Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Let's talk about blogs for a moment. Everyone and his brother has a blog. Many are quite good, but few really capture the readers' attention and bring them back again and again. (Of the 75 feeds I have in Bloglines, I only read 10 or 12 regularly. How many do you read?) What makes the difference? Storytelling.

By Ron Jooss

Do you know what your members are having for lunch? Chances are, a good number of them are devouring videos over their lunch hour, at least according to a front-page New York Times article that ran last Saturday.

By Mary Auestad Arnold

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

When I was a free-lance writer, I used to joke about how I'd cater to the every need of an "A" customer, try to turn "B" customers into "A" customers, and give away "C" customers. In truth, the only customer I ever fired was one that didn't pay.

An article in this week's Knowledge @ Wharton e-newsletter suggests that firing customers really isn't such a hot idea. It begins:

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I've been hearing for a long time that CUs need to pay attention to the younger set. To reach out to youth so that when they come of age, they'll already be members. To have plans in place for how they're going to hook this elusive demographic.

Until recently, it just all seemed like hype. But I've started to think that maybe the resources are in place to support real action. Consider that:

Posted by Lisa Hochgraf

I've been thinking a lot about public relations for credit unions lately.

That's partly because our star "PR Insight" columnist of several years, Laura Enock of CUVA, will stop writing about PR so she can author a new column for us in 2008. Check out "Teaching Smart Money Management"--all about how CUs can best deliver financial literacy education--on the second Tuesday of every month on cues.org, starting Jan. 8.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

It's been a while since I've posted. December has been a nutty month and I'm just sitting down to my desk this week. So to break my blogging silence, I thought I'd throw out some good opportunities for CU marketers.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson

I'm typically not a sentimental guy. I don't cry at movies. I don't reminisce about the good ol' days. I don't like puppies. (I'm more of a dog guy, but not little froo-froo lapdogs; just big dogs.) And I hate "power ballads." Nevertheless, I'm a bit bummed out because I just found out that my credit union is going to merge with another. Not only that, but my CU is taking on the other credit union's name.

Posted by Christopher Stevenson