Chime in on Social Media: Celebrating Chime’s 10th Anniversary Year with our Members
Social media is one of the most effective ways to connect with people and communities both near and far. For Chime, social media is how we listen to, connect with, and gather our members as an online community. It’s where we share financial insights and tips, product updates, sweepstakes, and relevant news to our members. It’s also where we learn more about — and from — our members; what’s working for them, how we can better help them reach their goals, and the things they’ve achieved with the help of Chime already.
After kicking off Chime’s tenth birthday year, we sat down with two members of the Chime Social Media team to learn about their roles, how their work helps us achieve Chime’s mission, and how social media helps keep Chime connected to our members.
Meet the Chimers
Javier Zamora (he/him/his) is a Social Media Marketing Strategist at Chime. In his role, he acts as a liaison between Chime and our members — anywhere a member quote or story is shared, he and his team play a role in getting it there.
“My work correlates with Chime’s value of being member-obsessed,” Javier says. “Social media provides us with a window into our members’ lives and grounds us in what really matters to them, and I’m honored to play a small part in sharing that with Chime and our community.”
Aaron Li (he/him/his), another Social Media Marketing Strategist on the team, runs many of Chime’s sweepstakes and brand campaigns on social media, like the #WhyIChime sweepstakes and Shoe Surgeon giveaways. He also composes a lot of Chime’s ongoing social editorial content. “As part of my role to help keep the lights on for our social media presence, I create daily content for our channels,” Aaron explains. “I aim to create posts for our following that are culturally relevant, engaging, and, most importantly, human. We’re always hoping to create earned moments through campaigns and achieve virality, but our number one priority is to share content that resonates with our members.”
“At Chime, our mission is to help our members make financial progress and a big part is ensuring their experiences are understood and known. We do that through social media by being human and connecting with them where they are.” — Aaron Li
Social media at Chime: Ten years of building connection
From November 2022 to November 2023, Chime is celebrating our tenth birthday and a decade of commitment to our members. In those ten years, Chime’s social media presence has changed drastically. “We started with one channel that wasn’t managed — Twitter — where members shared their feedback or issues, and we’ve turned our social media presence around completely,” explains Javier. Now, Chime has an active presence on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, all of which act as avenues to share insights, member love, sweepstakes, brand partnerships, and support.
“Our presence on social media goes hand in hand with our grounding value of being member-obsessed,” Javier says. “Chime wouldn’t be where we are without our members, and social helps us stay connected to them.”
Over the past ten years, social media at Chime has not only expanded its connection with our members — it’s also grown to include a team of Chimers who collaborate across marketing, creative, compliance, and legal. “Everyone comes together to provide our members with the best social media experience we can,” says Javier. “None of it is done in a vacuum.”
Chime’s tenth birthday: A real celebration of our members
Turning ten as a company is a big deal, but ten years of providing for our members is an even bigger milestone for us. “We really wanted to make our tenth birthday about celebrating both with and for our members rather than about wishing us a happy birthday,” Aaron explains. “We took a member-first approach to our social content for that week, making every share about celebrating them, not us. In a way, Chime’s tenth birthday is more about how we’ve grown with our members than how we’ve grown up.”
In the spirit of serving and growing together, Javier, Aaron, and a large cross-functional team also launched Chime’s Community Hub to mark our tenth birthday. It’s a place for community content on Chime’s website — a centralized page for members to share and read each other’s stories and access valuable resources. When Chime members join the Community Hub, they’re able to win swag and enter #WhyIChime sweepstakes — just another way the team continues to show their love for our members (and helps them show their love for Chime).
“Over the last ten years, we’ve formed a community online, but it never had a real home — the Community Hub was our way of giving it a place to grow so we can continue celebrating our members for years to come,” says Aaron.
The role of member engagement in social media
A critical component of a thriving online community isn’t just providing people with content, it’s engaging your followers and amplifying their stories, too. “For us, engagement means meeting our members where they are, getting to know them, and helping them become advocates for Chime,” Javier says. “Our presence on social media and within the community has helped our members access meaningful information, win prizes, and, in turn, members increasingly tell their friends and families about Chime.”
And while Javier and Aaron collect member stories via social media, they also talk to members in one-on-one interviews to learn about their experiences with Chime and their finances. Through these conversations and ongoing engagement on social media, the entire team at Chime has created a social brand that resonates with our members.
“We’re not your typical finance social account; we post things that our members enjoy, interact with, and benefit from,” explains Aaron. “The way other companies talk about finance on social media can be hard to understand; we want to make it easy to grasp and fun at times. Even as someone in the finance industry, there are things I look to understand better! Our biggest goal on social media is to put out content that’s relatable and helps us connect with the people we’re here to serve: our members.” And their work is working: several Chime hashtags have been the highest trending posts in the past few years. For example, our holiday #WhyIChime sweepstakes trended above the #FIFAWorldCup!
Javier and Aaron Chime in: Their favorite member stories
Ask any Chimer, and they’ll likely have a member story that ‘stuck’ with them. For Javier, it’s hard to pick from the over twelve thousand stories he’s helped collect and share.
“The first story that comes to mind is a recent interview with a member from Baltimore,” he says. “She has a bubbly personality, contagious laugh, and a way of storytelling that hooked me in. She’s working towards her second master’s degree. In her work, she helps youth who struggle with mental health by teaching them about financial literacy. In short, she’s an incredible human doing fulfilling and important work. She inspires youth to achieve their goals by always reminding them that there’s more to life than what they see in front of them. Her drive and attitude really stuck with me.”
For Aaron, it’s a story of member friendship that stole his heart. “Two members who had been sending each other SpotMe Boosts met on the Chime sub-Reddit and started going to karaoke together,” he recounts. “A real friendship started because of a Chime feature and our community’s desire to connect. Their story is so inspiring to me because it’s a reminder that we do more than provide a banking app or talk about community — we’re helping people learn from, support, and meet each other IRL.”
