Can a financial brand outperform the industry by turning social into a growth engine?

How Johnson Financial Group used Hootsuite to turn social media from a channel into a benchmark-beating solution that grows reach, boosts engagement, and drives business results.

A graphic showing a social media post template with a photo of a brick building labeled "Johnson Financial Group". The post is accompanied by two data cards: one showing a bar chart and pie chart, and the other displaying a metric of 6,783 impressions.

THE CHALLENGE

Turn fragmented social efforts into measurable business impact

Johnson Financial Group’s (JFG) social presence evolved rapidly, creating the need for more modern tools to manage channels and maintain compliance. While legacy tools provided a solid foundation and compliance safeguards, they weren’t optimized for modern, scalable social channel management for both the brand and advisors.

For the lean social team, these gaps made it challenging to scale impact or prove results. To move from disconnected execution to strategic impact, JFG needed a platform that could bring more structure, scale, and clarity to their social media efforts.

Hootsuite Amplify dashboard, showing a content feed and weekly share goals achieved (4/4 shares). A woman and a man are collaborating in the foreground. A finger icon is clicking the Share button on a card featuring credit cards, illustrating employee advocacy.

THE SOLUTION

Build a scalable, compliant foundation for corporate and advisor channels

By adopting Hootsuite’s suite of tools, including Hootsuite Enterprise, Advanced Analytics, Amplify, Listening, and key compliance integrations, JFG optimized its strategy, empowered advisors, and transformed social into a fully integrated driver of growth.

THE RESULTS

Benchmark-beating campaigns and a culture of confident social growth

1.6m

impressions for a key campaign (4x industry benchmark)

314%

higher engagement rate than the financial services industry average

28%

YOY increase in impressions across all social channels

Scaling social operations across a complex organization

A Hootsuite calendar interface showing scheduled content for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, February 22-24. A sidebar indicates recommended post times, with 11:00 am - 1:00 pm highlighted, and a cursor is clicking the "Schedule multiple" button.

With a two-person team, Johnson Financial Group found it challenging to manage an increasingly complex social strategy across corporate channels, business lines, and employee advocates. They asked: How do we unify workflows, accelerate approvals, and keep campaigns moving efficiently with our current resources?

The answer: Hootsuite Enterprise. Its centralized view gave the team a single place to plan, schedule, and manage content across multiple stakeholders, eliminating siloed calendars and manual coordination. Shared campaign views, approval workflows, and automated scheduling helped them move faster, stay compliant, and do more without adding new members to their team.

The impact of this optimization became especially clear when the team put it into action to support a cornerstone content series.

A graphic showing a social media post with a man recording a podcast. A red line frames the post, connecting it to a red megaphone icon and a pop-up button labeled "Approvals," illustrating the content approval workflow.

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE IN ENTERPRISE CONTENT DELIVERY

📣 Coordinating a flagship podcast across channels

When promoting new episodes of JFG’s Your Money. Your Mission. podcast, the team uses Hootsuite Enterprise to coordinate publishing across corporate channels and a distributed network of advisors.

Campaigns are scheduled in advance, tagged for performance tracking, and funneled through built-in approval workflows that ensure every post meets compliance requirements before going live. A shared dashboard gives full visibility to all stakeholders, while automated expiration dates remove outdated content from advisors’ view, ensuring only the most current, approved messaging is in circulation.

The results? Coordinated execution on launch day, consistent messaging across channels, and centralized control from planning through post-campaign debriefs, without adding operational complexity.

Unlocking advisor influence with compliant, curated content

A graphic showing a content feed of "Finance Tips" on the left. On the right, a drop-down menu for "New Amplify post" is open, showing options to select Regular post, Featured post, or Internal announcement, alongside logos for Proofpoint and UpContent.

JFG recognized significant potential beyond corporate channels — in its advisors. However, between spending time with clients, compliance concerns, and other time constraints, advisors were limited in their ability to establish a consistent online presence.

That changed with the combined power of Hootsuite Amplify, UpContent, and Proofpoint. Together, these tools enabled the social team to deliver a curated, compliant content library — tailored by region and business line — that advisors could confidently share with just a few clicks. Both branded and third-party articles were pre-approved and automatically vetted, striking the right balance between relevance and regulation.

A graphic showing a social media post of a man smiling while looking at his phone. An overlaid box labeled "Share to" lists multiple personal accounts (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook) for cross-posting content.

ENABLING ADVISOR INFLUENCE AT SCALE

📱 Unlocking new opportunities with mobile publishing

To extend the reach and immediacy of advisor content, JFG also turned to the Hootsuite mobile app, giving them the ability to post on the go. With Amplify in their pocket, financial advisors could share branded or curated third-party content directly from conferences, client events, or trade shows — no need to wait until they were back at their desks.

Empowering advisors with a mobile app also helped them unlock new social channels. Previously, Instagram was off-limits due to system restrictions on corporate laptops, but with Amplify on mobile, advisors could share timely, compliant content directly to their audiences on this high-impact channel. Today, a pilot group of advisors is actively using Instagram to build their brands by reaching new customers and prospects, opening the door for even broader engagement moving forward.

Making the case for social with actionable analytics

A dashboard graphic showing a line graph titled "Sentiment Over Time" (Positive, Neutral, Negative lines) and a donut chart displaying "Share of Sentiment" (72% positive, 18% neutral, 10% negative). A cursor points to a "Quick search" button.

As JFG’s social footprint grew, so did expectations from leadership, business lines, and advisors. The team reached the next step: What posts are actually driving results, and how do we prove social’s impact in a way leadership can trust?

With Hootsuite Advanced Analytics and Listening, they gained deeper visibility into content performance, audience behavior, and competitor activity. These insights helped fine-tune strategy and justify investment in high-performing content

A graphic showing a social media post of two men talking in an office, accompanied by a key metric bubble displaying a 5.26% engagement rate and a 3D thumbs-up icon.

CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE SPOTLIGHT

🙌 Setting a new standard for engagement

During a high-priority certificate of deposit (CD) campaign, the team took a multi-pronged approach, using a combination of paid and organic social. Using Hootsuite Analytics, they tracked campaign-wide reach and engagement — achieving 1.6 million impressions and a 5.26% engagement rate.

Comparing these results to competitor benchmarks in Hootsuite Listening showed that these figures far exceeded the 400K and 1.27% industry averages, respectively — helping the team win deeper executive buy-in on the value of organic social, reinforcing the value of investing in ads, and illustrating a full multi-channel success story.

Evolving social from a channel to a strategic solution

A graphic featuring two smiling women collaborating over a laptop, with a separate social media post of a man and a money bag icon floating nearby. The image illustrates teamwork and the successful sharing of content.

Johnson Financial Group’s partnership with Hootsuite hasn’t just elevated their content. It’s transformed how the social team operates, protects the brand, and empowers advisors to unlock new channels to build their reputation and personal brand.

With Hootsuite, JFG uses social not just as a channel, but as a strategic solution — scaling what works to turn social into a more consistent, measurable driver of reach, engagement, and growth.

A cheerful woman in an orange sweater, holding a laptop. The image is overlaid with social media analytics, including a Share of sentiment chart, a metric for 6,783 impressions, and a list of social platforms to Publish to.

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