Join the consumer movement – take your savings and checking money out of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citibank and move it to your local community bank or credit union.

What started as a New Year’s Resolution by Arianna Huffington and a few of her friends has gained tremendous momentum in the social media.

I’m talking about the article, “Move Your Money:  A New Year’s Resolution” which was posted December 29, 2009 on Huffington’s popular blog site, The Huffington Post.

If you are not familiar with this movement, you should stop what you are doing and immediately go online to catch up.  Your first stop should be the movement’s dedicated website www.moveyourmoney.info where you can view the video that helped launch this grass-roots movement.  It’s also available on YouTube where it has been viewed over 315,000 times since being posted a week ago.

And not surprising, the movement has already spawned a host of related YouTube videos.  One customer had herself filmed closing her Bank of America account.  Over 50,000 viewers have already watched her video.

Search on the keywords “Move Your Money” on YouTube and be prepared to be entertained and educated.

Of course, this movement has generated some naysayers who believe it will be unsuccessful as the big banks are simply too big to suffer much customer defection.  As we all know, it’s not that easy to close your checking account and move it to another financial institution.

But that hasn’t stopped thousands of consumers from taking action.

From my perspective, this movement presents community banks and credit unions with a golden opportunity to not only gather new customers but to learn more about the extent of customer anger over today’s banking disaster.

Fortunately for the smaller financial institutions, millions of consumers are fed up with the big banks being bailed out by the government while continuing to pay big year-end bonuses.

Yet, let’s not forget that consumers are also irate over high fees and draconian NFS policies foisted on them by banks large and small.

But the good news is that Huffington’s New Year’s resolution has sparked a movement away from big banks – urging consumers to establish relationships with their local community banks and credit unions.

Don’t neglect this gift that’s been handed to you and your bank.

The thousands of customer comments appearing at the end of the many blogs on the “Move Your Money” movement are priceless bits of free marketing intelligence. 

Unlike formal marketing research efforts where people tend to be less than forthcoming, the comments you’ll read at the end of these blogs represent the cold, hard truth about what consumers are thinking and feeling about the big banks in particular and all banks in general.

So if you’re not already tuned in to this rapidly growing movement, now is the time to do so.  Don’t pass up this wonderful marketing opportunity that’s been handed to you.

It’s readily available and waiting for you on the Internet.