Banks are still trying to crack the social media code. As the market continues its steady rise in popularity and relevance, banks are eager to exploit this direct avenue to their customers. However, it is not necessarily the easiest road. Patrick Brusnahan writes on RBI’s latest Twitter’s Top 60 financial institutions
With an average rise of 97% in followers, over the past two years across RBI’s Twitter Top 60, it is clear that financial institutions are taking the format seriously.
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The lowest number of followers on the table was 78,900, close to double the amount of followers held by 60th place in RBI’s last ranking.
Multiple institutions increased their number of followers many times over, with the highest rise attributed to Deutsche Bank which recorded a 659% rise. However, some saw barely any increase, with some banks even losing followers.
BBVA claimed first place once again with close to 3.5 million followers, a 34% rise since 2014. Two card companies, Visa and MasterCard, also placed in the top five, with American Express also holding strong in the top 10.
There were two new additions to the top ten, both headquartered in India: Yes Bank and State Bank of India with 1,050,000 and 742,300 followers respectively.
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By GlobalData
Why bother with Twitter?
A strong social media presence can have many advantages, from increasing awareness of products and services, to customer help, to simple advertising.
Sberbank, 12th in our rankings with 678,000 followers, states: “We use it for everything. We have three accounts: the main account of the bank, the one of the press office, and the account for business.
“We find it fair to give Twitter as much attention as all the other channels: Our clients use twitter as well as other social networks, and we want to communicate with them.”
Raphaël Krivine, director of Axa’s online bank Soon, believes social media is a crucial aspect in attracting the student market.
He says: “We’ve been omnipresent on social media from the start. And continue to be. Soon is for geeks. And all students are geeks!”
Speaking to RBI, Michael Lacorazza, executive vice-president and head of integrated marketing at Wells Fargo, says: “It’s on multiple dimensions for us.
“Given the complexity of the customer profiles that we serve, we have millions of customers and 90 different businesses, there are a number of different audience profiles that we want to connect with.
“We have multiple Twitter handles, one that’s the main Wells Fargo handle which has the largest number of followers, we have an Ask Wells Fargo handle which is more of a service-type handle for us, and we have Wells Fargo News, where we get information out about the company.”
Several banks decided to host several Twitter handles rather than funnel all information for all parties through a main one.
On this decision, Lacorazza explains: “This way everyone doesn’t have to wade through the main handle to find what they want. It’s more specific than that.
“We realised that if we tried to run everything through our main handle, you’d have to wade through a lot of irrelevant information to find what you followed us for.
“By creating a couple of these specific extensions, it gave us that ability to distinguish the content strains for our Twitter audience.
“We had a fair amount of discussion about this because, on the one hand, there was a desire to have a very consistent one-brand type of thing.
“We still see it as one brand, but we’re aware that we have different audiences that are interested in very specific types of content. If we pushed every single one, we wouldn’t reach many people.”
Keeping pace
Twitter is one of the fastest moving forms of social media out there. With that in mind, it can be tricky to stick out from the crowd.
In addition, with the multitude of regulations and compliance issues that banks work with, speedy communication is not thought of as their forte. However, financial institutions are getting around this.
Sberbank says it can tweet between three and seven times a week, and ‘sometimes more if we have news’.
A bank spokesperson says: “We have our product posts approved, but all in all we don’t have a complicated system of approvals.”
Using this method, Sberbank attains an average engagement rate of 0.009%, which it states is ‘at the same level or sometimes even higher than our international competitors’.
Lacorazza says: “[Wells Fargo has] the ability to get something out the same day. We have processes to get it reviewed.
“Most of the content that’s going through there, we’re preparing in advance for. We might be launching a new product or service and there’s been a whole effort leading up to that.
“The first thing that we try to do is having the content that gets engagement. You have to get in there with a nice headline and snackable content ,as it is short-form.
“For the most part, that user profile wants information quickly,” Lacorazza continues.
“We do some paid application there as well, it’s not all organic, which is part of how you build your following.
“If you don’t pay for it, Twitter doesn’t distribute it as much.”
With regards to people contacting the bank’s customer service Twitter handle, things are not as easy.
“We have a command centre listening in to that and we can respond within a day, but customer expectation is within hours,” Lacorazza explains.
The RBI Twitter Top 60 2016
