What’s so interesting about banks on Facebook? What do they post about and who posts on their wall? Ever since the Financial Crisis in 2008, banks have not been very popular among the public. Quite the opposite, as they have taken much of the blame for the current state of the economy in America. However, customers like to keep up to date on offers and get the most they can out of banks, and there’s no question that they enjoy informing them as to what they are doing wrong. We have ranked and analyzed 57 different American banks to see which banks are better connected with their fans.
So what exactly do banks post about on Facebook? Capital One posts primarily about travel and getaways such as here, while Amarillo National Bank posts generally about common interest, as you can see here. Wells Fargo concerns itself mainly with the latest offers and general food for thought as seen here, similarly to PNC, who post ideas and tips for different banking needs such as this one. Some banks also hold contests and give their customers chances to win money or good deals. How do their fans respond? By posting mainly concerns and complaints. Banks sure have a hard time pleasing everyone. Which banks are more successful at it?
The banks with the highest number of fans include Capital One, American Express, Bank of America and Citibank US. Capital One is the highest ranking bank only in terms of number of fans with 2.9 million. Other than that, they score 0% on Engagement rate, have not had a single fan post in the last 30 days and their growth rate is negative with -0.1%. When they post, which is not very often, they post mainly pictures, which get a high engagement from fans. Their content, however, has nothing to do with finances or banking, but rather travel and sports as you can see here and here. Because their pictures have received such a good response from their fans when posted, they should post pictures more often and perhaps relate it more to their area of expertise.
Probably the most famous US bank, Bank of America, has 886 thousand fans and a service level of only 46%, which is not much compared to the average of 70% of all banks listed. Bank of America receives a lot of fan posts, 54.4% of which are ignored by the fan page and the majority of them are complaints made by unhappy customers. Their poor response rate is understandable though, it can’t be very fun having to read through so many complaints all day. When they do respond to posts, they try to help the customer with their situation, like here for example. With 505 thousand fans and a major competitor to the Bank of America, Wells Fargo also mainly receives complaints from customers on their page. They have responded to about 74% of fan posts with advice on how to solve their problem and their average response time is 0.8 hours, which is very quick.
Eight banks in our ranking have a 100% Service Level, which means that they have reacted to every post made by fans. Let’s take Michigan First Credit Union for example. Although they have a 100% Service Level, when examined closely, we see that they have only had two fan posts in the last 30 days to react to. The next fan page we examined, Farmers Bank & Capital Trust Co., had a similar situation with only one post in the last 30 days. The other fan pages with 100% service level had, at the most, four fan posts in the last 30 days, which makes it not difficult at all for them to respond to their fans.
But wait, where are Goldman Sachs, State Street Corporation, Bancorp and other major American banks? Why don’t they all have Facebook pages? Perhaps they don’t necessarily want to connect with the public and would prefer to keep their financial business somewhat private, like many German banks. At least this way they get to avoid what those banks on Facebook have to face: a very public display of dislike, an example of which can be seen here. Yet if properly applied, having a fan page can be used to their advantage when posts are responded to quickly and efficiently, such as this one, which would help resolve customer problems. In this way banks would be able to establish a good relationship with their customers, which would result in positive publicity and create a win-win situation for everyone involved.
All data was taken from Fanpage Karma. To try our free analysis click here.
