Santander Tops Banking Industry in Tweets

In a blog posted today, Visible Banking, a social media watch site, highlighted the 10 most active Twitter accounts from the financial services industry. Coming in at No.1 was Santander (Brazil) with 142 tweets in February 2012.

Other ranked banks with auto finance units were: Bank of America coming in at No.3 and Wells Fargo taking the No. 7 spot with 88 and 71 tweets, respectively.

Since 2009, Visible Banking has been tracking and benchmarking how the global financial services industry uses sites like Twitter to engage with customers. The site now tracks more than 1,700 Twitter accounts in 78 countries. The Top 10 list includes a broad range of accounts focused on various topics like brand, sport, and customer care.

At yearend 2011, Visible Banking revealed that 90% of Twitter accounts in financial services were inactive and only 0.05% of Twitter accounts in financial services were verified, "which seems low from an industry whose reputation has been severely damaged in the last three years and which is eager to improve brand perception and provide better customer care wherever their clients are," Christophe Langlois said in the post.

Since then, just a few banks and insurance companies have started to develop and implement a more structured and engaged content strategy, but most "are clueless in regards to leveraging the popular microblogging service: they still don't have a content strategy and they do a poor job engaging with their customers and their influencers," he went on to say.

Though it's fairly easy to set up a Twitter account, it seems that few auto finance companies are using the social media giant to reach out to customers, prospects, or even employees.

Tags: BofA, Santander, Twitter, Wells Fargo, visible banking

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Comment by Frank Rauscher on March 14, 2012 at 4:25pm: Christina, share this Mary Wisniewski. She is looking for areas of bank innovation vendor opportunities such as marketing companies that can integrate bank corporate customers with retail banking customers. This is a good example of that opportunity at banks. .

Comment by Christina Haberstroh on March 14, 2012 at 5:25pm: Thanks, Frank! Will do; she's right here with me today and actually helped me find some of this information.

Comment by Frank Rauscher on March 14, 2012 at 6:10pm: Here is a thought: From the post "At yearend 2011, Visible Banking revealed that 90% of Twitter accounts in financial services were inactive and only 0.05% of Twitter accounts in financial services were verified, "which seems low from an industry whose reputation has been severely damaged in the last three years and which is eager to improve brand perception and provide better customer care wherever their clients are,"

No bank in 2012 is going to have 6 million followers of whom some take action from a tweet. But there are celebrities that do. Combine a commercial business account, a celebrity endorsement, and a a bank and you may get some action.

Try Kim Kardashian Fragrance, Macy's and be added to Wells Fargo twitter list or use Wells Fargo plastic or mobile phone for payment gets you a discount. With 6 million followers, there may be some action. I realize that the celebrity may need to be a better image, the store should be one for which the bank is the card merchant, and the discount is part paid by the bank but you get the idea. The bank helps you fatten your wallet. The bank gets one small step toward a better reputation - maybe - depending on the bank.

Lady Gaga has 20 million followers.