Each quarter, The Dubs delves into the social media activity of the major players in a number of key industries. This month we’ve turned our focus back to retail banking, looking at the change in social media activity since the beginning of the year. Our in-house research provides a measure of the presence each institution has on social media, the engagement of their audiences, and ultimately the impact they have in the social space. Here we summarise a few of our key findings.
TOP 20 – BOQ Up, Westpac Down
This edition (Jan-Mar 2017) of the Top 20 Australian Retail Banks social media tracker showed diverse activity across the key social networks being Facebook, X, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Looking to the Top 20 by aggregated social media reach and activity, ANZ, NAB and CBA maintain their hold on the first three positions while Westpac dropped out of the top 5 to position 9.
BOQ lifted four spots to position 7 as it was the most active bank publishing 506 social posts compared with the Top 20 total posts median of 125. HSBC also recorded a four spot jump to position 16 due to an incredible jump on its Facebook followers on the previous reporting period.
HSBC Owns Facebook – How?
HSBC’s Facebook position leapfrogged from bottom spot to first position dwarfing all other retail banks with 1.55m followers. We can only imagine a global reorganisation of HSBC Facebook followers occurred within the period.
HSBC’s Facebook position leapfrogged from bottom spot to first position dwarfing all other retail banks with 1.55m followers.
The most active bank on Facebook was again Bendigo Bank with 97 posts against the Top 20 Facebook median posts of 45 while the median Facebook Likes was 47.6k.
The most popular Facebook content type of the Top 20 was Sponsorship at 22.3%, Customer Service was 17% and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) was third at 12.6%. NAB and ANZ were most active with Sponsorship Content, while Bendigo and St. George lead Customer Service posts and Bendigo lead CSR content.
BOQ Ramps Up X
ANZ maintains its clear lead on X with its 114k followers eclipsing the Top 20 median of 9.1k followers, however, it was BOQ that was the standout, jumping 7 spots on the X Activity chart to top spot with 424 Tweets/Retweets during the period against the Top 20 median of 83.5 Tweets/Retweets.
Related Article:Â Content On X – Tips For Financial Brands
ANZ Owns LinkedIn But Bank Of Melbourne Gets Active
ANZ continues to dominate LinkedIn reach with 280k followers with CBA (170k), Macquarie (155k), NAB (130k) and Westpac (110k) rounding out the top 5 spots. The reach of the top 5 far exceeds the Top 20 median of 17.8k of LinkedIn followers and this shows there’s plenty of room for growth on the LinkedIn platform.
ANZ and Bank of Melbourne were most active on LinkedIn with 35 posts each while big 4 player Westpac was surprisingly quiet with only 5 LinkedIn posts during the period.
Related Article:Â Content On LinkedIn – Finance Brands Win Back Trust
YouTube Treated As The Poor Cousin
The YouTube Top 20 Reach chart continues to show the retail banks do not know what to do with the video platform if their subscriber numbers are anything to go by. CBA and ANZ lead YouTube reach with a modest 7.9k and 7.2k subscribers respectively. NAB rounds out the third spot with 4.1k and beyond this it’s truly rats and mice figures.
However, Westpac dialled up its YouTube activity to remain in the top spot with 35 videos uploaded during the period but to an unknown subscriber base as the bank does not publish this data on its YouTube channel.
While retail bank YouTube subscriber numbers are poor, three of the retail banks had success with video views lead by ING DIRECT being 2.15m during the quarter, followed by NAB with 1.55m video views and ANZ recording 1.36m views.
[Full disclosure – ANZ, CBA, Westpac, TM Bank and RaboDirect are clients of The Dubs]
Research is what we do
Research is at the core of everything we do at The Dubs – from strategy, through to content creation, distribution, social sharing and our own digital processes.
As well as keeping us at the forefront of our own industry, we conduct research on the industries in which our clients operate – asset management, general insurance, health insurance, super funds, retail banking, life insurance, and more.
If you are interested in a custom report that benchmarks your organisation against your competitors, Contact us to find out more.
Research Report:Â Top 20 Australian Retail Banks Most Active On Social Media Nov 2016 – Jan 2017
Research Report: Top 20 Australian Retail Banks On Social Media May-Aug 2016
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