[Part one of a two-article series on social media traffic at the Top 20 U.S. banks. See part two here.]

USAA, the financial services company for vets, is the king of social media among the Top 20 banks in the U.S., according to a Bank Innovation analysis.

Among the 20 largest banks, USAA derived the greatest percentage of its web traffic from social media: 1.52%. That compares to M&T Bank, the laggard among the Top 20 banks, which secured just 0.03% of its web traffic from social media.

Bank Innovation analyzed web traffic in December 2012 to better understand the sources of visitors to the banking sites of the largest banks.

Not surprisingly considering the size of its customer base, Bank of America led the nation’s 20 largest banks in the raw number of site visits coming from social media in December 2012 with nearly 468,000. Bank of America’s “social” visitors comprised 0.44% of bankofamerica.com’s total traffic.

It’s no secret that banks are going social since overall social media traffic is so high. For example, by the end of the fourth quarter of 2013, Facebook reported the following:

• Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.06 billion as of December 31, 2012, an increase of 25% year-over-year
• Daily active users (DAUs) were 618 million on average for December 2012, an increase of 28% year-over-year
• Mobile MAUs were 680 million as of December 31, 2012, an increase of 57% year-over-year
• Mobile DAUs exceeded web DAUs for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2012

As a result, most large banks have presences of some kind on the major social networks. What’s less clear is what this does for banks — and bank customers. Undoubtedly customer service plays an important role, as does financial advice. What we can expect to see more of in 2013 is offers over social media, along the lines of American Express’s use of Twitter to alert customers to special offers.

The majority of bank web traffic is so-called direct traffic, meaning users visit the bank sites by typing the URL rather than arriving via a link or  search engine. For most sites, this is not desirable. Consumer sites want search engines or similar sites to send visitors their way. However, existing bank customers usually going to their banks deliberately to do some business — check accounts, pay bills, etc. — so a high percentage of direct traffic is expected. That said, it is likely that new potential customers will originate from social media and search engines.

A recent JD Power survey of excellence in social media cited JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and Regions Financial Corp. These banks are spread throughout our rankings.

Below are the nation’s 20 largest banks, ordered by the percentage of their web traffic coming from social media in December 2012.

Join us at Bank Innovation 2013, where we will discuss the role of social media in banking.