Top 5 Banks #Winning Social Media Page 2
SoFi’s YouTube
As a platform that began with student loan refinancing, SoFi’s approach to the millennial market has always been a bit more in-step than some more traditional financial companies, and its YouTube channel is no exception. With 18,171 subscribers, the channel features the expected product advertisements–like this video on its original student loan refinancing service, with shots of coffee, rocket science, and graduation caps accompanied by appropriately modern, rhythmic music–but also features tutorials, career advice, and video blogs.
All of the channel’s content is devoted to the millennial or younger viewer, like this video series running through how best to create a resume, or master a job interview. For those on the older end of the millennial scale, the channel also has testimonials from customers who’ve used the company to master outrageous (but not altogether uncommon, considering student debt in the United States is a casual trillion dollars) amounts of debt, or are looking to take the next big financial step in their lives by looking to purchase their first home.
Of course, SoFi’s channel also has a touch of whimsy: it features videos like this “tiny” kitchen makeover, which customers could then apply in real-life (with the help of something like a SoFi personal loan, the company suggests). That video has nearly 10,000 views.
Simple’s Twitter
Like most accounts on Twitter, Simple’s is a mix of product placement, philosophical musings, shared advice columns, and memes. It’s most recent tweet is a brief, salient tease of a new feature to come on its quintessential banking app, and the one after that is a link to the company’s blog…furnished with a gif of two cockatoos.
The bank joined Twitter in September 2009, only a few months after it was officially founded,and used the channel (unusually at the time) for realtime customer support. Since that time, the company’s approach to the platform (heavy on the emojis) has amassed 48,600 followers, a solid audience for a financial company. While Simple does strive to make its Twitter more of a lifestyle account, tweeting out links to partner writers, musicians, and cities, or asking about the start of baseball season, these social anecdotes are always mixed in with product and business.
However, the mark of a stellar Twitter account is not just follower numbers, but engagement, which is why Simple’s account seems to shine brightest when it combines product with its lifestyle approach. Take the tweet below, a question 101 people have responded to:
What emoji best describes the state of your bank account right now?
— Simple (@simple) February 28, 2018
Square’s channel features tutorial videos about its products and features, stories about its sellers, inspirational videos, and videos in Japanese and Spanish. The brand manages to speak to its audience of small businesses while also educating consumers and others in the industry (ahem, bankers.) Its most recent video is instructions on setting up e-gift cards for merchants. The one before teaches merchants the basics of moving from a cash-only business to one that accepts cards. And the one before that is a 16-minute film about Sister Hearts Thrift Store in New Orleans, which provides housing and employment for formerly incarcerated women, and was itself founded by a former prison inmate.
Square has a mission to support its small-business customers, but its video productions go far beyond that. Its videos feature stories from actual people discussing a problem in their businesses or in their lives. Social media is about forming connections and telling stories, and Square does that — go to its video page and see how long it takes you to get sucked into stories about its diverse and dynamic community of sellers.
So there are Bank Innovation’s top picks for FIs #winning social media. Of course, we have there some other honorable mentions like American Express, which according to NetBase report was named the “most-loved” financial service on social media in 2017. Other mentions include payment services PayPal and it’s social payment platform Venmo, both of which brands have impressive and engaging presences on Twitter.
In 2018, no doubt more banks and fintechs will take to the various social media platforms, not just as a marketing tool, but also as a means of customer interaction. We just hope that most of them get better at it.
