Was 'a Day' on Facebook and Twitter Worth Vanguard's CEO Time?

Last Friday, I posted an article about an interesting social media experiment involving the CEO from Vanguard's Head of Social Media John Buhl.  In a nutshell, the investment firm's CEO Bill McNabb "took over" Vanguard's main facebook page and twitter account.  
 
So, how much activity did this initiative generate?  And more importantly, was it worth Bill's time?

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Proudly Announces Facebook Milestones. But Wait, They're Just Getting Started.

Last night, and a few days after I congratulated the bank for its 100,000 likes, I received an email from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) with an official press release announcing the 1st anniversary of their facebook page: 
"Since launching its Facebook page, the Bank has been working hard on developing and implementing a solid strategy to not only keep current fans engaged through interactive content, but create an environment for the community to unite, share suggestions, seek advice and receive active real-time responses directly from the Bank’s dedicated customer service team."

Russia's PSBank Aims to Set New Standard for Banks on Facebook

Back in Q1 2011, my team started to track how financial institutions are leveraging facebook.  Now, we track over 1,300 pages and apps in 77 countries as part of our Visible Banking Facebook Watch series.
   
The usual suspects when you think of innovation on Facebook in banking and financial services are the likes of American Express or Chase.  I personally love the level of engagement on CIMB Malaysia's page or the crowdsourcing apps from Danske Bank or Nykredit and I salute the effort in social customer care of Interbank Peru.
 
But innovation on facebook doesn't necessarily come from the US or the booming APAC and LATAM regions.  As usual, even -or shall I say especially- in banking, it is driven by people, and defined by a vision.

Introducing the Visible Banking Google+ Watch Series [200+ Financial Institutions in 21 Countries]

Since early 2009, my Visible Banking team have been tracking how financial institutions are using social media services like facebook (now over 1,100 pages and apps in 75 countries) and twitter (over 1,600 accounts in 72 countries).  It gives us some unique insights we share with our clients to help them immediately increase the level of engagement on those popular online communities.
  
This month, I've asked my team to start tracking financial institutions on Google +.

Google + was launched on 28 June 2011, and in the last four months, everything has been said of Google's latest venture in the world of social media.  This is the fastest growing 'social network' ever with 40 million 'users' (vs 'active users') at the end of October 2011.
  
Social media gurus are divided on the Google service, I invite you to read those articles: 'Google+ Is Dead', '
Google+ Proclaimed Dead. Is This a Fair Assessment?', '5 Reasons Google+ Could Win the Social Enterprise Battle'.
 
A couple of weeks ago, on 7th November, Google launched 'Google+ Pages' for brands and other businesses 'a la facebook pages'.  In just a week, it has been claimed that over 60% of world's top brands created a Google+ page.  With this move, the search engine giant is poised to reach 60 million users by year end. 

So how big is the opportunity for brands and how critical it is to build an active presence on this other social media 'channel'?  More importantly, should financial institutions hurriedly jump on the bandwagon and create another social media profile without much conviction or engagement?

How Much Do Facebook Users Talk About Your Financial Institution? [Top 20 Pages]

In March 2009, my Visible Banking Team officially started tracking how financial institutions all over the world are using social media channels like twitter and facebook.  I am delighted to announce that we are now tracking over 1,100 pages and applications on facebook, and over 1,600 twitter accounts in 75 countries.
  
The size of your 'community' is still one of the key indicators for brands.  I respect that, but once more I would advocate for a good balance between quality and volume.  After all, It is easy to quicky increase your number of likes on facebook as I explained in my recent posts about Credit Union Australia's Pink 'My Profile' and Commonwealth Bank's imminent Time Vault contest on facebook.
 
Your main goal is to build an engaged 'community' of facebook or twitter composed of as many users interested in your brand, your values or your initiatives as possible.  Quickly increasing your 'fan base' usually impacts the quality of your community and the overall level of brand intimacy, and make it difficult for you to design efficient content and reward strategies including the occasional wall posts about financial services.
 
And the ultimate key to brilliant engagement on facebook and twitter is to make sure you Know Your Followers/Fans (KYF). 

As a page owner, in addition to comparing the size of your audience with your competitors', you want to assess the levels of engagement and visibility of your page (metrics such as: volume of likes, comments, shares, posts, questions and answers...).  In early October, facebook unveiled its new Pages Insights analytics Tool and introduced a new metric to access the individual level of success of its 200 million pages: 'talking about this'.
 
So, let's find out which pages in the worldwide financial services industry are the most talked about.

CIMB Promotes its Social Media Presence in Malaysia's Largest Tabloid-Format Newspaper

CIMB is one of the most active banking group on social media in Asia Pacific with their flag ship facebook page, CIMB Malaysia which now counts over 365,000 likes. And you can add another 323k likes from their CIMB Indonesia, Thai, Singapore, Asia Pacific Classic Malaysia, and Group pages. On twitter, the bank adopted a customer support angle with @CIMB_Assists which counts close to 8,000 followers.

In the last six months, the Malaysian bank has released a number of successful facebook apps targeted to the youth such as 'the battle of the bands' and 'CIMB YOUth' which I confidently called 'the most viral application for the youth on facebook' (from a bank).

Yesterday evening, I arrived in Kuala Lumpur to deliver my next two-day social media in financial services workshop. I look forward to spending the next couple of days with participants from 8 banks and 4 countries.

This morning, I was making the most of the beautiful Malaysian weather whend I came across this full-page ad in the Sunday Star.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Celebrates its Centenary by Giving Away $20,000 to its Facebook Fans

Even though 2011 is not over yet, it has already been a fantastic year for Commonwealth Bank in Australia:



* This year, CBA celebrates its 100th anniversary,
* Thanks to the vision and under the leadership of people like Michael Harte - Group Executive Enterpise Services CIO, they are one of the only banks in the world to provide real-time banking to its clients (in action it is very impressive),
* Two weeks ago, CBA launched 'Kaching', one of the most innovative mobile banking / payment applications for iPhone,
* The bank is the second most liked financial institution on facebook in Australia,
* Last but not least, in August Andy Lark became CBA's new Chief Marketing and Online Officer (CMOO). Andy was instrumental in establishing Dell as one of the leaders in social media. His team is already working on a number of innovative social media initiatives. Stay tuned on Visible Banking!
 
CBA is committed to regain the first spot on facebook and become not only the most liked, but also the most insightful and engaging Australian bank on facebook.  The soon-to-launch 'Time Vault' contest will be the first of a long series of initiatives on the most popular online communities in the world, and in Australia (#19 country in terms of penetration with over 50% of internet population)...

The Most Liked Financial Institutions on Facebook in Australia is... a Credit Union

As most of you already know, today I've just come back from a very productive business trip in Singapore and Australia.

My schedule in Australia was already packed with many business meetings and social media workshops lined up with many financial institutions. But I was delighted to see so many news and events taking place in Sydney in the last two weeks: Commonwealth Bank's launch of 'Kaching' - their innovative payment application for iPhone -, the launch of 'Pygg.co' - a payment service on twitter (via PayPal) - (I recorded a video interview in Australia), and last but not least, last week's bit of a 'crisis management' for the National Australia Bank (NAB) and its controversial rate cut.

On 25 October, I received an email from Peter Cramb - Manager Digital Initiatives at Credit Union Australia who wanted to connect with me in Sydney and inform me of the credit union's successful facebook application 'Pink My Profile' which had a dramatic impact on the fan base of the credit union on facebook...

Kaching! Commonwealth Bank Launches the Sleekest, Most Convenient, Mobile Payment App for iPhone

I'm currently in the middle of the Visible Banking Asia Pacific tour. I've landed in Sydney a couple of days ago after a successful week in Singapore ponctuated, among other things, by a social media workshop in Bangkok and a well attended book launch party with the likes of Standard Chartered, OCBC, DBS Bank, Maybank, Visa.

On Monday, Tracy Hicks - PR Advisor at Commonwealth Bank of Australia invited me to attend their event for the launch of their latest mobile banking application 'Kaching' ('#CBAAnnouncement on twitter). The event took place yesterday morning at the CBA building on Harbour street.

The leading Australian bank, which has started to celebrate its 100 years, did a good job building the level of excitement and interest with this well executed product launch. Well done to Tracy and her PR colleagues.

This initiative reminded me of FNB's recent event to support the launch of their own mobile banking app for smartphones. The South African bank's launch was extremely smart and successful: the bank invited a lot of influencial and vocal bloggers which helped them generate a lot of buzz online, sustain excellent conversations and capture valuable feedback from the get go, trend on twitter for days, and earn a high volume of online coverage (earned media).

My expectations were high. So, how innovative is CBA's new mobile app? And how successful was the PR launch event? Let's find out now.

Two Third of Facebook Pages in Financial Services are at Risk

My Visible Banking Team has started tracking and benchmarking how financial institutions are using social media channels like facebook or twitter since March 2009.

I am delighted to announce that we are now tracking over 1,000 pages and apps on facebook, and over 1,500 accounts on twitter, in 75 countries.
 
In the last few days, I shared with you some of our latest insights on facebook and twitter via a number of video posts: I've confirmed that only 0.05% twitter accounts in financial services are verified, and 90% of those same twitter accounts are inactive.
  
Now, I will share my thoughts and recommendations on one of the key challenges on facebook for financial institutions: driving engagement via an open wall. Surprisingly, we found that the majority of facebook pages in financial services are 'open' and 'at risk'... find out why, and what to do to lower the level of risk.