Making News
| Twitter Now More Popular than Facebook with Financial Services Firms |
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Labels: Mobile, Social Media
| Written by Alan Maginn |
| Monday, 15 August 2011 13:26 |
 Corporate Insight has been tracking the use of social media by financial services firms since the summer of 2008. At the time, a few firms were using social media to communicate with their clients but most of the industry was still waiting on the sidelines. The few pioneer companies that were experimenting with social media typically consisted of banks, credit card issuers and self-directed brokerages. Most of these firms focused their efforts on Facebook, the most popular online community of the time. By the time we published our initial social media report – Social Media: Trends and Tactics in the Financial Services Industry – 32% of the firms we track had a Facebook page.Over the next two years, we saw a steady increase in the number of firms using social media. As it grew in popularity, we watched it spread to other areas of the financial services industry, including full service brokerages, mutual fund companies and annuity providers. When we published our second report on the topic in October 2010 – To 'Friend' Is the Trend: Social Media and Financial Services Today – the percentage of firms with Facebook pages had increased to 56%. But even more interestingly, Twitter had surpassed Facebook as the most popular third-party network employed by financial services companies. While only 15% of the firms we tracked had a Twitter profile in the fall of 2008, that number grew to 57% by October 2010. Since then, we have been tracking statistics related to the social media properties included in our recent report on a monthly basis. This past month, we expanded our coverage group to include social media properties that were launched after October. Our findings demonstrate that Twitter continues to gain in popularity. As of August 1st, 67% of the firms we track now have a presence on Twitter, a 10% increase in as many months. During the same time, the percentage of financial services firms with Facebook pages increased by 3% to 59% of the industry. |