Q3 2016 FINANCE Regional Insights & Benchmarks About Socialbakers Socialbakers is the trusted social media analytics partner to thousands of enterprise brands and SMEs, including over 100 companies on the 2015 Fortune Global 500. Socialbakers’ solutions help companies of any size ensure their investment in social media is delivering measurable business outcomes and Turning Digital Relationships into Growth. With over 2,500 clients across 115 countries, Socialbakers is the industry leader in social media analytics, tracking over 8 million social profiles across all major social platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and VK. Socialbakers has been a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer since 2011. About the Analysts Michaela Branova Michaela Branova is the Market Insights and Analytics Manager at Socialbakers. Her expertise is in looking for patterns and insights in social media data to uncover impactful conclusions for today’s social media marketers. Phillip Ross Phillip Ross is a Social Media Analyst at Socialbakers. He has written extensively about the intersection of marketing, social media, and data for the Socialbakers blog and in numerous white-papers. Phil is also passionate about politics, and has been quoted in the press about the impact of social media on democratic elections. This report looks at the Finance industry on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We identify the quarter-to-quarter changes in a number of key performance metrics between Q3 2016 and both the prior quarter (Q2 2016) and year (Q3 2015). Our team of analysts have identified the three major changes that you need to keep an eye on for each region in Insights by Region, while the Benchmarks, Top Content and Social Customer Care chapters provide you with context for your social media performance, as well as inspiration for creating even better content from your industry’s top performers. Social media is a constantly-evolving landscape. You need the latest data to give context to your performance and plan for the future. Contents Insights by Region Facebook Benchmarks North America Facebook Top Content Latin America Twitter Benchmarks Brazil Instagram Benchmarks Europe, Middle East and Africa Facebook Social Customer Care Japan & Asia Pacific Twitter Social Customer Care Australia & New Zealand Executive Summary North America Promoting 14.29% of all posts, North America has the world’s most mature Facebook advertising environment Ideally, post promotion rates will hover between 10-20%. At 14.29%, the average North American Finance company’s Facebook Page seems to have achieved a post promotion equilibrium. As the percentage of published content being promoted dropped 10.29 percentage points from Q2 and 16.07 percentage points from Q3 2015, marketers seem to be promoting more consistently (the only other region that promoted less content this year than last year was Brazil, which promotes almost twice as many of its posts). The implication is that more companies are closely monitoring their paid performance metrics, and are focusing on promoting only their best content to avoid negative feedback and improve cost metrics like CPC and CPM. The median Twitter account grew 16% slower than in Q2, but engagement dropped 34% In Q3 2016, the average Finance company’s Twitter profile earned 967 interactions on each post, and had 18,168 Followers. While this would suggest that companies are not doing enough to engage new followers or keep old followers engaged, the annual data suggests the opposite: engagement in Q3 2016 was down just 1% from Q3 2015, while Follower growth was 33% slower this year than in the same quarter last year. To be sure that this quarter does not become the norm, companies should focus on their key Twitter personas, and leverage top-notch customer service on the platform. North American Finance companies answered a smaller percentage of customer questions than any other region At only 25.17%, QRR on Twitter lagged far behind the rest of the world in Q3 2016. That number is also in decline, down 20.51 percentage points from Q2 and 19.42 percentage points from Q3 2015. In order to keep customers happy, marketers in the mobile-savvy finance environment in North America need to respond to more questions. After all, they received by far the world’s most questions on Twitter: 110,913 questions, or 26.91% more than they did in Q2, and 38.71% more than they did in Q3. If they don’t do a better job of attentively responding to more of these questions, Finance companies could see increased customer attrition as consumers migrate to mobile-first, digital-experience centered competitors. Executive Summary Latin America Facebook audience growth slowed by 19.8% from Q2, but Pages posted only 3.2% less content LATAM Finance Facebook Pages published 101 posts on average in Q3 2016, or 40.3% more than the next-busiest region. With Fan growth slowing down by 19.8% from Q2 2016, companies risk overwhelming their audiences with so much content that they could stop paying attention or feel aggravated when they see a Finance post. The dilemma is that no one brand can post less often, or they risk losing audience exposure to brands that post more. There is a solution: promote only your best-performing content. If you know that a certain post is going to succeed with your audience, that is where you should put your money. With predictive analytics, you can do just that. Twitter response times dropped by 4 hours and 45 minutes to a new world record LATAM Finance profiles on Twitter responded to customer questions faster than any other region in the world, answering the average question in only 6 hours and 48 minutes. This represents the result of good benchmarking and a dedication to providing better customer care as exemplified by leaders in the field - the goal for every company should be to provide attentive care in under an hour (or faster). Central and private banks are using social media to communicate financial news and advocate to the public The two most successful organic posts in LATAM were from large banks, and communicated key policies and offerings to the public. For Banco de Crédito BCP (62,870 interactions) and Banco Central de Reserva del Perú - BCP (55,785 interactions) social media offered an avenue to communicate new changes and collect public feedback without having to rely on a claims department or outside consulting services. This shows an interesting future for banks and public agencies that need to gain political favor for their programs - similar to how Healthcare.gov in the United States turned to social media to try and garner national support for the healthcare marketplace and increase sign-ups. Executive Summary Brazil Brazil’s Finance audiences are getting increasingly engaged with social media content Brazilian Finance Facebook Pages experienced faster quarter-over-quarter (39.4%) and year-over-year (93.6%) growth in total interactions than any other region. With one of the industry’s largest median audiences and a healthy amount of post promotion (26.83%), that portends a bright future and an energized audience. If marketers can continue to track and measure their best content according to individually-defined categories such as “funny posts” or “mortgages” (which is something that a campaign view allows you to do quite well), and run contests to drive customer feedback, they should be able to optimize paid promotion efficiency even more. Engagement with videos rose less than any other Facebook post type in Q3 2016 Despite solid growth in engagement across the board for Facebook posts by Brazilian Finance companies, statuses, links, and photos all saw more engagement compared to Q2 2016 than videos did. The median Facebook video earned 445 Interactions, which is a 40.5% growth from Q2 and a 102.6% growth from Q3 2015. However, every other post type grew faster, and photos still earn 562 interactions on average. By this time next year videos should have overtaken photo posts by a huge margin - but that change will start happening soon, and marketers need to dedicate themselves to making excellent video content in order to keep audiences engaged going forward. The best-performing Facebook posts were moving, live, and user-sourced Bradesco managed to post some of the quarter’s most-engaging content, including Brazil’s two best organic posts (One with 76,087 interactions and one with 69,312 interactions). They and other top Brazilian content creators increased both paid and organic engagement by getting innovative with their content production, using Facebook Live broadcasts, GIFs of user-sourced Instagram photos, Facebook 360 video, and more in order to keep their audiences involved. For Brazilian companies, and Finance Pages everywhere, this kind of inter-network, user-focused content is the future. When you’re planning your content strategy, forget arbitrary boundaries between social networks, and think of how you can best connect fans of all Pages to your message. Of course, content still needs to fit each network’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of UI, but the point remains that users want to see themselves getting involved, no matter how that happens. Executive Summary Europe, Middle East and Africa No Facebook post type averaged more than 100 interactions Photos (median 98 interactions per post) were the most engaging post type for EMEA Finance Pages on Facebook in Q3 2016. Marketers would be well-served by focusing their efforts on video, and finding ways to discuss their messaging that would be well-suited to both live and recorded video. In 2017, videos should clearly outpace other content types. EMEA Finance companies responded to 85.07% of all questions they were asked on Facebook That excellent response rate, which is the world’s best, actually comes after a 1.6% decline in quarterly performance and a 4.8% annual drop.