Financial Institutions and the benefits of Social Media….

What are financial institutions?

Financial institutions also known as banking institutions are corporations that provide services as intermediaries of financial markets. Know when you think of financial institutions and social media it doesn’t sound like a good mix, but in fact social media plays a big role in terms of communicating with their customers and stakeholders. By using the SMMF (Social Media Marketing Framework) I can help you show and interpret what is happening in the financial services industry in terms of its social media (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).

As you know there is four main dimensions within the SMMF these consists of:

1. Scope
2. Culture
3. Structure
4. Governance

Scope:

Majority of financial institutions nowadays use social media to communicate to their clients and customers, with social media as a platform of communication customers can report or solve problems, give reviews or comments. With the scope dimension there are two ways of going about it.

1. Defender – using social media to connect with clients and customers.
2. Explorer – to explore within the financial service and Collab with consumers and other brands to formulate better service.

For Example: Commonwealth Bank is an explorer as they are now teaming up with other social media outlets to engage with customers and provide a better service towards their clients and stakeholders.

Culture:

Financial institutions nowadays aren’t mainly focused about posting just financial products, they are more focused about getting more customers whether that is through traditional marketing strategies or through social media marketing. As we all get sick and tired of seeing home loan posts, interest rates or starting up new bank accounts. Majority of the banks like ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB, Westpac and more are now focusing on creating a better environment not entirely based on financial services but more about making their client feels safer and better with their current banks.

Structure:

Financial institutions in today’s society have centralised control in terms of their social media (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). With the banks having a very strict and strategic set of guidelines and rules that come into play with their social media content. This makes it easier for the social media marketing team in order to let them know that there will be no risky content on the institution’s social media feeds and pages. In terms of the company’s goals I’m sure and assume that they would have a social media team which would produce the banks social media content which would be strictly focused on engaging with customers, and growing the financial status of the bank and have a strong relationship between customers and the institution.

Governance:

Governance in terms of the social media marketing framework is how the institution establishes the company’s rules and guidelines for the use of their social media outlets and pages (Felix et al, 2016). In this case there are two sub-categories for whether the governance is either autocracy or anarchy. Personally, I think in terms of financial banking services such as, Commonwealth, ANZ, NAB and Westpac there is both anarchy and autocracy as the banks are all engaging with their customers and clients on social media posts, although this is done in a formal manner to keep the institutions reputation up. For example, some of the rules would be not posting photos in work clothes online or, no abusive comments.

So in conclusion, using the SMMF (Social Media Marketing Framework) I have shown you how using SMMF can help financial institutions connect and can be beneficial to the growth of a company or business.

References

Anz.com.au. (2019). ANZ Personal Banking | Accounts, credit cards, loans, insurance | ANZ. [online] Available at: https://www.anz.com.au/personal/ [Accessed 28 Aug. 2019].

Commbank.com.au. (2019). Stay in touch with us on Social – CommBank.

Available at: https://www.commbank.com.au/support/social-networks.html [Accessed 28 Aug. 2019].

Chaffey, D. & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. United Kingdom: Pearson.

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A. & Hinsch, C. (2016). Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70(1), 118-126.

Nab.com.au. (2019). stay in touch with social media. [online] Available at: https://www.nab.com.au/contact-us/stay-in-touch-with-social-media [Accessed 28 Aug. 2019].