Banks are falling for twitter in a big way. They’re using it to:
- Help customers
- Learn from customers
- Engage customers
- Promote new products and offers
- Share personal finance tips
- Humanize their brands
- Build community outreach programs
According to a new report, “Connecting to Customers with Twitter: The Comprehensive Guide to Twitter for Financial Institutions”, there are hundreds of banks tweeting away on a daily basis.
The list includes Chase, Citibank, ING, Wachovia, and Wells Fargo. Bank of America has notably jumped into the fray with terrific results.
What I find most interesting is the number of regional and community banks that are taking advantage of Twitter. The fever is spreading, and it won’t belong before Twitter becomes a cost of entry item for financial institutions of all types and sizes.
In a recent USA Today article, Ed Terpening, Wells Fargo vice president of social media remarked, “There’s a lot of worry out there. That means we have to stay close to our customers.”
In the same article, Discover’s Steve Furman added that Twitter provides communication with customers that is “pure and instant.”
Who knows whether Twitter is here to stay or not? The point is, it’s working for banks right now.
Welcome to Outside-In Banking, a blog for bank marketers and anyone else involved in financial services. I believe that many banks are way too internally focused for their own good, so I try to provide an outside-in perspective. Expect a lot of opinions, raves, rants, and unsolicited advice. I hope to get the same from you. 
Indeed, there are many community banks using Twitter. The CommunityBanks twitter profile was set up exclusively to follow community banks and currently follows 101! More are reserving their profiles and jumping into the Twitter stream weekly.
http://twitter.com/CommunityBanks
Thanks for the article, interesting stuff. Many community banks are jumping into twitter too soon I believe. They need to stop and ask ‘why’ and ‘what are our goals’ before activating that Twitter account.
Good point.
In regards to Ed Terpening’s comment, it’s less about staying close to customers because they are worried, and more about the realisation that banks can perform a much larger role as community leaders. Umpqua and ATB Financial are good examples of creating community hubs at the retail banking level. Twitter is symptomatic of a larger evolution in banking.