Lies, damned lies and statistics: 3 new stats that suggest social media does drive brand growth

Despite the many complaints about how difficult it is to track ROI from social media in financial services, one thing that isn’t in short supply is statistics. Stats about the phenomenal growth of Facebook, how we’ll soon be spending our entire life online or why financial brands need to embrace social media have flooded the web. Today, we’re joining up the dots with three new stats that together, sum up the social media message for financial providers.

1: Since Jan 2009, when Twitter saw just 2 million tweets per day, traffic has grown to a mind boggling 250 million daily tweets.

Source: Sysomos

2: American Express is the most followed financial brand on Twitter, showing growth during Q1 2011 of 5.2%

3: American Express is the most valuable global financial brand, growing its brand value by 5% over the past year[i]

Source: VRL-Financial News

Are these three facts a coincidence? Almost certainly not.

We’ve written before about how AmEx are connecting socially with their customers via the OPEN Forum but a quick look at the 3 runner’s up in the race to be top financial brand in Interbrand’s top 100 brands for 2011 tell a similar story.

At no.29, JPMorgan have established themselves as one of the top financial brands on Facebook, using their Chase Community Giving page to engage customers about how they want to help community charities.

At no. 32, HSBC are one of the few global banks with a truly differentiated customer proposition and their subsidiary, First Direct, has led the way to embed social and community features within the UK financial services industry.

And Allianz, one of the biggest financial brand winners have put the social customer at the very heart of everything they do. In this interesting interview with Allianz’s Global Head of Group Market Management, Joseph Kumar Gross, it becomes clear that this is one financial organisation who really does understand that “earning trust is critical to success”.

Kumar sums up the changes that are overtaking the financial sector neatly:

“Our research shows several trends. First, self-empowerment: that customers recognize that they must take their destiny more into their own hands and cannot rely solely on institutions or advisors. Next, we’ve noticed that customers are seeking sustainable, reliable partnerships versus the previous “maximum return, maximum margin” attitude. Third, customers require transparency and openness – the age of the “trust me black box” is over. All of these behaviours are accelerated and enabled through the web.”

They say that there are lies, damned lies and statistics but for once, everything seems to be pointing in the same direction… that social media and digital technology really can grow value in the financial sector.

[i] According to Interbrand’s Global Brands Survey 2011