Social Media and Russian Banks 

Let's thinking about how Social Media can influence on the banking area? What are the Social Media Marketing solutions for banks, particularly for Russian banks?

In this post I would like to review a few examples of interaction between banks and SMM.

Undoubtedly, the communication of financial products is a considerate theme, especially in a particular period of global economic crisis.

And it's even more critic to consider how social media and banks can work together in order to provide a better service for their customers. 

One of the great example of investment on social media is Bank of America. It was opened a Twitter customer care channel back in 2009 @BofA_Help. Currently, Bank of America have an active social media presence to help to stay in touch with it's customers and serve them better. 

source bankofamerica.com

It’s really hard to not notice how emerging economies are representing a new frontier in the field, due to huge and fast-growing amount of customers, and a high level of innovation too.

In Russia, despite a high peneration of smartphones (about 200 every 100 people), but a very low usage of mobile banking (around 1.6 every 100 people). This is mainly due to heavy usage of cash for financial transactions (source: blogs.worldbank.org).

The usage of social media for communication purposes still not very widespread among Russian banks, although there are some relevant examples of best practices.

One of them is Moscow-based Promsvyazbank, active mainly on Vkontakte and Facebook, where they counts over 18K fans and launched a specific app to promote their special edition Angry Birds-themed MasterCard. An evident sign of how the younger  target is the one showing greater potential.

Another good example of using social media is Sberbank (Savings Bank), the biggest bank in Russia and the third biggest in Europe, with a strong focus on Eastern countries.What's more interesting that over the last years Sberbank launched a program of communication and financial education strongly involving social media channels.

As we can see on the Sberbank's website, there is a section to showcase all bank's communities on various social networks:

The most popular in Russia social channel is Vkontakte, with two different communities. One of them is Sberbank: bank of friends, counts over a million followers, which is an enormous amount for Vkontakte standards.

The VK page has a strong daily activity, with hundreds of posts on the discussion board, and an intense activity of comunity management and customer assistance.

Also, Sberbank is very active with Vkontakte apps: one of them is the Financial Navigator, an interactive game with a point-based ranking related to the usage of credit card.

Also, every year Sberbank going Green Marathon, on the VK page bank allowing users to "run together'' in order to support the Russian national team.

A bit weaker the presence on Western fields, where Sberbank is still communicating only in Russian. Currently, Bank present on Youtube channel series of corporate videos and TVCMs, and runs official pages on Facebook and Twitter-the last one used for customer care purposes.

And one last reason why one need to invest in Sberbank: