NETBASE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRY REPORT 2019: FINANCIAL … · In the era of social media, businesses have more opportunities than ever to learn from the opinions expressed by customers

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NETBASE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRY REPORT 2019: FINANCIAL SERVICES

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NetBase Social Media Industry Report 2019: Financial Services

TABLE OF CONTENTSPreface: ..................................................................................................................................3Scope of the Report: ..............................................................................................................3Executive Summary: .............................................................................................................. 4 Banking ........................................................................................................................ 4 Credit Cards ................................................................................................................. 4 Investment Banking ..................................................................................................... 4 Payment Services ......................................................................................................... 4 Insurance ...................................................................................................................... 4 Internet Lending .......................................................................................................... 4 Crypto Currency .......................................................................................................... 4Top 10 Results: .......................................................................................................................5Methodology: .........................................................................................................................7Summary Metrics: ..................................................................................................................8 Aggregated Key Metrics (all brands researched) ..........................................................8 Categories by Share of Mention Volume ......................................................................8 Net Sentiment ...............................................................................................................9 Passion Intensity ...........................................................................................................9 Brand Passion Index .................................................................................................... 10Ranking of Finance Brands: ................................................................................................. 12Category Insights: Banking .................................................................................................. 15Category Insights: Credit Cards .......................................................................................... 18Category Insights: Insurance .............................................................................................. 20Category Insights: Crypto ....................................................................................................23Category Insights: Investment Banking ...............................................................................25Category Insights: Internet Lending ....................................................................................26Category Insights: Payment Services ..................................................................................27Closing Statement: ..............................................................................................................29

NetBase Social Media Industry Report 2019: Financial Services 3


In the era of social media, businesses have more opportunities than ever to learn from the opinions expressed by customers online. This can also present a unique challenge because a brand is only one tweet or facebook rant away from the next negative review, deterring future customers to do business with them. Citizen journalism, in all its glory, gives each person’s unique experience a voice to be heard, and amplified, among their circle of influence.

Luckily, the glass is half full here, not half empty, as technology now enables brands and marketers to take these consumer in-sights and use them as an opportunity for improvement, course correction and competitive differentiation. Not to mention, the ability to use these insights to address market need and innovate to give consumers what they want. Financial institutions now have the ability to tap into consumers’ minds to identify what can be improved and capitalized on, if only they are willing to listen. As today’s mobile powered environment changes the way people interact with their financial institutions, businesses now must change to be where their customers are—online! In fact, in addition to being vocal online, consumers put their money where their mouth is. This can have a big impact in customer retention as consumers make their voices heard through their banking and finance decisions.

This report seeks to uncover insights and trends that will enable you to learn from brands knock-ing it out of the park with their social strategy and avoid the mistakes of those not faring so well. Questions to ask include, what kind of content generates authentic engagements with customers? What gets customers excited, causing them to share their passion with others? What would cause a consumer to bank with one brand over another? Social conversations offer a deluge of insights, ready to be acted on, for those brands who are willing to embrace these consumer insights.

PREFACE

Financial institutions now have the ability to tap into consumers’ minds to identify what can be improved and capitalized on, if only they are willing to listen.

SCOPE OF THE REPORTIn the digital age, brands are humanized more than ever. A brand’s image and equity is built on the stories they share, and the engagements and connections they make with customers. People invest in brands they feel connected with, which gives a brand an opportunity connect and engage in a way’s they never had before the era of social. This report will digest and synthesize what kind of social interactions drive authentic engagement and brand passion, and how financial institutions can capitalize on these experiences to drive consumers to do business with them.

The other goal of this report is to do a deeper dive into how different brands are performing around key indicators to identify who is doing well, who has room for improvement, and what contributed, according to consumers, to this performance. This part of the report will allow brands to better understand actual experiences driving these scores and what the general population expects as it relates to customer service, membership perks and overall trust as it relates to these institutions.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

In addition, we can look to see how different brands fared compared to last year’s report, giving us a better understanding of what they are doing well, or can be improved depending on whether they rose or fell in rank on the report. Some of this is good, bad and downright surprising, so read on to learn what consumers are sharing!

The NetBase Social Analytics platform with its next generation artificial intelligence technology makes it very easy to look granularly at a brand and their competitors across a broad spectrum of categories to quickly identify trends and identify key performance indicators, adding a layer of understanding that goes deeper than just sentiment. This enables the data to quickly tell us where some brands are knocking it out of the park in relation to things like trust, customer service, membership perks and value-where others show clear room for improvement. The most intelligent brands can use this information to their advantage.

BANKING: Consumers appreciate good customer service and don’t want to be nickled and dimed, case in point Bank of America, who is recovering from a multitude of brand damaging press and viral conversations resulting in many wanting to Boycott this bank. On the flip side, banks offering great customer service and a great place to work pays off in dividends as it relates to brand sentiment and awareness.

CREDIT CARDS: Great customer service, membership perks and strategic sponsorships are the name of the game in credit cards.

INVESTMENT BANKING: This category declined in social rank overall with the exception of Morgan Stanley who moved up the list 30 places, as a result of great performance, thought leadership and tons of press mentions via their analysts economic predictions.

PAYMENT SERVICES: Ease of use and no fees are the way to win consumers hearts as is evident by Venmo, PayPal’s sister company, with many people discussing switching from Paypal to Venmo and other easier to use payment apps. Not surprisingly, Venmo moved up 23 places from last years report!

INSURANCE: Believe it or not, people do watch commercials, with many people saying they actually saved a ton of money by switching to Geico.

INTERNET LENDING: The internet lending space has the highest sentiment of all the categories, with many of the companies trending positively for offering student load dept refinancing as well as easy to obtain capital for small businesses.

CRYPTO CURRENCY: Bitcoin, the biggest brand in Cryptocurrency, has become synonymous with “blockchain” and cryptocurrency. Bitcoin continues to dominate conversation volume overall and in the top 10, while the conversation around cryptocurrency has declined overall in the past year.



It appears that 2019 is the year for online payments as Venmo and Paypal occupy the first and second place of the top 10 list, followed by Bitcoin, with over 52% of the conversation volume in the top 10. Venmo moved up 23 spots from last year’s list, showing they are clearly becoming a household name in the mobile payments world. Morgan Stanley moved up 30 spots from last year’s report, as their thought leadership with their economic market reports garner newsworthy attention and consistently put their name in the spotlight. In addition, Capital One moved up 16 spots, with many of their mentions attributed “superior customer service” in addition to visibility with their Sponsorship of the AMAs.

TOP 10 RESULTS

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TOP 10 NOTES:

• Venmo moved up 23 places from last year’s report

• Pay Pal stayed at #2, same as last year

• Bitcoin moved up one spot from last year

• Morgan Stanley moved up 30 spots!!!

• Capital One moved up 16 spots!

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Venmo PS 1 24 23 5,541,643 88,193,186,701 20,075,244,493 72% 53 43

PayPal PS 2 2 0 32,877,563 74,779,070,419 186,255,326,927 47% 22 12

Bitcoin C 3 4 1 89,840,821 2,047,875,040 822,792,652,583 30% 48 18

Ripple C 4 NEW N/A 15,333,510 640,649,970 125,263,774,015 56% 58 37

American Express

CC 5 1 -4 2,880,828 21,457,169,403 94,088,049,603 57% 54 35

Capital One

CC 6 22 16 634,471 12,278,720,337 8,836,953,787 49% 95 54

Goldman Sachs

IB 7 5 -2 3,488,184 2,069,654,489 212,277,270,879 21% 55 15

Visa CC 8 10 2 3,176,277 1,822,842,110 101,448,373,225 39% 61 28

Morgan Stanley

IB 9 39 30 2,888,285 1,209,107,753 152,861,674,783 46% 49 26

HSBC B 10 11 1 2,920,736 3,067,333,096 117,610,017,097 22% 66 19

CATEGORY KEY

PS: Payment Services

C: Crypto

CC: Credit Cards

IB: Investment Banking

B: Bank



When Looking at the Top 10 list brands as it relates to the term “trust”, it is clear that Capital One leads in this category, with a sentiment score of 94 (highest you can go is 100) while Goldman Sachs, Venmo and Paypal are at the bottom of this range at 26 and 28.

Factors going into “Social Rank” that determine the top 10 list include mention volume, awareness (people talking about them), reach (the conversations they are putting out on their own channels), net sentiment, and brand passion. While not everyone leads in mention volume, these other factors can help level the playing field to identify stands out in the world of social.

Our analysis of brand performance looked at volume of conversation, awareness (as a measure of earned impressions), reach (a measure of owned impressions), net sentiment, andbrand passion as measured and analyzed through the NetBase platform. Given that there are an incredible number of banks and financial services companies, we chose to select popular brands within six categories to streamline our analysis. Our analysis ran from January 1st, 2018, to December 31st, 2018 allowing us to look at the flow of conversation around these brands over a year’s time. We also used NetBase themes to dive deeper into conversations and look at the underlying emotions in these social conversations like trust. Indexing and social ranking is an average measure of actual position for each metric (ranked relative to the other brands in the list), with the largest,

METHODOLOGY

Venmo

PayPal

Bitcoin

Ripple

American Express

Capital One

Goldman Sachs

Visa

Morgan Stanley

HSBC

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most positive, or most passionate brands ranking first. The analysis was English-language only but country agnostic. Given the origin of the brands discussed, however, the majority of conversation occurred in the USA.

The following report examines top trends and overall performance of selected brands as discussed across several social channels. Our analysis focused on an assortment of brands, represented by 58 brands across the following categories—Banking, Credit Cards, Investment Banking, Payment Services, Insurance, Internet Lending, and Crypto Currency.

SUMMARY METRICS

Aggregated Key Metrics (all brands researched)

Mentions250,950,605

Reach // Awareness264,195,092,094 // 3,265,937,296,142

Net Sentiment49%

Passion Intensity (Average) 57

CATEGORIES BY SHARE OF MENTION VOLUME

[63%] Crypto

[16%] Payment Services

[9%] Banking

[5%] Investment Banking

[3%] Credit Cards

[2%] Internet Lending

[2%] Insurance



Net Sentiment is a score that expresses a ratio of positive to negative sentiment about a brand or topic, ranging from +100 to -100. A score of 100 means that all opinions of a brand are positive, a score of -100 would mean that all opinions of a brand or topic category are negative. One can get a better understanding of sentiment of a brand when comparing to brands in their competitive set, for example, industries such as telecom always have lower sentiment than brands in the beauty category which trends much higher in sentiment. However, Sentiment alone doesn’t paint the entire picture about a brand; Passion Intensity can help better understand how passionately people feel about a brand. Of all the categories, Internet lending had the highest Net Sentiment with a score of 62, while Banks were the lowest with a sentiment score of 32.

NET SENTIMENT

NET SENTIMENT BY CATEGORY

Payment Services 59

Investment Banking 55

Internet Lending 62

Insurance 51

Crypto 57

Credit Cards 46

Banking 32

Chart legend/Scale explanation ( ( Positives – Negatives) / ( Positives + Negatives ) ) * 100A net sentiment score of +100 means that all opinions of the brand are positive; a score of -100 means that all opinions of the brand are negative. A score below 50 means that net sentiment for the topic is lower than most brands.

PASSION INTENSITYPassion intensity is a score between 0 and 100 that expresses the ratio of strong emotions (such as love or hate) to weak emotions (such as like or dislike). Passion intensity can help someone better understand the difference between liking or loving a brand. For example, Square in this report, has a net sentiment of 84%, with a brand passion index of 100, this

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means people don’t just like Square they LOVE Square. On the flip side, if a brand has negative sentiment with high passion intensity, this means consumers don’t just dislike them, but hate them. Net sentiment and Passion are metrics used to calculate the Brand Passion Index, which helps understand how a brand stacks up versus competitors in their category. Of all the categories, credit cards had the highest passion intensity with a score of 72.

PASSION INTENSITY BY CATEGORY

Payment Services 60


Internet Lending 52

Insurance 59

Crypto 58

Credit Cards 72

Banking 56

Chart legend/Scale explanation A * (Strong Emotions – Weak Emotions) / ( Strong Emotions + Weak Emotions ) + BNOTE: A topic’s passion intensity score is independent of the topic’s mentions count and net sentiment score. For example, a topic can have a large number of matching mentions, a high net sentiment score, and a low passion intensity score.

BRAND PASSION INDEXSentiment alone does not tell the entire story about how people feel about a brand or topic. Combining net sentiment with passion intensity gives a Brand Passion Intensity score, or BPI, that can help marketers better understand whether consumers like, love, dislike or hate a brand, category or topic.

This metric is all the more useful when looking to see how a brand compares to its’ top competitors and to see how it has trended over time. The data tells us that consumers feel most passionately about Payment services, with the least passion around banks.



BRAND PASSION INDEX BY CATEGORYPayment Services 43


Internet Lending 37

Insurance 34

Crypto 39

Credit Cards 38

Banking 23

INTERPRETING BPI SCORES

■ 57–100 Love■ 45–55 Like■ 25–44 Dislike■ 1–24 Hate

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RANKING OF TOP FINANCE BRANDS

To receive a detailed report on your brand, please contact NetBase at [email protected].

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Venmo Payment Services 1 24 23 5,541,643 88,193,186,701 20,075,244,493 72% 53 43

PayPal Payment Services 2 2 0 32,877,563 74,779,070,419 186,255,326,927 47% 22 12

Bitcoin Crypto 3 4 1 89,840,821 2,047,875,040 822,792,652,583 30% 48 18

Ripple Crypto 4 NEW NA 15,333,510 640,649,970 125,263,774,015 56% 58 37

American Express Credit Cards 5 1 -4 2,880,828 21,457,169,403 94,088,049,603 57% 54 35

Capital One Credit Cards 6 22 16 634,471 12,278,720,337 8,836,953,787 49% 95 54

Goldman Sachs Investment Banking 7 5 2 3,488,184 2,069,654,489 212,277,270,879 21% 55 15

Visa Credit Cards 8 10 2 3,176,277 1,822,842,110 101,448,373,225 39% 61 28

Morgan Stanley Investment Banking 9 39 2,888,285 1,209,107,753 152,861,674,783 46% 49 26

HSBC Banking 10 11 1 2,920,736 3,067,333,096 117,610,017,097 22% 66 19

SoFI Internet Lending 11 12 5,168,304 142,345,284 29,067,838,700 60% 65 44

Barclays Banking 12 17 5 3,577,390 652,761,479 143,516,065,045 36% 56 24

Vanguard Investment Banking 13 3 -10 4,952,054 628,344,864 174,448,353,881 32% 51 20

Deutsche Bank Banking 14 11 -3 4,047,632 1,476,283,201 191,513,615,207 6% 4 0

BNP Paribas Banking 15 14 -1 961,904 469,470,612 59,948,185,285 50% 66 38

StateFarm Insurance 16 44 28 836,410 2,405,028,167 18,188,790,426 57% 50 32

Ethereum Crypto 17 6 -11 27,071,041 56,094,617 162,711,106,229 43% 54 27

Metlife Insurance 18 18 0 1,448,426 1,913,631,014 18,222,609,337 42% 42 28

UBS Banking 19 9 -10 2,453,900 1,206,405,628 143,839,031,342 36% 19 8

Geico Insurance 20 34 14 501,398 733,766,200 5,721,375,213 68% 60 46

United Services Automobile Association

Insurance 21 22 1 617,046 11,503,364,525 6,971,556,917 51% 55 32

Bank of America Banking 22 13 -9 1,453,429 17,322,889,341 23,406,767,998 -1% 67 3



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Wells Fargo Banking 23 28 5 2,798,487 535,310,336 104,322,486,782 24% 39 12

Cardano Crypto 24 NEW N/A 1,731,298 116,053,650 9,726,498,638 60% 64 44

Litecoin Crypto 25 NEW N/A 13,214,399 12,908,375 73,480,143,461 60% 51 35

AXA Insurance Insurance 26 16 -10 389,294 82,433,213 10,738,763,532 74% 62 51

SunTrust Banking 27 37 10 211,548 434,225,071 2,470,425,379 51% 94 55

Charles Schwab Investment Banking 28 20 -8 291,484 367,334,570 13,611,377,152 46% 68 36

MasterCard Credit Cards 29 21 -8 160,282 6,542,744,000 4,628,377,831 34% 85 35

Royal Bank of Scotland Banking 30 15 -15 2,334,423 240,937,184 53,270,089,232 21% 54 15

Bitcoin Cash Crypto 31 NEW N/A 11,220,589 – 74,383,429,816 41% 49 24

Chase Banking 32 32 0 513,948 1,818,236,234 4,711,023,496 22% 76 22

Square Payment Services 33 8 -25 356,915 192,936,248 277,121,827 84% 100 93

John Hancock Insurance 34 30 -4 163,142 82,991,480 6,970,837,994 67% 73 55

Citibank Banking 35 23 -12 528,395 670,706,407 17,105,493,511 3% 64 6

Aflac Insurance 36 29 -7 289,778 58,316,141 4,270,127,615 65% 70 51

Discover Credit Cards 37 47 10 118,208 4,346,139,117 994,428,313 49% 65 37

Simple Bank Banking 38 29 -9 258,226 155,085,882 1,961,551,233 81% 56 50

Circle Crypto 39 35 -4 357,975 28,938,632 1,439,226,870 84% 97 90

Samsung Pay Payment Services 40 7 -33 212,403 333,619,674 2,679,165,487 57% 60 39

Fidelity Investment Banking 41 25 -16 264,602 439,175,047 7,251,519,168 69% 28 22

Santander Bank Banking 42 33 -9 249,894 92,601,444 2,272,473,282 56% 71 45

ApplePay Payment Services 43 27 -16 759,666 – 28,245,179,355 37% 64 28

Robinhood Investment Banking 44 19 -25 231,662 115,415,401 1,115,919,584 69% 66 51

Personal Capital Investment Banking 45 40 -5 31,955 20,528,134 2,722,526,032 84% 65 60

GoBank Banking 46 49 3 50,739 149,545,548 449,803,979 76% 55 46

Stash Investment Banking 47 48 1 74,752 331,048,040 285,896,981 60% 56 38

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Glossary

• Volume—overall volume of conversation.• Reach—Impressions from original tweets posted by a brand, such as @Starburst, and any replies to or retweets of the brand.

This is a measure of “owned” impressions. • Awareness—Impressions from all tweets that mention a brand, excluding those that are classified as owned tweets. This is a

measure of “earned” impressions. • Owned Impressions—Impressions originating from posts submitted by the brand itself. See “Reach.” Earned Impressions—

Impressions including mentions of a brand that originate from other sources than the brand organization itself. • Brand Passion Index (BPI)—weighted average of Passion Intensity and Net Sentiment to represent overall favorability.

Note: Some awareness and reach scores are due to an inactivity and/or lack of social presence by the brand itself. Consumers are more involved when a brand has an active and engaging social strategy. It should come as no surprise then, that a consumer might not be as motivated to post about a product experience when said brand has been inactive for several years.

Kabbage Internet Lending 48 36 -12 31,988 46,501,312 951,477,865 82% 71 64

Esurance Insurance 49 26 -23 386,982 309,355,120 2,289,353,313 -2% 59 2

Metromile Insurance 50 41 -9 12,096 175,320,399 173,496,527 72% 49 39

E-Trade Investment Banking 51 43 -8 52,155 49,486,055 4,392,396,210 65% 46 34

Progressive Insurance Insurance 52 38 -14 736,448 15,719,078 5,300,720,466 -2% 66 3

SpectroCoin Crypto 53 42 -11 84,351 21,362,402 259,704,396 83% 45 41

Wealthfront Investment Banking 54 21 -33 61,030 45,401,828 1,793,593,755 59% 53 36

LendUP Internet Lending 55 45 -10 9,476 3,932,202 167,859,325 82% 44 40

Commonbond Internet Lending 56 44 -12 9,459 4,079,885 98,492,177 91% 38 38

Ally Bank Banking 57 50 -7 21,232 256,614,302 22,220,651 1% 59 4

LendingClub Internet Lending 58 46 -12 60,252 24,095,433 2,039,461,935 -6% 43 0

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CATEGORY INSIGHTS: BANKING

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The Banking Category included over 20 brands, with Deutsche Bank garnering the most mentions in this category, but not in a favorable way as much of the conversation was about being in fiscal trouble and being restructured, in addition to mentions of being fined in the past for money laundering that garnered lots of attention in the media.

BNY Mellon (Bank of New York) had the highest sentiment of all banks, as they had higher than expected profit in Q1, in addition to having tons of positive reviews by employees on places like indeed.com saying BNY “was a great place to work”. BNY is active on social, congratulating their employees for winning awards and embracing diversity in the workplace.

Simple Bank tied BNY Mellon for highest sentiment at 81%, as consumers share how they love banking with Simple because of no fees and easy to use budgeting tools with “goal setting” making it easier to save.

With sentiment at 74 and Brand Passion at 77, consumers don’t just like Regions bank, they love Regions bank for their excellent customer service.



Bank of America, on the other hand, is suffering from negative sentiment and high passion intensity, which means people strongly dislike them. This is a result of some major brand damaging press including a report from the Miami Herald that Bank of America was freezing the bank accounts of people they suspected weren’t legal citizens. To make matters worse, a Tumblr post went viral about how they charge a monthly fee for those who keep less than $1,500 in their bank account. This post was shared over 8,000 times! In addition, Bank of America stopped offering free checking accounts, adding to their already damaged reputation. The words “worst bank” from original posts was mentioned almost 500 times in a year’s time. As a result of this bad PR, “Boycott” Bank of America was mentioned over 12,000 times during the course of the year.

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Visa dominates the credit card conversation with over 46% of the conversation, followed by Amex with 41% of the conversation. Visa’s conversation is largely dominated by conversations around the different visa cards and the perks that come along with them.

Amex comes in second in conversation volume while also leading in sentiment. Consumers love the perks associated with the card, while also trending favorable for supporting small business with the hashtag #shopsmall and #smallbusinesssaturday being used over 14,000 times. Amex also gets visibility by partnering with “Amex Ambassadors” like Chiara Ferragni, powerful Fashion Blogger and Allessandra Ambrosio, a Victoria’s Secret Model. They also garner tons of mentions giving members only exclusive presale access to concerts such as Ariana Grande’s world tour through their “membership rewards” program that has a partnership with Ticketmaster.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: CREDIT CARDS:



Capital One moved up 16 points from last year’s report, as over 1,300 original posts said they had “superior customer service”. They also sponsored the AMAs, giving them over 8,000 mentions during the event, as well as the opportunity to promote their savor card which gave exclusive access to presales of the event, showing they are getting into the “membership perks” game.

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When looking at credit cards as it relates to the themes “membership perks” and value, it is clear to see that Visa and American Express dominate in share of voice of the conversation around these two entities.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: INSURANCE



Metlife has largest conversation volume of the 10 insurance brands, garnering a ton of earned mentions as people mention going to “Metlife” to see shows since they sponsor the big stadium outside of NYC. Much of the conversation around Metlife was about their polarizing relationship with the NRA, which they severed ties with earlier in the year.

AXA is highest in sentiment of all the insurance brands, with people saying they “recommend” AXA over 200 times due to their excellent experience with them.

Trailing in sentiment is Metromile, a company that offers insurance for low mileage drivers. In addition to filling a need in the industry, they have excellent reviews on glassdoor.com, being named “Best Place to work” 2 years in a row by Glassdoor.com.

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State farm moved up 28 spots from last year, with tons of conversation around their commercials. The commercials featuring NFL star Aaron Rodgers are polarizing with people saying the love/hate them, while “Jake from State Farm” has spurred his own set of memes and jokes online. Statefarm employees contribute to State Farm’s success by participating in social and sharing info online, such as when State Farm won the J.D. Power award for the 4th year in a row, which got over 500 retweets from agents online. That shows the power of social!

Geico also made impressive movement up the social rank list by 14 places, with much of the conversation around their funny commercials. The commercials seem to be working though because over 10,000 people said “they saved a ton of money switching to Geico”.



Crypto Currency is the subject that everyone loves to talk about but still baffles most. There was a decline in overall conversation of all Crypto Brands this year, though Bitcoin still dominates the conversation with over 54% of the top 10 category. The term Bitcoin has become synonymous with the blockchain term, as people use the terms bitcoin, blockchain and crypocurrency interchangeably. Think of Bitcoin as the crypto equivalent to the term “Kleenex” in the world of tissue paper.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: CRYPTO CURRENCY

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Mentions of the various crypto brands in this category were upwards of 3M at the beginning of 2018 and had dwindled to less than 1M by years end, showing the buzz around this industry is starting to equalize.

Much of the conversation is found on Twitter and Youtube with Twitter for newsharing and Youtube functioning as a teaching device to learn how to trade this new type of currency.

When looking at Bitcoin, Ethereum is a trending brand that is discussed simultaneously as the conversations say Ethereum has better technology than Bitcoin but Bitcoin has larger adoption. Ethereum gets buzz because of its technology and ability to do “smart contracts”, a big deal in the world of crypto currency.



All investment banks on this list moved down on list with the exception of Morgan Stanley who moved up 30 points!

Vanguard, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley occupy over 90% of the mentions, while Personal Capital, Fidelity, Robinhood and E*Trade have higher sentiment for this category.

Morgan Stanley leads in thought leadership and earned mentions as their analysts and research reports get many mentions in the news. In addition, their great q1 performance coupled with tons of press on their “Mad Scientist” Analyst, Adam Jonas, who is predicting the space industry will be an exponential growth driver.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: INVESTMENT BANKING

E*Trade

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Kabbage dominates volume of conversation in the Internet Lending category while Common Bond ranks highest in sentiment. Common Bond gains major brownie points by offering flexible, low interest rate student loan debt refinancing, while also giving back to the community with their “Pencils of Promise” partnership, helping fund classroom learning in undeveloped countries like Ghana. Lending club suffers negative sentiment as a result of being fined by the FTC for deceiving consumers with hidden fees and charging borrowers who had already paid off their loan. As a whole, internet lending has the highest sentiment of all categories.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: INTERNET LENDING



While Paypal has the highest conversation volume in the payment services category, it is currently competing with it’s sister company, Venmo, who has sentiment of 72 and moved up 23 places from last year. Many paypal customers talk about switching from Paypal to Venmo and other apps because of the fees and bad customer service. In addition, Venmo users enjoy seeing the emojis people use when paying others on Venmo. Venmo partnerships such as with Grubhub make it easy for people to order and pay online, making Venmo that much more appealing.

CATEGORY INSIGHTS: PAYMENT SERVICES

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Square is the high net sentiment leader at 84%, with over 7,200 people saying they “LOVE” Square for being convenient, making their life easier, and charging minimal payment processing fees.



In the financial services industry, it pays to offer great customer service as consumers share these experiences online. Brands in this report offering great customer service have consistently moved up the social rank list with vocal consumers excited to share their positive experiences with others.

Consumers also don’t like to be “nickled and dimed” with many brands getting negative reviews as a result of excessive or hidden fees, with many consumers saying they plan on switching to services that don’t charge fees.

Membership perks provide an excellent way to attract and retain customers, as proven by American Express and now Capital One, as their membership perks coupled with great customer service give them an edge over other credit cards.

Being a great place to work doesn’t go without notice as employees share these experiences on places like indeed.com and glassdoor.com, giving these brands a boost. In addition, having employees on social, such as the case with State Farm, adds social clout as employees help share the brands message via social sharing, giving the brand increased reach and exposure.

Being small business friendly, such as the case with Square and American Express, casts these brands in a favorable light as small businesses are vital to the economy and consumers like to support small businesses using hashtags like #shopsmall and #smallbusinesssaturday. Financial service brands who cater to small brands can use this movement as an opportunity for increased exposure as more consumers want to support small business in stark contrast to mega corporations like Amazon and Walmart.

In summary, offering great customer service, being transparent and easy to use without nickle and diming your customers, offering membership perks, being small business friendly as well as being great place to work are all ways financial service companies can get ahead in todays market. These offerings, when coupled with vocal consumers, can propel a brand forward in today’s competitive economy. Consumers want to share their experiences, so give them a reason to give your brand a positive shout out and this, in turn, will pay dividends.

CLOSING STATEMENT

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NetBase is the social analytics platform that global companies use to run brands, build businesses, and connect with consumers every second. Its platform processes millions of social media posts daily for actionable business insights for marketing, research, customer service, sales, PR and product innovation.

NetBase is recognized by analysts and customers as the leader in Social Analytics. NetBase was rated a category leader by Forrester in the “Forrester Wave: Enterprise Social Listening Platforms, Q3 2018” report. NetBase was also named a top rated social media management platform by software users on TrustRadius and a market leader by G2 Crowd.

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Documents

NETBASE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRY REPORT 2019: FINANCIAL … · In the era of social media, businesses have more opportunities than ever to learn from the opinions expressed by customers