A report on the exploits of banks from Nigeria on social media, both home and abroad. Leaning on the Financial Brand's quarterly report of the top 100 banks using social media, this report goes further to consider some of the most active banks on Instagram, and then dives into the activity stats of Nigeria's banks on social media.

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THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE
BANKING INDUSTRY.
A report on the exploits of banks from Nigeria, both home and abroad.
By Oludare Fasure

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Introduction
Whenever you hear Nigeria sits at the top of a global ranking, it's easier
to assume it is for something bad, right? It's sad, but a lot of Nigerians
have gotten used to hearing poor ratings about Nigeria, which is why it
gives me so much joy to share a global rating with you in which
Nigerians sit at the top and it's for something good.
Did you know that according to the Financial Brand's rating of the
"Power 100", the top 100 banks in the use of Social media, banks from
Nigeria are well represented at the very top of this list? The Power 100
rankings break down the social media stats of retail financial
institutions in English-speaking countries for the three major platforms
— Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and here is how banks from Nigeria
ranked for 4th quarter 2018;
Facebook: Guaranty Trust Bank(GTB) - 3rd, Zenith Bank Plc - 5th
Twitter: Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) - 3rd, Zenith Bank Plc - 4th
YouTube: Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) - 34th, Zenith Bank Plc - 31st.
Overall: Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) - 7th, Zenith Bank Plc - 12th.
Considering the fact that the Financial Brand monitors roughly 2000
banks and credit unions on Facebook and about 2500 banks and credit
unions on Twitter, I believe these banks from Nigeria deserve some
accolades.
Two things are worth noting from the ratings stated above, these banks
had a lower overall rating because they rated lower on YouTube
compared to other social media platforms. Also, as you might have
noticed already, Instagram is missing from the ranking, and these
factors are significant for businesses on this side of the world​.
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Why is Instagram so important?
According to Digital 2019 Nigeria, a report by Hootsuite that shows how
the internet is being used across different parts of the word, it was
reported that Nigerians are more active on Instagram when compared
to YouTube. This is quite understandable considering the fact that data
is still relatively expensive in this part of the world. Hence, an average
internet user would be more inclined to spending time on Instagram
than on YouTube.
With this in mind, I was curious to find out how these banks from
Nigeria would rank with other banks from across the world in the use of
Instagram. However, since I do not have the resources to consider
hundreds of banks like the Financial Brand, I only considered the top 12
banks from the "top 100 banks using social media Q4 2018" and here is
the result based on states gotten as at 30th of March 2019:
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#12 Kotak Mahindra, India - 16.2k Followers, 87 Posts
#11 TD Bank, Canada - 25.6k Followers, 444 Posts
#10 Wells Fargo, United States - 56.7k Followers, 357 Posts
#9 CIMB, Malaysia - 58.2k Followers, 726 Posts
#8 HDFC, India - 72.7k Followers, 265 Posts
#7 ICICI, India - 75.1k Followers, 211 Posts
#6 Axis Bank, India - 107k Followers, 303 Posts
#5 Chase, United States - 120k Followers, 620 Posts
#4 Zenith Bank, Nigeria - 236k Followers, 5,894 Posts
#3 YES Bank, India - 550k Followers, 383 Posts
#2 GT Bank, Nigeria - 552k Followers, 7,284 Posts
#1 State Bank of India, India - 1M Followers, 2,601 Posts
Please note that the ranking above is based on an existing ranking; top
12 banks from the Financial Brand's "top 100 banks using social media
Q4 2018", it doesn't mean some other banks couldn't have made the
list if all banks were considered. For example, First Bank Nig. Plc has
519 followers, which would have landed her a good position on the
ranking if only all banks were considered.
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It is also important to note that context plays a very important role in
the interpretation of reports of this nature. For example, a bank from
India, a country with a population of 1.339 billion people will easily have
higher numbers than a bank in Malaysia which has 32.3 million. Hence,
considering a ratio of followers to population of the country of origin of
the bank might give a more balanced outlook.
Social Media usage ranking for commercial banks in
Nigeria
According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, there are 21 commercial
banks in Nigeria, but two of these, Citibank and Standard Chartered, do
not have accounts independent of their international subsidiaries on at
least 2 of these major social media platforms, so they are not captured
in this ranking.
The table below represents statistics gotten from the various social
media accounts of these banks as at the end of 30th of March, 2019:
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# BANK Facebook
likes
Twitter
Followers
YouTube
Views
Instagram
Followers
1 GTB 6,517,007 1.4M 16,570,958 550k
2 Zenith 5,226,586 951k 16,714,720 235k
3 Stanbic IBTC 601,609 231k 6,454,243 62.1k
4 UBA 2,118,958 358k 4,170,710 152k
5 Access 1,930,876 341k 3,901,632 286k
6 Union 837,818 145k 4,290,782 53k
7 Diamond 1,159,426 307k 2,036,570 165k
8 FCMB 1,319,842 89.4k 1,729,131 119k
9 First 1,167,322 360k 366,503 519k
10 Fidelity 1,034,814 152k 1,032,335 70.1k
11 Sterling 648,858 73.6k 936,185 54.8k
12 Wema 159,837 48.7k 595,689 33k
13 Ecobank 324,868 44k 321,181 25.3k
14 Keystone 368,953 22.7k 39,551 13.5k
15 Polaris 259,758 90.5k 55 38.4k
16 Heritage 170,904 36.3k 57,057 22.4k
17 Unity 100,775 39.7k N/A 14.6k
18 Providus 10,307 395 N/A 741
19 Suntrust 1,437 490 N/A 269
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Now, if you are wondering why I even bothered to research these information, it is
because we are often overwhelmed with all the things going wrong about Nigeria and
Africa that we tend to overlook our silver linings, the little things that we are doing right that
could make a big difference, now and in the future.
The two banks, Guaranty Trust Bank and Zenith Bank Plc, were started by Nigerians, in
Nigeria, and while both banks have grown to become internationally recognised financial
institutions, the core of the feats they have achieved were done by Nigerians using
knowledge acquired from developed societies to develop our developing society.
Hence, Nigeria might not be able to boast of having the most valuable financial institutions
in the world, but we can start with boasting about having very strong financial brands. This
is a little sign that Africans, and Nigerians in particular can build a world class institution. So
while we celebrate these two banks for making us proud, always remember that there is no
limit to what you can achieve.
Thank you for reading.
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