FAQs About The Financial Brand’s Social Media Rankings

Here are answers to common questions about The Financial Brand’s “Power 100” social media database, a list of the top 100 banks and the top 100 credit unions on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. If you think your bank or credit union should be listed and it isn’t, click here.

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Who is included in the social media database?
Inclusion in the social media database is limited to financial institutions who (1) provide retail consumer financial services, and (2) conduct the bulk of their marketing in English. This includes — but is not limited to — banks and credit unions in the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Philippines, Ireland and South Africa. You need to qualify for ranking inside the top 100 on at least one list before The Financial Brand will begin to collect and report your data for any/all channels.

How is the Power 100 “Total Score” calculated?
These rankings are based on a score calculated in the following manner:

  • 1 point for every 500 Facebook ‘Likes’
  • 1 point for every 1,000 Twitter followers
  • 1 point for every 2,000 tweets sent
  • 1 point for every 750 Instagram followers
  • 1 point for every 500 Instagram posts
  • 1 point for every 15,000 YouTube video views

What are the minimum requirements for inclusion?
Every financial institution in the database must conduct the majority of their marketing and communications in English, and qualify for inclusion in at least one of the following lists.

Social Media Channel Banks Credit Unions
Facebook Likes 154,000 16,000
Twitter Followers 23,800 2,215
YouTube Views 3,690,000 1,000,000
Instagram Followers 15,300 2,000

What about LinkedIn, SnapChat, TikTok and other social media platforms?
At this time, there are no plans to expand the social media database to include other platforms, channels, sites or stats.

We have multiple Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts. Which one was used in the database?
If you have multiple accounts at any social network, The Financial Brand will only include one in the database we maintain. This will be the Facebook page with the most ‘Likes,’ the Twitter account with the most followers, and the YouTube channel with the most video views. If you would like The Financial Brand to reference a different social media account than one we are currently using, please contact The Financial Brand and we’ll update your profile stats in the next quarterly update.

Why were we omitted?
You weren’t. At least not on purpose. If your bank or credit union should appear on one of the social media ranking lists but doesn’t, that simply means The Financial Brand has not yet ran across one of your social media accounts and you need to add your financial institution to the database.

Please realize that there is no practical way to find every bank and every credit union on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. There are roughly 30,000 financial institutions in the English-speaking world, and at least 65% of those are involved in at least one social channel. That means there are approximately 50,000 social media accounts The Financial Brand could track — impossible, especially when you have to find each one “manually”. And financial institutions are constantly adding and deleting new social media accounts as they continue experimenting with various platforms. Compounding the challenge, none of the social networks allow you to pull user/profile stats through API hooks for large databases. We have to load every single social media page one by one to collect and tabulate our data.

How can I add my institution to the social media database?
Easy. If your institution qualifies, just fill out the form on this page here.

How often is the social media database updated?
We update stats for all banks and credit unions in our social media database every calendar quarter. All data has to be collected and tabulated manually, as there (at present) no efficient, affordable system to automatically pull stats from three different social networks. For instance, Twitter caps the number of queries you can make through their API at 15 per 15 minutes. Ideally the list would be updated automatically and in real-time. If/when technological advancements allow for an automated system, The Financial Brand will try to implement it.

I submitted my institution, so why isn’t it showing up?
If your institution qualifies for inclusion in one of the social media lists, it will appear the next time the database is updated (quarterly, four times per year).

The stats for my institution aren’t correct. How can this be fixed?
Statistics for social media accounts is collected manually and updated quarterly. This means your current level of social media activity may not be reflected in the current rankings. If however, you feel there has been a serious error, please contact The Financial Brand and we’ll do what we can to fix it.

I have a question that isn’t addressed here. What should I do?
Please contact The Financial Brand and we’ll do our best to answer your question.

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