Indian banks are increasing their social media presence.

1. Analysis & Outlook
Few private Indian Banks have presence on Social Media
Some of the Indian Banks are effectively using social networking sites to listen and
engage with customers that will help them in improving their marketing focus & target
customers effectively, capturing consumer perceptions, brand building & increased
product research. According to Facebook, its India user base has more than doubled in
a year to 51 million at the end of March 2012 and Twitter has around 15 million users
in India. Most of the social media users in India are younger generation in the age
group of 18-34 years, predominantly male and are mostly inclined to use social media
for doing banking transactions. Private Banks are the most active in using the social
media with IDBI Bank (637K Likes), Axis Bank (545K likes), ICICI Bank (475K
Likes) and HDFC Bank (109K Likes) as of May 2012. Public sector banks like SBI, etc
are yet to start actively using the social media platforms but they still have presence.
In January 2012, ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, launched its Your Bank
Account Facebook application, which allows users to check their account balances,
apply for debit cards, and other tasks like request statements and cheque books without
leaving Facebook. ICICI assures its Facebook users that the app is hosted on separate
ICICI bank servers and no data is transferred to Facebook as many of the social
network users are concerned about privacy and data security which is hindering the
active usage of banking applications on the social networking sites. HDFC Bank, one of
the early adopter and with an active presence on social media space, runs the Money
Matters section on its Facebook page. The bank through its Facebook page engages
visitors by putting up interesting news articles, small puzzles and games to educate
users about various banking tools and even posting latest offers on cards and loans at
the bank. HDFC Bank even lets its customers voice their grievances on the bank’s
Facebook page and responds to them within 24 hours.
Axis Bank has an active presence with highest number of likes, has interactive apps &
promotional offers that allow the bank to communicate with its target audience. Brand
campaign apps like Meri Zindagi ka Safar and Meri Zindagi ki Picture both have seen
more than 20,000 monthly active users and bank is promoting its platinum credit cards
on Facebook by integrating a movie ticket-booking transaction engine. IDBI Bank is
the largest socially networked bank in the country in terms of official presence on four
platforms namely Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with the largest number of
fans/followers/subscribers/circles across these platforms as compared to any other peer
bank in India. IDBI social media success formula is because of their approach which is
an interesting mix of informative content, product awareness and grievance redressal.
Social Media Platforms are an active part of IDBI marketing strategy.
Despite the fact that many Global banks are still apprehensive about offering their
services and allowing customers do banking transactions using social networking
applications due to data security and privacy concerns, Indian Banks majorly private
banks are actively using the social media platforms to engage with customers and allow
transactions through the applications. Apart from offering a low cost, effective
customer engagement & marketing platform, Social Media usage through the mobile
devices is also on tremendous rise as more people use their phones or mobile devices to
make payments or other banking transactions through social networking sites.
Rajesh Prabhakar Analyst Bio @ http://socialmediacases.blogspot.com/