Evaluation of Social Networks Sites in the Banking Sector: An Analysis of Top 200 International Banks

Social networks have become an interesting marketing tool for the banking sector to manage contact and interaction with their actual and potential customers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of Facebook by the top 200 international banks. Our paper proposes a new instrument called Facebook Assessment Index (FAI), which uses three categories to evaluate the essential information on a firm's Facebook page: popularity, interactivity, and content. Only 60% of the banks tested had official Facebook page. The results show large differences between them in the three dimensions of FAI and a great improvement opportunity in the use of Facebook as a marketing tool in the sector. These results not only serve to create a ranking of banks, but also can be used by bank manager as a benchmarking analysis of best Facebook pages, suggesting improvements to their current Facebook pages.