CorpComms Magazine

All the top 50 financial technology companies are exploiting business-to-business connections with associates, clients and former employees via LinkedIn, according to a recent analysis of these industries' use of social media channels conducted by financial and technology marketing consultancy Cognito.

But these businesses are far less likely to reach out to consumers via social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

More than half of the companies surveyed have no Twitter account. The average number of tweets by the firms each month is just six. Amongst those using the tool, the most commonly tweeted topics were company news and details of events and new products. There was also a variety of people across the companies tweeting, including chief executives, marketing executives and software engineers.

The overwhelming majority of financial technology firms have no Facebook profile, with just eight per cent harnessing the tool. Only one in five have their own YouTube channel and three out of five use no online video tools whatsoever.

Verity Ramsden-Hare, marketing services manager at Cognito, said of the hesitancy in exploiting social media channels, 'Many companies think these channels aren't appropriate for business-to-business. This could be changing. The larger firms with more client-facing departments, such as Oracle and Thomson Reuters, are doing more in this space.

'But in the main, companies aren't tapping into all the opportunities on the plate. The question is, who will go first? Who will lead the trend, and who will follow and be frowned at by competitors?

'The main thing for companies is understanding who their audience is and taking advantage of the channels they are using, from those who get all their news from the Financial Times hard-copy, to the other extreme of people who are only responding to Twitter.'

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