A recent social media engagement research by Hearsay, a digital client engagement platform, found that social media engagement for financial services firms declined in 2023 despite individuals consuming more content overall, suggesting that current social media marketing strategies are becoming less effective.
The study analyzed data from over 100 leading global financial services firms and 260,000 agents and advisors using Hearsay’s platform. They reviewed 13 million published social media posts, which attracted over 21 million engagements across Facebook, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram.
According to Leslie Leach, Hearsay’s chief marketing and strategy officer, target audiences consume a significant amount of financial content but engage with it less frequently than in previous years. Instagram saw the highest engagement despite declining from 1.6 in 2022 to 1.1 last year. While it remains the least used platform, Instagram’s engagement rate was three times higher than Facebook’s and 14 times higher than X.
Facebook’s engagement rate stayed consistent at 0.4, while X slightly increased from 0.07 to 0.08. The study also noted that firms reduced their post frequency on both platforms, suggesting a shift to publishing fewer but more carefully curated posts.
The study found that when it comes to social media engagement strategy, original content was the most engaging, performing three times better than modified content and ten times better than unmodified content. However, the publishing of original content decreased from 6.5% in 2022 to 4.4% in 2023. Despite this, firms have seen a significant increase in engagement with video content, which has increased by 287% from 2019 to 2023.
Firms have embraced video content as part of their social media strategy over the past few years, increasing their video posts by 287% from 2019 to 2023. Despite this, text-only posts maintained the highest engagement rate at 4.3, compared to 0.64 for video.
The social media marketing study recommends how to improve social media engagement: Financial firms focus more on Instagram, which consistently outperformed other platforms but accounted for only 2.2% of published content. Meanwhile, LinkedIn saw 51% of the firms’ social content, proving valuable for financial professionals to share diverse content types. Asset management professionals found particular success on LinkedIn by sharing trusted, data-driven analyses. Facebook remained a popular choice, hosting 40% of firms’ social media content, and was used by asset and wealth management firms to help wholesalers and financial advisors build personal brands.
Facebook remained popular, hosting 40% of firms’ social media content. Asset and wealth management firms use the platform to help wholesalers and financial advisors build personal brands.
