Around Town

@BofA #wants 2 connect w/ U

By Jonathan McFadden

Admit it. When you grab a hold of your “avoid-face-to-face social-interaction tool” (i.e. log onto Facebook or Twitter), the first thing you look for is an exciting, informative and scintillating tweet or post from the local bank, right?

Wait, you don’t? Before you dismiss the idea, give it a try.

BOFA’s push

– Bank of America is bolstering its social media efforts by tasking employees with managing its social media accounts.

– The bank won’t dish on how many folks are actually handling social media (my Facebook trolling tells me that at least one woman named “Yvette” is involved).

– The aim is to respond to customers using their Twitter and Facebook pages and be relevant at a time when 30 percent of people on the Internet are spending their time on social media.

Winning

– Maybe their efforts are paying off. Bank of America made it to no. 11 in a Harvard Business Review ranking of the 50 companies that “get” Twitter.

– Its news account has 359,000 followers and its Facebook page has more than 2.1 million “likes.”

– I’ll hand it to the bank. They seem pretty active on Twitter: live tweeting their events, retweeting people who give them kudos and pushing out some content that’s actually interesting and stays away from the bank-alese. They get a 6 on my Twitter relevance scale.

– And the @BofA_Community account on Twitter is pretty neat. They’ve seemed to harness at least one basic rule of social media prowess: Post pics of cute kids every time — it always works.

– The bank’s also on Pinterest, where people are pinning all types of things about the bank, like its pretty buildings.

Unlikes

But let’s be honest. Social media is all about connecting and, when you’re the second largest bank in the U.S., that means you’re going to be connecting with a whole lot of complaints and criticism.

To test their level of social media responsiveness, I reached out to @BofA_News. 

Alas, I never got an answer (sad face). But they did tweet this a few minutes after I sent my message (notice the time stamps).

I’ll give them an “A” for shameless self-promotion.

Let’s see how things go when they do respond to customers. Here’s former WCNC reporter Stuart Watson and his reaction to a standalone ATM.

His complaint

Their answer

The result

I didn’t see an answer after this one.

Jonathan McFadden

@JmcfaddenObsBiz.

This story was originally published April 30, 2015 at 11:39 PM with the headline "@BofA #wants 2 connect w/ U."

Get unlimited digital access
#ReadLocal

Try 1 month for $1

CLAIM OFFER