The economy has surged into a daily trending topic on social media. Across the news cycle, alarming buzzwords paired with conflicting and confusing insights have made following the economy closely more essential than ever. As an institution, Bank of America has established authority in tracking the economy and providing industry-leading research and guidance.
However, our social presence had not previously been focused on guiding users through real-time economic uncertainty. This was due to the challenge of creating social content at the speed of the market; however, as demand grew, we decided we needed to provide trusted, eye-level content to demystify the markets and empower the consumer to feel more in control of their daily finances. Our solution transformed the use of social from branded marketing to economic journalism, leveraging the trusted expertise of the Bank. We set a goal of distilling in-depth information into user-friendly data visualization via social without sacrificing credibility or over-sensationalizing. No easy feat.
To accomplish this goal, we established The Social Newsroom: a proprietary, real-time workstream able to quickly spot the latest economic news, mine reputable data and distill it into an always-on stream of social-first reporting.
Week to week, we combed through the latest reports and surveys, kept watch over breaking headlines and leaned into trending topics to become a strategic, real-time, data visualization news source our followers could depend on.
Within every piece of content, we honed in on a key data point and provided a fresh financial perspective backed by the Bank’s economic expertise. From static posts to carousels and short-form videos, we shared data in a sophisticated, visually arresting way that caught user’s attention in-feed. This content stream was thumb-stopping, unique and, most importantly, credibly sourced and useful.
But ultimately, this wasn’t just a new approach to social. This pivot represented a significant shift in how BofA’s economic authority is communicated to the masses, democratizing economic insight for how users today consume news. We prioritized the utmost credibility, agile creation and a shift from marketing messaging to branded reporting — and it paid off.
From the start of this shift, we saw a +45% increase in engagement on our social content, proving utility to social users. We also drove a +24% increase in shares, proving that consumers trust this information enough to pass it along to their networks. Overall, within the first few months of this approach, we were able to reach 3.6M people without any paid media and a net gain of +447K followers across our social accounts.
The success of Bank of America’s Social Newsroom proves that brands can utilize social data visualization to provide real value and truly earn consumer trust and attention. Beyond that, it signals a shift in how marketing channels can grow more adaptive and responsive to changing consumer needs and mindsets.
