Boosting CBA's Social Media Presence

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has been utilizing social media as a tool to connect with customers and increase its market share. While CBA's social media strategy is strong, there are some areas for improvement, such as setting up chat times to engage with customers and introducing social media analytics tools to gauge customer sentiment and performance. Additionally, incorporating blog posts that provide in-depth information on financial services could also enhance engagement.

Running Head: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social Media Marketing
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Overview of the organisation...........................................................................................................4
Social media presence of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.........................................................5
Social media audience of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.........................................................6
Social media marketing of Commonwealth Bank of Australia.......................................................8
Ethics, privacy and security of social media...................................................................................9
Social media technologies.............................................................................................................10
Conclusions....................................................................................................................................11
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................11
Reference List................................................................................................................................13

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Executive Summary
Social media presence is important for an organisation as it increases the brand loyalty of an
organisation. Social media marketing increases the customer base and profitability. Most
significantly, organisations can have benefits through social media as it would be cost effective
and can reach a large number of customers. In this report, Commonwealth Bank Australia has
been chosen for analysing social media presence and its social media marketing strategies. In the
first part, social media presence of each of the social media networks like Facebook, Twitter,
Snapchat and You Tube has been presented. Moreover, audiences of the CBA are mostly
customers and business investors on social media. Social media marketing of CBA is mostly
content marketing through social media pages. However, this organisation does not use social
media analytical tools and they do not have social media analytics. It is recommended to CBA
that they increase social media presence through blog posts and chat facility through social
media. Finally, they can introduce social media analytical tools to analyse the social media
performance of them.

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Introduction
Active social media presence is significant for now in all types of businesses. Social
media networks provide an advantage to drive the target audiences of the organisations.
Moreover, using social media networks for business can boost the website's SEO (Search Engine
Optimisation). For a bank, through social media marketing, it can improve to have a higher
conversation to customers, to increase the traffic and to develop bank loyalty. The aim of the
report is to highlight the social media presence and social media marketing techniques of
Commonwealth Bank of Australia. In the first section, the social media presence and audience
profiles will be explained. In the later section, social media marketing strategies will be
described with current statistics. Moreover, ethics, security and privacy policies of social media
will also be analysed in the final section.
Overview of the organisation
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is a public bank of Australia and it is a
multinational bank. This bank has branches across United States, Fiji, New Zealand, the UK and
other Asian Countries. Headquarter of the bank is situated in Sydney, Australia. CBA has more
than 1100 branches across the world and was established in the year 1911 as a government bank.
Then, in the year 1991, this bank became public company. CBA works in retail banking services,
institutional banking and markets, business and private banking and wealth management
(Commbank.com.au, 2017). Moreover, CBA offers finance and insurance, corporate banking,
consumer banking, private equity, investment management, mortgages and credit cards facilities
to the consumers. In the last year 2016, the revenue of the bank was AUD 24.58 billion. This is
the largest company in Australia that is listed on Australia Securities Exchange. In addition,

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Commonwealth Bank Australia wants to have high conversion rates, good marketing ROI, and
increase website traffics through social media marketing.
Social media presence of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Now, the most of the people are getting tech-savvy and in case of Australia, maximum
people are using social media. It is very much easy now to reach the people through social media
network and it is cost effective. Through social media, CBA got unexpected growth in Australia
and in the Asian countries. CBA has its own website and in this website, the customer can find
links through which they can join CBA's social media pages. Customers can join Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Google+ and You Tube. Commonwealth Bank Australia
loves to hear from customers and the organisation gives plenty of chances to the customers to
stay in touch (Commbank.com.au, 2017).
In case of Facebook, CBA has currently more than 739,900 likes and more than 5,500
Facebook users visited the Facebook page of CBA. As it is finance based company, the
organisation wants to reach people and teach people about financial literacy and services and
products they offer. Most interestingly, CBA reached 100,000 Facebook users within one year of
launching their Facebook page. CBA's customer service team try to respond each of the queries
in real-time basis posted on the Facebook page or in the inbox. This has enabled the traditional
customer service provision of the over-the-counter policy.
In case of Twitter, CBA has its account named #CommBank and they have been active
on Twitter since May 2008. On the Twitter, this bank has more than 80.7K followers and the
organisation twitted 36.7K. The organisation follows more than 4K through twitters. Most
importantly, the management has decided to be active on Twitter like Facebook in order to

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engage more users and market the services and products. In addition, in case of LinkedIn, CBA
has its presence and users can find them using the catch word Commonwealth Bank on LinkedIn
for career opportunities and like to access industry experts for any queries.
In Instagram, it is the latest sensation for the digital age and most of the young generation
use this social media for posting images and videos. CBA has been using this social media
network since its beginning. The users can find CBA using @CommBank. This bank posted
more than 700 posts and has followers of 13.K. The funny images, creative GIFs and relevant
videos make this social media page attractive for users.
Moreover, this bank has You Tube channel and customers can subscribe these channels.
CBA has two You Tube channels for the users, CommBank Business Channel and CommBank
Channel for spreading the knowledge of financial tools, tutorials and tips to invest money in the
bank.
Additionally, in Snapchat, users can find CBA by using key words ‘CommBankSnaps’.
Here, the customers can find the relevant news of company, community, legal and business
aspects of the organisation. Lastly, in Google+, the customers can find CBA by using
CommBank and CBA posts images and news of services and products through Google+ for the
users.
Social media audience of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Purpose of social media marketing is to reach the target audiences and increase the customer
base of the organisation for a bank (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). Social media marketing falls under
internal marketing strategy of the organisation and the overall objectives remain same. The target
audiences of a bank are to grab the future customers of the organisation. CBA post various

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images, discount offers, financial news and videos in order to reach the customers and the users
of social networks may get interested for being a part of CBA. CBA joined social media to target
specific demographics or psychographic segmentation of the customers. They use the strategy to
ask the users to comment on posts and they personalise the business. In this case, Facebook
creates a part of banking and its social media strategy is to create a community to interact the
customers through online. The target audiences are customers of the CBA bank make them loyal
to the bank in any kind of investments. Moreover, the audiences of CBA in social media are new
start-up ventures people to generate funding. The target of CBA in social media can be investors
who want to invest in business in the banking sectors. The common people are the target
audience and number of these audiences is bigger than others. The users may want to know
about private equity, mortgage and interest rate, the customer service team are there to solve the
issues when these are posted on social media pages. 56% of the social media users log into social
media pages more than 5 times a day and 84% of the Australian adults access the internet on
daily basis (Sensei.com, 2017).
Facebook Instagram Snapchat Twitter LinkedIn Google+
93% 45% 40% 32% 17% 10%
Table: Daily use of social network
(Source: Cio.com.au, 2017)
The CEO of CBA demanded that the strategy of CBA is to build bridges between
customers and banking services through social media networks, not to just make an echo-
chamber. In case of CBA, the customer engages rate through social media extends to 20% last
year (Smartcompany.com.au, 2017). CBA is one of the top most banks in the world who have

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customers to use online banking services. More than 1.75 million Australians use NetBank in
each day. In order to reach customers, CBA uses mainly content strategies that attract the
customers.
Social media marketing of Commonwealth Bank of Australia
Social media presence of a bank gives opportunities to create the meaningful connection
to the users and customers. The marketing through social media helps to lure desirable
consumers that must support the organisational goals. The management of bank tracks the ROI
in social media marketing as well. Social Media marketing of Commonwealth Bank Australia is
based on mainly content marketing strategy. They generally use attractive contents in order to
engage maximum users on social media pages. Promoting a service or product of CBA, they use
mainly content marketing strategy to create connections on social media pages. 44% of the social
media users like to read engaging contents on social media if they are beneficial for them
(Ashley & Tuten, 2015). CBA tries to being personal in content marketing and asks the
customers to share likes and comment on the posts.
In last Ashes series, when Australia whitewashed England, CBA used impressing content
marketing through social media. CBA made short videos on cricketers’ caricatures and they used
mimicked voices to it (Scott, 2015). Content marketing of Commonwealth Bank Australia
pushed the target markets through this and that can share the knowledge of the users through
social media. This content strategy on social media pages like Facebook, Twitter and CBA used
this subtle way that could inform the potential customers to engage on their posts. In addition,
CBA uses CSR techniques through social media marketing and they use the tactic of
‘Community Seeds. They ask the customers to generate $125,000 for the six different

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communities through Facebook in order to develop the community life (Dwivedi, Kapoor &
Chen, 2015). Through Facebook, the organisation started a campaign in opening savings account
for all. CBA uses the strategy to give way gifts for the winners of any competition. CBA
distributed EMI music voucher, movie voucher and gift coupons for the customers. CBA used
the strategy of ‘Time Vault’, through which the users of Facebook needed to give the right
answers about company’s history posted on Facebook page each day.
Ethics, privacy and security of social media
Everything that an individual does online is getting public and one cannot ‘delete' this
forever. An organisation must know about the consequences of taking any action through social
media. Privacy of the customers or any users should not be penetrated through social media.
Commonwealth Bank shared their ideas that they never posted any distort news or any images
that can hurt the sentiment of any particular class and people. In recent time, Commonwealth
Bank faced the issue of ethics when in two pages of employment policy, they wrote about
employees' responsibility on posting on social media pages about CBA (Lovelock & Patterson,
2015). CBA declared that no employees can post anything negative about CBA on social media.
However, legal experts fired back as they say that no organisation can ever interfere with
someone's personal expression. Moreover, inappropriate images and news about CBA on social
media pages can harm the brand loyalty of the bank and it may also pose marketing of customer
expectation. CBA has customer support team to solve the issue when it is posted on social media
before it is getting viral. CBA does not do unsupported endorsement and compromise about
consumer privacy. When CBA uses to collect consumer behaviour data, they do not compromise
with privacy (Gordon et al. 2016).

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In case of security, CBA claims that they never steal the identity of the users and share
personal information of any users on social media pages. Any kind of personal discussion is done
through ‘personal inbox’ and not in comment section publicly. Any kind of hacking and
spamming of email are not entertained by the IT cell of the CBA (Hyder, 2016). CBA does not
share any URL on social media pages that can be vulnerable to the customers. CBA itself uses
link scanner to be secure.
Social media technologies
Business organisations are no longer use social media for only communication purposes,
however, social media analytics are now capturing in the industry, especially in the financial
sector to analyse the data. Most of the organisations trying to capture competitive advantage
through social media marketing. Content strategy, sharing link or optimising the SEO, these
strategies can be evaluated through social media analytical tools (Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015).
Financial Technology (FinTech) is one such tool that can be used to gather financial information
on social media pages. Woolworths, the largest retail of Australia takes help from Socialbakers
analytical tools to analyse the engagement of the customers on social media pages
(Smartcompany.com.au, 2017). However, Commonwealth Bank Australia does not use any
social media technology to analyse their social media performance. CBA just uses social media
pages like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, You Tube and all. Buffer is a tool that makes a schedule
for posting contents on social media pages according to customer engagement. Buffer analyses
that most numbers of Facebook users become online on Friday. In addition, Agora Pulse is an
interesting analytical tool that helps the professionals to posts on three social media at a time.

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Conclusions
In recent days, social media is taken as best tool in order to connect with customers of the
organisation. With consistent updating of the services and products on social media can help to
increase the market share and customer base. It is observed that CBA uses traditional social
media strategy of content marketing. However, social media presence of CBA is strong and they
have customer service department in order to give replies to social media queries. The social
media marketing of CBA boosts the advertisement of this bank as it is cost effective. CIO of
CBA, Michael Hate opined that they provide real time posts on social media. On the contrary, it
is observed that the organisation has been facing challenges in the analysis of social media
performance as they do not have social media analytics and social media analytical tools within
the organisation.
Recommendations
Setting up chat times:
It is needed for CBA to connect the customers at personal level and setting up chat time
(on live) is very important. Customers and potential future customers have various questions
regarding investment opportunities in CBA, if they can chat with customer support team over
voices or through messages would be helpful. Giving thoughtful answers to the customers’
queries will definitely increase social media presence.
Introduction of social media analytics:
CBA must use social media analytical tool in their organisation and in order to continue
using, CBA needs to hire skilled analytics. In order to gain a competitive edge, CBA can use

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these tools help to gauge the customers’ sentiment and monitor the performance of the
organisation on social media platforms.
Tie in blog posts:
CBA posts short and relatively catchy contents on social media pages as people do not have
enough time to read long contents. However, if a customer wants to know the financial benefits,
financial services of CBA, blog posts would be perfect. Blog posts links can be shared on social
media that will make more financial literate customers.

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Reference List
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
CBA in hot water over social media policy - SmartCompany. (2017). SmartCompany. Retrieved
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water-over-social-media-policy/
Chang, Y. T., Yu, H., & Lu, H. P. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-
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Dwivedi, Y. K., Kapoor, K. K., & Chen, H. (2015). Social media marketing and advertising. The
Marketing Review, 15(3), 289-309.
Facebook, H. (2017). How to kick start your social media strategy — Commonwealth Bank
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mmonwealth_bank_focusses_facebook/
Gordon, R., Gordon, R., Zainuddin, N., Zainuddin, N., Magee, C., & Magee, C. (2016).
Unlocking the potential of branding in social marketing services: utilising brand
personality and brand personality appeal. Journal of Services Marketing, 30(1), 48-62.

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Hyder, S. (2016). The zen of social media marketing: An easier way to build credibility, generate
buzz, and increase revenue. BenBella Books, Inc.
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mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.
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Chapter-1.pdf
Stay in touch with us on Social - CommBank. (2017). Commbank.com.au. Retrieved 6 September
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