On July 4th, Twitter exploded with tweets celebrating the founding of the United States of America, and financial services joined the party.
Companies such as JPMorgan Chase, TD Bank, Citibank (which ironically used #4thofjuly on the 3rd and not the 4th), and many more joined in the celebrations and used hashtags such as #independenceday.
They were just a few of the Twitter feeds celebrating the holiday. Does using popular hashtags work as a way to get people to view your content, or help people form a positive impression of your brand?
Some financial services Twitter teams avoided mention of the holiday altogether. MasterCard, for example, did not put out a tweet about it. American Express sent out a tweet concerning Independence Day, but did not include a hashtag.
Though the numbers are not astronomical, the dissemination of #4thofjuly tweets by banks is impressive. On July 4th, for example, Bank of America sent out this tweet:
Happy birthday, America! Have a safe and happy #4thofJuly pic.twitter.com/P5D0CNQv6l
— Bank of America (@BofA_News) July 4, 2015
It received 58 favorites and 41 retweets. The hashtag was retweeted a total of 985 times, as of today, which means BofA accounted for 4.16% of all that. On a relative basis, BofA’s July 4th tweet had more interaction than the bank’s other recent tweets.
Ally Financial took a slightly different route. Instead of using a standard 4th of July hashtag, the bank created its own, #Americathedelicious, in this tweet:
At Ally Bank, No Branches = Great Rates. It’s a fact. Just like 4th of July = red, white & food. #Americathedelicious pic.twitter.com/QFbylyz6lL — Ally Bank (@AllyBank) July 3, 2015
This tweet received 80 favorites and 24 retweets — that is all the retweets the hashtag got.
These are just two examples, but it appears that banks’ Twitter audiences responded positively to acknowledgments of America’s birthday, so the verdict on piggybacking? It works.