As a money-making tool for banks, the jury is still out on Facebook and Twitter. But as a way to raise awareness for a cause, the social-media sites seem to have confirmed their street cred.
Consider how Susquehanna Bancshares Inc. put Twitter and Facebook to work during the holiday season last year. For every new Facebook "like" or new Twitter follower, Susquehanna donated 10 meals to its food drive. A re-tweet or a shared post on Facebook meant 5 meals donated.
The final tally: 289,500 meals donated to food banks in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.
"A lot of our branches already collected food, and we decided to extend that to social media," said Stephen Trapnell, a spokesman for the Lititz, Pa., company.
Other banks say they're using Facebook and Twitter for rewards programs. Susquehanna hasn't gone down that road yet, Trapnell said. Nor has Susquehanna made a statement on how it might be affected by Facebook Inc.'s payments business, which is thought to be a threat to banks' credit and debit-card business.
Susquehanna never intended for the Tweet2Feed food-bank project to be anything more than a way for the $15 billion-asset company to slowly wade into the waters of social media, Trapnell said. While "there are always conversations on how we can use Facebook and Twitter in our business plan," Susquehanna has not yet used social media to directly push its products and services, he said.
Other than the food-bank drive, Susquehanna uses Twitter, Facebook and a blog to provide financial advice to customers, spread the word about the bank's sponsorship of community events and offer another outlet for communicating with the bank.
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