An evaluation of the social media usage of deposit and participation banks in Turkey: Facebook Assessment Index

The popularity and the variety of services provided by social media sites continue to increase. As a result of that increase, social media has become an important issue both for customers and businesses. The content shared in social media by customers affect the purchasing behavior of the other people. Firms have started using social media in order to take advantage of its customer potential, to persuade customers to buy their products and to maximize customer satisfaction after sales. In this respect, the use of social media has become very important for banking sector, too. In this study, the social media usage in the deposit and participation banks in Turkey is investigated. As a result of the study, it's been found that among the six most common social media applications used by banks, Facebook and Twitter are the two most popular ones. Also, a Facebook Assessment Index is developed based on the criteria of popularity, interactivity and content and based on that index Facebook pages of banks are evaluated. As a result of these evaluations, the Facebook Assessment Index value of the deposit and participation banks in Turkey for the year 2015 is calculated as 39,61. Key words: Banking Sector, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Banking, Facebook Assessment Index