Social media is the juice of humanity. From Facebook to Snapchat, people are flocking to these platforms to make connections – both new and old.

Last week, Facebook announced its 2 billionth user while other platforms like Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc. are adding numbers exponentially. One factor of this is the usage of these platforms by brands in seeking deeper relationships with their customers.

Brands, especially banks with their former starched personas, are having to become more social, do more social and engage more socially. Nigerian banks are not to be left behind with this practice and seven of them are the top-100 list of banks that have correctly deployed digital marketing for their businesses.

Toolz Academy, Nigeria’s foremost digital marketing trainer undertook a study of the usage of social media by Nigerian banks – the successes and the failures. Banks must find what works in the midst of the digital chaos and negotiate their way to a greater ROI using these new marketing channels.

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Research by Toolz Academy shows that physical banking visits have gone down by almost 40% in Nigeria between 2015 and end of 2016 while digitalization has ensured better competition in a more dynamic format as banks now do not have to invest in brick and mortar – all they need is the Internet and very knowledgeable digital natives and migrants.

The emergence of the smartphone, the proliferation of the PC and the adverse usage of social media platforms have brought all businesses to this crossroad. If your future strategy is not built on digital platforms, then the brands (read banks) are on their way to extinction.

Nigeria [by May 2017] had 85 million active Internet users with 16 million having active social media accounts, while 14 million have an active mobile social account. While the population of the country grew just2.8% in 2016, the Internet usage grew by 16%.

With rising trends, competition, recorded and potential results, banks have continued to increase the percentage on digital activities in their marketing budget.

The meaning of social media in B2C businesses, especially for a sector as conservative as banking, has grown greater and achieved a nuance where every banking brand now sees it as a tool to draw in the unbanked in the country while keeping the banked happily engaged.

The most popular social media platforms in Nigeria are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn, and our study did a periscope of the activities of these banks on four of these various reports.

Instead of Market Research, which was the yardstick of traditional marketing, it is now Market Reality with banks now needing [more than ever] to build popular platforms that are engaging, which ultimately means that they must have content that delivers value to their audience on a consistent basis.

Our banks can definitely do more. The definitive path to accurate and achievable digital foretelling comes from making a succinct and continuous study of the current social trends in Nigeria and the fact that Nigerians are a very adaptable lot.