Old Media has cemented its dominant position on Twitter, while finance firms have seen slower growth in followers over the past year according to our 2020 social media study.
The New York Times has reached 45 million followers to retain its top Twitter status, while BBC World News, The Economist and Reuters each boast more than 20 million-plus followers.
Communication Means’ sample of 12 major news outlets saw an average increase of 6% in followers in the 12 months to January 30, with The Guardian and Bloomberg both recording double digit gains.
Our sample of 11 finance firms seemed to have eased growing their presence on Twitter over 2019-20. Average growth of Twitter followers has slowed to 4.5% among banks and fund managers, with UBS is the only firm in this category to have increased followers by more than 10%.
Citi, with the strongest following of the sample at just over 900,000 saw almost no growth, as did Deutsche Bank.
To find out more about our survey contact Jeremy.adams@communicationmeans.com
How we track social media followers
Communication Means tracks the followers of a group of 11 finance firms and 12 media organisations on Twitter and LinkedIn. We take a reading of their followers on January 30 each year for year-to-year comparisons. These groups are designed to offer an illustrative sample and are by no means a comprehensive survey or ranking. We track main accounts rather than sub accounts (such as separate regional, business line or coverage area accounts).
Sample of finance firms: Bank of America, Barclays, BlackRock, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Pimco, UBS, Vanguard. (Some, though not all, of these organisations are existing clients of Communication Means)
Sample of media platforms: BBC News, Bloomberg, Economic Times, The Economist, El Pais, Financial Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, New York Times, Reuters, The Times, Wall Street Journal.
Successful posts
This year we have also assessed the finance firms’ most successful tweets and LinkedIn posts for January 2020 only. We have counted how many posts have reached 1,000 engagement or more on each platform. The engagement data excludes video views.