Seylan Bank’s Facebook page tops 50,000 fans

•  Becomes the most active Sri Lankan bank in social media

Seylan Bank PLC recently hit the 50,000 fans mark on its interactive Facebook page, thus becoming the only bank in Sri Lanka to reach this milestone and establishing itself as the most active Sri Lankan bank in the sphere of social media. Seylan Bank’s Deputy General Manager – Marketing Tilan Wijeyesekera said: “We believe that social media is a seriously under-estimated medium of engaging customers in Sri Lanka, and have taken a pioneering and leading role in the banking industry to be a catalyst for both the bank as well as social media in Sri Lanka. We have developed a sustained approach to the medium and have been following identified global benchmarks for the banking industry in social media.” Playing a multiplicity of roles, the Seylan Bank Facebook page interacts with customers and virtually takes the bank and its array of products and services to the fingertips of its fans. Seylan believes that ‘Likes’ or number of fans is not the key criteria in gauging the success of its social media efforts, but rather the engagement it has with its current and potential customers. The ‘Seylan Bank Customer Support’ link is one of its key features and gives Facebook fans the unique opportunity to interact with the bank. This link invites queries of any kind, all of which are replied on a priority basis. Facebook fans are also kept updated with the bank’s latest activities such as product and service launches, value additions, product promotions, news updates, branch openings etc. Making the page even more interactive, it also conducts competitions with exciting prizes on offer. Recent promotions have included guess the value promotion, designing a hoarding, win tickets, and, share and win promotions. Giving it greater social appeal, the Seylan Bank Facebook page takes on the role of a social commentator and engages its fans with daily inspirational posts, comments on on-going cricket matches and other such national and international events. It also posts a range of useful tips for daily living such as those on successful lifestyles such as how to run a house efficiently, how to save money, energy savings tips and a range of other important household and other tips. “We have identified the importance of social media with it being a far more interactive and engaging medium rather than a traditional medium of media. It acts as an extremely cost efficient communication tool as well as a feedback and research and idea generation mechanism as well. We have used the feedback gained from our social media platforms to add value to our products and services as well as to improve our service standards at branches as well as business development in the recent past. In fact we will continue to invest in this medium with due consideration to the tremendous growth we see in both the internet and mobile telephony penetration in Sri Lanka. We have also planned to launch some more exciting competitions, features and apps in the near future which are sure to engage our current and potential customers and fans even further,” Wijeyesekera added.