By Faten Omar

KUWAIT: The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) conducted an interactive class on Sunday for participants of the Kuwait Times Summer Program titled “Mastering the Social Media Game”. NBK’s class came as part of the Kuwait Times Summer Program, in its second edition in 2023, held in strategic partnership with Boursa Kuwait. During the interactive class, NBK Digital Communications Manager Farah Bastaki delivered a presentation on the importance of social media as an integral part of modern business strategies due to its significant impact on brand visibility, customer engagement and overall business growth.

Digital Communications Manager of NBK, Farah Bastaki

Bastaki explained how social media has become the metric against which every business is measured, saying that there are 4.31 million Internet users in Kuwait, with 93 percent of the total population social media users. Internet users increased by 54,000 between 2021 and 2022. She indicated people spend between three to six hours on their phones daily, and two and half hours of those are on social media, which is increasing every year. “The top social media channels in Kuwait are YouTube with 3.62 million users, then TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and lastly LinkedIn,” she said.

Regarding NBK’s presence on social media, Bastaki said: “NBK shares content on several channels with over 2 million followers on seven different channels.” She said NBK’s Instagram account has 640,000 followers, and the content focuses on sharing photos and videos of competitions, community-related events (CSR and International Days), products and services, and offers and discounts, in addition to videos/Reels of TVCs, products and services and campaigns.

“On Twitter (now rebranded as X), NBK focuses on sharing short messages to 593,000 followers about the bank’s news, salary deposits, informative threads and financial news. Facebook is a popular social network mainly used by expats, so the bank posts offers tailored to expats, with 269,000 followers,” Bastaki added. On LinkedIn, Bastaki revealed this platform is a professional network that allows NBK to connect with 279,000 individuals on a professional level.

Meanwhile, NBK recently joined TikTok, which has now 23,000 followers, to offer its services to an important segment of the Kuwaiti community — the youth — along with Snapchat, which offers live coverage and NBK reward offers with total views of 2,000 per snap. “YouTube is also present in NBK’s strategy, where the bank uses it to share videos of TVCs (Ramadan, National Day, etc), business tutorials and campaigns and initiatives with total followers of 217,000,” she concluded.