In marketing and communications, analysing competitors helps organisations understand what others are doing differently and identify opportunities to improve their own strategies. On social media, this involves looking beyond individual posts to examine broader content patterns, audience engagement and the approaches competitors use. Analysing these patterns can reveal opportunities that may not be immediately apparent from reviewing individual posts alone.
This approach informed my study of social media performance in Malawi’s banking sector, which examined how different content categories performed across eight commercial banks. The 1,278 Facebook posts analysed between January and June 2026 were classified into 11 categories: Product Marketing, Financial Education, Thought Leadership, Corporate Communications, Community Engagement, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Customer Service and Support, Digital Banking, Events and Sponsorships, Employee Feature, and Seasonal Content.
The analysis compared the proportion of content dedicated to each category with the average engagement it generated. The findings highlighted four categories worth paying attention to, including three that generated strong average engagement despite accounting for a relatively small share of the content.
- Community engagement
Community engagement content is designed to encourage interaction between a brand and its audience, strengthen relationships, and make people feel involved in the brand’s activities or community. This can include posts that invite people to share opinions, answer questions, participate in activities, or contribute to conversations. The primary purpose is to build relationships and encourage participation rather than directly promote a product.
Despite accounting for only 2.5% of the total content published by the eight banks between January and June 2026, community engagement ranked second among the 11 content categories in terms of average engagement. This suggests that banks may be underutilising a category with considerable potential. When done well, community engagement content can encourage substantial volumes of reactions, comments, tagging and shares by giving audiences reasons to participate in conversations and interact with the brand.
Beyond generating immediate engagement, regularly encouraging audience interaction may also increase the likelihood of followers seeing and engaging with future content, including product promotions.
2. Employee Features
Employee feature content highlights employees, their roles, experiences, skills, achievements, or contributions to an organisation. Its purpose is to put a human face to the brand, showcase the people behind its operations, and help audiences connect with the organisation beyond its products and services.
Employee feature content accounted for only 1.9% of the total content published by the eight banks between January and June 2026. Despite this small share, it ranked fourth among the 11 content categories in terms of average engagement. This suggests that employee feature content is another underutilised category with the potential to generate stronger audience engagement.
3. Thought Leadership
Thought leadership content positions an organisation or its representatives as knowledgeable voices in their industry by sharing expert insights, informed opinions, analysis and perspectives on relevant issues. The purpose is to demonstrate expertise, build credibility and influence how people perceive their brand.
In an industry where organisations offer similar products and services, thought leadership can help differentiate a brand by establishing a distinct voice and demonstrating its expertise. However, the data revealed that thought leadership accounted for just 0.6% of all content published by the eight banks during the study period, ranking sixth among the 11 content categories.
Despite this relatively small share, the category generated strong audience engagement, suggesting that it has potential to deliver greater value if banks give it more attention. Banks therefore have an opportunity to increase their use of thought leadership content to strengthen brand differentiation while generating engagement.
4. Financial Education
Financial education content helps audiences understand financial concepts, develop money management skills and make informed financial decisions. For banks, this includes content on budgeting, saving, borrowing, investing and financial planning.
In the study, financial education accounted for just 1.1% of the content analysed and ranked tenth among the 11 categories in average engagement, outperforming only digital banking. Although it did not perform strongly on engagement, its low representation and strategic value present an opportunity for banks to give it greater attention.
Financial education can help people make informed financial decisions while allowing banks to demonstrate their expertise and build trust with audiences. Banks should consider increasing the volume of this content and testing practical, relatable formats that address everyday financial challenges. Engagement data can then help identify which topics and formats resonate most with audiences.
Conclusion
The findings highlight opportunities for banks to improve their content strategies. While community engagement, employee features and thought leadership offer opportunities to strengthen audience engagement, financial education deserves greater attention despite its low representation and engagement. Banks could increase the volume of this content while experimenting with different formats to identify ways of making it more engaging.
More broadly, businesses should use data to guide content decisions, identify underutilised opportunities and test different approaches. The goal is not simply to publish more content, but to understand what resonates with audiences and supports organisational objectives.
About This Study
This study analysed 1,278 publicly available Facebook posts published by eight commercial banks in Malawi between January and June 2026. It examined content trends and audience engagement patterns to generate insights that can inform sustainable, repeatable and scalable digital marketing strategies aligned with business objectives. The findings provide an evidence-based foundation for understanding social media content performance, identifying opportunities for improvement and informing future marketing decisions.