The power of clicks, likes, and shares: Promote the right kind of financial content

FINANCIAL influencers, aka finfluencers, have amassed an enormous following on social media, particularly among Gen Zs aged 18 to 25. Some finfluencers leverage social media to promote sound financial education, thereby providing significant benefit for society at large. But some others are bad actors, doling out questionable advice for monetary gain or social media fame.

Our job as a community is to promote content creators who have a genuine interest in financial education and knowledge sharing. This is easier said than done. Social media platforms reward the loudest finfluencers who make the most extraordinary claims, because they drive traffic and elicit large volumes of likes and shares.

A recent academic study analysed more than 29,000 tweets on the X platform and found that some financial content creators have “negative skill”. These “anti-skilled” finfluencers have more followers and more influence than skilled financial content creators, they point out.