The 2012 third quarter edition of the Investis IQ Rankings of corporate websites has accounted for a growth in the use of social media across the banking and finance sectors.

One of the most startling revelations the rankings exposed was a trend among FTSE 100 companies integrating their Twitter feeds onto corporate websites. This accounted for a 22% increase since last year’s survey. Investis sees this trend as an encouraging sign of digital communications integration.

The IQ Rankings points to banking as one of the best sectors for social media integration with 65% of respondents embedding a social media channel on their own website. This trend sounds promising for the banking sector’s engagement with its digital audience. However, most have had social channels in existence for over a year and have only recently integrated them into their overall communications strategies. The report cites a latecomer effect as one of the drivers toward the trend.

RBS, the only bank in the top 20, jumped from 10th to sixth place since the 2011 report due to its informative social media channels.