No matter what your personal feelings are about social media, there’s no question about its value as a part of your financial advisor marketing strategy. But learning to leverage your social media as a tool for engagement and conversions can take some best practices for the financial industry.
Read on for the best ways your financial advisor social media posts can maximize engagements.
Make it Personal
Just not too personal. Good social media engagement will require showing your human side. This is especially true for financial advisors. That’s because potential clients for financial advisors will want to learn as much as possible about the person who provides planning and investment assets for their assets. Many times this becomes an intensely personal relationship that impacts the achievement of financial goals.
That said, your professional social media channels for your firm should be kept totally separate from your personal accounts. If you have hobbies or charitable interests, or any other activities you participate in, this is great content to share. However, sharing personal or political posts should be avoided on your company page. Even personal pages should avoid this type of content.
As a good rule of thumb, if you’re not sure if it’s appropriate to share on your company page – it probably isn’t. Remember that the point of your business’ social media profile is to boost engagement for your business – and your business only.
Ask Questions
One of the best ways to get engagement is to ask questions of your audience. This can be done by creating a poll, survey, or simply asking a question on your social media page. Even if you don’t get many responses, that doesn’t mean people aren’t paying attention and watching how you interact with those who did respond.
This can also help you provide information on a subject or topic that you frequently get asked by clients and prospects. For example, if you are asked what happens to 401(k) assets once a person leaves a job before they retire?
This could either be framed as a question: “Who has ever left their 401(k) assets with a previous employer because they didn’t know what else to do?” or even as a trivia-type question such as a multiple-choice with 3 incorrect and one correct question. Either way, you will be able to get a conversation going.
This not only helps you get to know some prospects better but also helps with those mysterious social media news feed algorithms. While the exact formulas are a well-kept secret, we do know that the more engagement a page gets on its posts, the more likely it is to show up on followers’ news feeds.
Become a Trusted Source of Information
With the endless news cycle, information is easy to come by. But having it explained by an industry expert is not. While the higher-ups at social media channels are making efforts to curb false information circulating on their platforms, it can be hard for users to navigate the sea of information when it comes to complicated topics related to financial issues, content, and pain points.
For example, there have been many economic impacts as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and not all of them are easy for the average American taxpayer to understand. If you position yourself and your financial advisor firm as a voice of reason and knowledge in a time where other outlets are promoting confusion and chaos, you will position yourself as a trusted source of information and gain a strong online following.
Produce and Share High-Quality, Relevant Content (Not Just Your Own)
Just because everyone seems to be sharing content doesn’t mean it’s the right content. Invest time and resources in creating your own quality content such as a quality website with enhanced SEO, blog content, videos, infographics, and other engaging content.
This not only helps boost engagement on your social channel, but it can also lead more visitors to your website and other cross-promoted social channels. And don’t forget to also share high-quality and relevant content from other trusted sources.
Keep in mind, however, that anything you share on your social channels is subject to the same rules and regulations as original content you create and distribute.
Offer Value
In addition to offering insights to your page visitors, you can also offer access to other resources, such as whitepapers and eBooks. While these are typically content that is gated behind a contact/lead form on a website, you can also promote via social and capture the same content to grow your prospect list as well as provide value to the end user.
Additionally, this strategy works well with paid ads that include lead forms. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer this type of ad format and it can provide a lot of value for the money when it is set up properly with the right audience parameters.
Mix it Up
When using social media, mixing up the content on your page can increase engagement all on its own. Again, while we don’t know the exact metrics behind what makes social media news feeds tick, we do know that it helps to have a mix of different types of content, shared frequently. This can be a mix of text-only posts, photo posts, videos, and 3rd party content, or anything else you feel is relevant to share.
Be Consistent
Like any practice, it’s sometimes easy to come out strong in the beginning when you have momentum behind you and then trail off a bit (or a lot). When it comes to social media for financial advisors, it’s very easy to be forgotten. That’s because social media moves so fast, that if you stop posting - or post a lot in the beginning and then taper off – you may stop showing up in your followers’ feeds altogether.
To prevent this, engagement is key. Keep posting, creating, and sharing content, asking questions, and offering your insights. Just remember to be authentic and make sure your social media feeds represent who you are as a person, professional and financial advisor, and keep at it.
Like most things worth having, social media engagement can take time to build but will certainly pay off in the long run. And don't forget to include your social media links in your email marketing!
