While it once seemed like a passing craze from the humble beginnings of AOL, MySpace and early Facebook versions, social media has evolved into a part of our everyday lives. As a financial advisor, chances are you visit some form of social media on a regular basis. And that means, so do your potential clients.
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If you’ve avoided creating a social media presence for your financial advisory firm, you could be missing valuable opportunities to engage and grow valuable relationships. Read on for some valuable tips on how to leverage your social media presence as a financial advisor.
Get Established
If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to create accounts for your advisory firm. You might have one or two platforms already set up, but you may want to establish accounts on other platforms, even if they are inactive. The reason for this is two-fold: 1) You are reserving your firm's name on that platform in case you ever choose to start utilizing it as part of your regular social media marketing routine. 2) You are preventing anyone else from registering your business name on social media without your permission.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn and Facebook Groups
Both LinkedIn and Facebook have many groups for people with common interests, professional connections, and just about anything else you can think of. LinkedIn tends to be more professionally focused, so if you only have time to develop one, start there. Many of these groups are a mix of service providers as well as prospects, so be sure to word any posts carefully.
Share Content
Social media was created to share content and ideas – not for direct selling. Investors are smart, and they know when they’re being targeted as a potential sale, rather than being a member of an audience receiving content and tips from an experienced financial professional. Use your social platform to offer insights and commentary of your own, as well as sharing reliable and trustworthy 3rd-party content from trusted sources. By becoming a resource for your social media audience, you increase the chances of your content being shared and becoming a thought leader to your own followers.
Post Regularly
Social media moves fast. So fast that refreshing your feed can sometimes result in a brand-new set of posts, photos and videos. In such a fast-paced environment, it’s essential that you’re regularly posting content in order to reach the majority of your audience. In some cases, it’s acceptable to re-share content that was extremely relevant and/or didn’t get quite the audience views you expected. This can happen for a number of reasons, many of which include Facebook’s algorithms that are a mystery to everyone but Facebook. Bottom line: If you have followers but aren’t getting in front of them, you’re not taking advantage of the power of your own audience. Posting regularly is a necessary step toward being seen in newsfeeds.
Grow Your Network
For most businesses on social media, growing their audience can be a major challenge. So much so that they may give up entirely and have stagnant or negative growth. To avoid this, create and share relevant content that has a high likelihood of being shared. When someone in your audience shares your content to their page, they’re making your content visible to all of their connections and friends. If they like what they see, they can then become a follower of your page in the hopes of seeing more content like that. Be sure to deliver on that promise and you have found one way to keep growing your audience. Another way to keep your audience growing is by cross-promoting your social content across your social platforms. For example, someone may follow your firm’s account on Twitter, but not on Facebook. Sharing your Twitter post on Facebook is a great way to bring that platform to the forefront and vice-versa.
Know Your Audience and Platform
Different social platforms are known to have different audiences. Meaning that your followers on Facebook may look very different than your LinkedIn Followers, which differ from your Twitter followers, and so on. That means a couple of different things: In some cases, you need to prepare different content for different platforms to strike the right tone for that particular audience. Additionally, graphic sizes and requirements vary from platform to platform (and they have been known to change frequently) so staying on top of the latest information is essential.
Use Different Mediums
Because of the competition for attention on social media, try a mix of different media for your social posts. Most financial advisors who are successful on social media use a mix of media: including text-only posts, videos, photos, infographics, and sometimes—believe it or not—emojis! The main idea is to not become stagnant by only posting the same type of content. This way, you can keep your audience engaged while also providing quality, shareable, and useful content that provides value to your audience and establishes you as a credible source of financial information and insights.
Targeted Advertising and Sponsored Posts
Another way to get more views of your content and way to grow your audience is to use paid advertising on social media. While the process varies between platforms, the general idea of paid advertising is to get your “post” in front of people who fit your audience profile but aren’t in your audience currently. Depending on the platform, you can target your audience by demographics, geography, professional skills, interests, and even estimated income and assets. You can also utilize the analytics offered throughout the campaign so that if you’re not seeing the results you had hoped for, you can make adjustments along the way or even pause while you rethink your strategy.
