Video is having its moment on social media right now, and that moment doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon. That’s why so many financial advisors are adding video to their digital marketing strategies.
The key to social media for financial advisors is understanding your platforms, understanding your audience, and developing a content strategy based on the most recent trends and research. Particularly in the financial services industry, social media is an extension of inbound marketing because it affords firms an opportunity to connect with clients and prospects in a meaningful and impactful way.
Financial advisors who use video on social media discover increased brand awareness, greater client and prospect trust, and enviable ROI. However, financial advisors still need to make sure they are following social media best practices and optimizing their video content for an effective strategy. Continue reading to learn these video tips.
Why Financial Advisors Should Be Using Video on Social Media
Brand Awareness
Part of what makes social media such an effective marketing tool is how easily content can spread. If just one user shares your social media content, that can mean exposure to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who otherwise might not have experienced your content.
Producing content that gets frequent shares can be a highly effective marketing strategy. And guess what? Social media users are 40 times more likely to share visual content than text content.
Build Trust
When one of your followers shares content you’ve produced, they are not only giving you more exposure, they’re also giving you positive exposure. Think about who appears on your feed when you’re on social media. Probably, you primarily see posts from family, friends, and peers. These are people you know who have social capital and influence. Consequently, a referral from them can mean that a business assumes an automatic familiarity and level of trust.
In addition to the potential for positive association with a user’s social circle, a good video affords an opportunity to personalize your business more thatext or a static image. Doing so fosters that quality which is so important to financial advisors’ clients: credibility that produces trust.
Win More Customers
Studies find, the majority of consumers would prefer to learn about a service via video. What’s more, this same study found that a higher percentage converted to active prospects due to video consumption. It’s not surprising, then, that 88% of video marketers experience a positive ROI when they use video to produce leads and market their firms.
Statistics demonstrating the positive effects of integrating video into a marketing strategy have increased year over year, as video becomes an increasingly popular medium among social media users and more businesses adopt video marketing strategies. So, we can only expect these trends to continue increasing in popularity.
Social Media Video Best Practices
Of course, it’s not enough to just slap a video together and post it on a social media platform. To see best results, financial advisors need to be more strategic and follow these practices:
1. Have a measurable goal
It’s important to know why you’re posting each video to social media. How does it complement your overall marketing strategy? What, specifically, do you want this video to accomplish? Did you include a call-to-action in your video and set up tracking codes?
2. Measure video performance against your pre-defined goal
Did your video accomplish what you hoped it would? If not, can you determine why and make adjustments? If so, can you reproduce the process?
3. Produce the right content for the right audience
The content of your video should be compelling. Ask yourself - is this a topic that actually matters to my followers? Solutions for pain points are particularly effective.
You also need to consider whether you have selected the appropriate social media channel. Does your target audience match the demographics that tend to use the channel you’ve chosen? Popular social media platforms for financial advisors are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and sometimes Instagram and YouTube. Like financial advisory firms, each social media channel has its own personality and consumer base.
4. Craft an outstanding introduction
Give viewers a reason to keep watching beyond the first ten seconds of your video. This can be harder than it sounds, since you’re competing against an ever-refreshing stream of content and distractions for your viewers’ short attention spans.
5. Harness the power of narrative
Humans love stories so, no matter who comprises your audience, don’t underestimate the power of narrative. Package the most important points you’d like to make into a coherent account that has the potential to make an emotional impact.
6. Include graphics
In a HubSpot poll, only 29% of users reported always consuming social media videos with the sound on. Because the majority of users do not watch videos with sound, it’s important to ensure your videos make ample use of graphics to help convey the message.
Whiteboard videos, for example, provide a popular and inexpensive mechanism to illustrate a video’s audio.
7. Produce, post, and share short videos
Remember that your video is just a blip on the screen for most users, whose attention is ready to redirect to the pages and pages of content they can scroll through after your video. That’s why you need to make your videos short - no more than two minutes, to be precise. To be even more precise, make sure videos are:
- No more than 30 seconds on Instagram
- No more than 45 seconds on Twitter
- Around one minute on Facebook
- Around 2 minutes on YouTube
8. Optimize your content
Make sure each video has a keyword rich headline and description. Use hashtags when relevant. In short, make it as easy as possible for people to find what you’re sharing.
Conclusion
Financial advisors who use social media cannot discount the power of video content. As this medium continues to grow, financial advisors who haven’t incorporated it into their social media marketing strategies will find themselves outpaced by their competitors.
However, those who do adopt the use of video on their social media profiles and do so effectively will benefit from a strong return on investment that translates to increased brand awareness and client conversions.
