TEXT BY MARK STEWART
FINANCIAL ADVISOR’S SOCIAL MEDIA
DOS & DON’TS
Social media and financial professionals aren’t always a match made in heaven. And that’s okay. If you put me in front of clients, in charge of their hard-earned money; I’d fold like a house of cards. But, I do know quite a bit about social media and its best practices. So, to clear some air around this topic, I did some good ol’ fashioned brainstorming to come up with ten social media “to-dos” and ten “to-don’ts” that can help you improve your social media performance across the board. Alright, enough gobbledygook, let’s get to the point.
For Financial Advisor’s Social Media . . . 1 Be Consistent One of the questions we always get from advisors is, “How often should I be posting on social media?” And the answer is….it depends. For most advisor’s businesses, anywhere from three to ten posts per week should suffice. You’re no multi-national corporation, so there’s no real need to break your back over posting multiple times every single day. The main point here is to be consistent with your posting. You don’t want to go weeks without a post, then bombard people with two posts a day for a week, and then go back to posting nothing for two months. That’s not a formula to form strong customer relationships.
2 Showcase Your Personality Ever met a drab person, with little personality and said “Gee, that’s the type of person I want to befriend!” Yeah, me either. The beauty of social media is its fluidness, and the ability to shed light on your business and your personality, without being so calculated in your efforts. So, use social media genuinely. Humanize yourself and your brand. After all, people still love to connect with people. Be sure to act in your company’s best interest, but have fun with it. Remember: no one likes boring.
3 Give More, Take Less Like any other relationship, those successful at connecting with people on social media practice a “give and take” method. Social media should be used to help your customers more than it helps you. That’s where the value is added for your clients and prospects. They want to be able to learn, interact, and be helped by your posts – not get annoyed. For posting content, there’s an easy-to-follow 4/5 rule: For every five posts, four should contain content that’s relevant and helpful to your audience, while one can be an advertisement for your business, a product promotion, or any other piece of information related to your business. So, stay away from using social media as a soapbox for how great your business is, and add some value to the lives of your audience. 26 | CONNECTIONS MAGAZINE
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4 Be Original For a financial advisor’s social media channels to be successful, they must also be unique. Show that you’re different from your competition through your posts. Illustrate that you’re thinking outside the box to make your competition look bland and cookie-cutter. It makes a bigger difference than you may think.
5 Optimize Your Profile and Bio On Facebook alone, a business page profile has areas to fill in your company’s story, your business and contact information, products, milestones, and much more. Be sure to use these. Fill in all the relevant information you can to fully optimize your social pages. After all, how’s anyone supposed to connect with your business if they barely know anything about it?
6 Maintain One Voice and Tone Remember the importance of consistency in posting? Turns out, consistency in your social posts’ voice and tone is important, too. This means that you should develop a certain tone and voice throughout all your social posts that reflect your company well. If one posts read, “R U ready to annuitize urself?!?”, and another, “With annuities, you can wave goodbye to the stress that comes with retirement planning.”, then your social voice needs some work. A simple exercise is to think of two to three adjectives that describe your business, and then create your voice around that. So, if your business is seen as “friendly”, “helpful”, and “professional”, then make your posts’ voice and tone come off as such.
7 Be Visually Appealing Humans are visual creatures. In our industry of numbers and words, it can really help to create or find visuals to make a point. Not to mention, photos and videos get much better engagement across all social platforms. Don’t believe it?