Your Aversion to Social Media is Killing Your Growth: Why’s it’s a Must for Financial Advisors

 

Social media is a powerful marketing tool for financial advisors.

 

It gives you a more cost effective alternative to market your financial services and to attract clients naturally; however, you must learn how to use social media to reap its maximum benefits. 

 

The first thing you should do is come up with an effective strategy that can attract followers and prospective clients over time.

 

This is what we recommend.

 

Perform Research

 

There are many social media platforms out there that allow you to interact with prospective clients across the country. Each of them have different types of audiences and may not be effective if that audience doesn’t align with your firm’s brand.

 

 

Your choice of social media platform will largely depend on what you want to achieve as a financial adviser. So ask yourself:

 

• Do you want more clients?
• Are you planning to educate more people in the financial industry?
• What is your budget (time and money)?
• What are your long and short-term goals?

 

All of these factors will play a key role when choosing a platform.

 

Identify the Best Platforms for Your Focus

 

Once you know what you want, do some research to identify the best platforms out there. 

 

You need to determine the following:

 

• The number of people on each platform
• Average age of the audience
• Education levels
• How users interact with those platforms

 

Facebook commands 71 percent of all internet users making it the best platform for volume.

 

It is followed by LinkedIn at 18 percent.

 

Pinterest comes third with 21 percent.

 

Twitter ranks fourth with 18 percent.

 

The majority of people who use social media platforms are women.

 

84 percent of the total users are between 18 and 29 years of age.

 

Building Your Social Media Accounts

 

 

Social media will only bear fruit for your brand once you optimize your account and its visibility to prospective financial services clients. Here are a few things to remember:

 

• Make sure your profile and header images have the proper dimensions so that you don’t end up with annoying cropping and distortion issues.

 

• Stick to the recommended pixels for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest.

 

• Find out the best time of the day to post on your social platforms of choice. Most retweets and Facebook shares tend to occur from 5 p.m.

 

• Post at these times to maximize your reach.

 

• It is also important your measure the impact and ROI of your social media marketing channels. With free tools like Google Analytics, you can analyze how traffic from social media converts into leads and calls to your office and modify your strategy accordingly.

 

• When communicating with clients, note specific instances where social media impacted a prospect to contact you.

 

Create Compelling Content

 

 

Creating compelling content should be a priority in how you use social media for your financial advisory firm. Your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and or Instagram account should have content that can capture your target segment’s attention and make them want to like and share.

 

The content should not be limited to articles or written advice.

 

You can also use video, pictures / infographic, podcasts or live streams.

 

You can share your thoughts about topics in the news that may affect your target demographic’s financial well-being. You can also mix in more evergreen content, like Monday motivation videos.

 

Always be sure your firm’s brand reflects through all of your posts, and showcase your brand’s voice and unique angle. Give your followers something interesting and unique.

 

Helpful Tip: Aim for a reaction (like, favorite, etc.) to share ratio of 3:1 to 2:1 when marketing B2C. For B2B, this ratio is usually higher.

 

Encourage your followers to provide feedback to help you improve. The feedback can be in the form of surveys, challenges or questions.

 

Do not forget to invite people to share if they find your content valuable or entertaining.

 

Staying Within Compliance

 

 

With the rise of compliance regulations for advisors, you and your firm have to stay abreast of those regulations to avoid any regulatory scrutiny:

 

These are just a few of the standards you should abide by:

 

• For any links to 3rd party content, such as video or article, that linked to content should adhere to the same standards as your firm’s own content

 

• Content should not be exaggerated, false, misleading or unwarranted

 

• For 3rd party testimonials:

 

• • Unsolicited testimonials on social media profiles do not fall under regulatory scrutiny

 

• • For solicited testimonials, make sure you follow these rules:

 

• • • Assert that the testimonial is not representative of other clients’ experiences

 

• • • Assert that any testimonial is not a guarantee of future success or performance

 

• • • For any testimonial where more than $100 was paid in exchange for the testimonial, you must explicitly state that it’s a paid testimonial

 

For a full review of FINRA’s guidelines, be sure to review Regulatory Notice (17-18) Social Media and Digital Communications.

 

While you’re busy providing great value to your clients, it can be difficult to stay atop all of these regulations.

 

Leverage the tools that are available to you.

 

These vendors are good choices to review:

 

1. Smarsh – a suite of cloud-based archiving tools for advisors. Smarsh was the 2014 FTF recipient of the Best Social Media Compliance Solution.
   
   
2. Archive Social – an archiving solution specifically for social media.
   
   
3. Global Relay – going beyond social media, Global Relay provides archiving solutions for instant messaging, text messaging, web-based chats, voice, and email.
   
   
4. PageFreezer – securely collects online content automatically in the required format for the financial industry. PageFreezer complies with FINRA, SEC, and SOX regulations.

 

The Wrapup on Social Media for Financial Advisors

 

 

It takes time and effort to pull this social media marketing strategy off; however, when well thought-out and executed, your social media efforts can be a great way to build awareness for your firm and attract prospective clients to the top of your sales funnel.

 

By creating and executing a social media strategy that aligns with your brand and speaks to your target demographic, you will build awareness for your firm and appointments on your calendar.

 

Remember, social media is a top of funnel strategy, and its effectiveness amplifies when combined with other common online marketing strategies for financial advisors such as blogging/content marketing and email marketing.

 

If you’ve read this and not sure where to start with your social media strategy, we’re happy to help!