In this age of obsessive online sharing, the once indignant cry of TMI (too much information) has lost its force.
Still, one must admit that it’s almost impossible for a financial advisor to know too much about their clients and, conversely, it’s
intensely desirable to have clients and prospective clients know the right things about you.
Enter the ubiquitous social media sites: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You’re probably on at least one of them and have left your
digital DNA in the form of a “like,” a “re-tweet” or a “congrats” to a colleague of a colleague on the occasion of her work anniversary.
But how do you proactively put sites to work in the service of advancing your firm’s business and your reputation?
The instruction to use social media is not helpful. It’s right up there with: eat healthy foods.
Which are the right websites to start with? What do you post in order to come across as both approachable and knowledgeable, yet not
creepily intrusive? See: Social media is effective with ultra-wealthy clients but forget the Morgan Stanley approach.
There are a few routes to take when kickstarting your social media activity; we’ll discuss a few of the options and best practices
associated with each so you’ll know the optimal entry points for your business.
But first, one word of caution about social media for financial advisors: It is always a good idea to check with your compliance department
to learn about any guidelines and/or regulations they have on social networking tools. If they do allow you to create profiles
and post, you’ll most likely be required to document and track all your messages and activity. A few good companies that specialize
in this area are: Actiance Inc., Smarsh Inc. and SocialWare.com. See: Outdated RIA websites risk compliance trouble not to mention credibility .
700 billion minutes
If your Facebook post was printed
on a billboard in the middle
of New York City, would your
reputation remain intact?
With 1.1 billion users, Facebook gets the attention of everyone around the world. Users are spending a cumulative 700 billion minutes
on Facebook every month and each user spends on average 20 minutes on the site, incredible statistics for an incredibly useful
website to use in promoting your business. See: Orion will take a page out of Facebook to help RIAs achieve better inter-office chats.
Personal or professional?
Sign up for a Facebook “company” page. With a Facebook company page you can create a business profile to promote your brand and
services, show your company history and timeline of successes. Look for the link on the main Facebook page underneath the “Sign
Up” button for personal pages — in the very small font.
If you build it, will they come?
Facebook makes it easy to contact your current clients, prospects and professional contacts and ask them to join your community.
You can also invite your personal friends to like your business page too. When the “like” shows up in your family and friends newsfeed,
this means more impressions of your company name out in the world of social media. Also, integrating the Facebook icon into your
business website will let prospects know they can also find you on Facebook and connect that way. Find the Facebook brand assets
here.
What should I share?
Pictures of the kids? An article in which you were recently quoted? A picture of the scenic view from the Financial Planning Association’s
annual conference in Arizona? The answer is yes, to all of the above — providing you share in the right way. Sometimes it
comes down to a simple judgment call. If this post was printed on a billboard in the middle of New York City, would your reputation
remain intact? If the answer is yes, then go for it! A well-balanced mix of both personal and professional posts will show you
have an engaging personality and authoritativeness in the industry.
It is also important to get your Facebook community engaged. Posting relevant industry news and blogs is great, but get online and
start a conversation. Asking poll questions to gather commentary is a great conversation starter. Also engaging are contests and
giveaways — maybe a monthly giveaway to a local favorite restaurant, something to keep people coming back to your page.
Doing the right thing for advisors since 1979.
Take advantage of the Facebook real estate
Use the billboard size space at the top of your page, a.k.a. cover photo to your advantage; but be cautious because Facebook
prohibits using this space promotionally, i.e. no special promotions or placing your website address within the picture. Choose
a photo that will represent you well: your company logo is an obvious choice, picture with clients or friends or maybe a scenic
landscape photo. You can also take a stab at creating a collage of a few pictures to add interest to your page. You can find
the specifications for all the Facebook real estate here.
The time issue
Be selective about what you post. Also, make a basic calendar of activities, which will keep you organized. And if you see activity
on your page, the most important task will be to respond in a timely manner.
140 characters
Tweeting involves a delicate balance of
limited self-promotion mixed in with education
and information for your followers, topped
with a dash of personality.
The short answer is a lot more than you think. Although only 10% of Americans are using Twitter, 89% are familiar with it, according
to Tom Webster from Edison Research. With 89% of the world familiar with Twitter, it should be part of your online social networking
campaigns. See: RIAs recount how they reap new clients using LinkedIn and Twitter, stealing a march on shackled wirehouse advisors.
Setting yourself up for success
An important step for launching a Twitter account is choosing the right handle — think of this as your calling card for Twitter.
This could be as simple as using your name, with proper capitalization where needed. If you are a business owner, then the name
of the business is likely the best route to take. Once you have the account established, integrate the Twitter handle into your
e-mail signature, business cards, website and blogs to advertise the handle. Make sure your profile is set to public and that you’ve
added your company location so you can be discovered and followed by others.
Personalizing your page
As with other social media platforms, be sure to post a photo of yourself and create a branded background for your Twitter
account. People on Twitter want to connect an account to a real person and this is especially true in the financial services
industry. Twitter also gives you the opportunity — with a generous allotment of 160 characters — to describe who
you are and what you do. Include a link to your website within the profile to easily link your Twitter feed to your branded
website. You can find the specifications for all the Twitter real estate here.
Follow your industry leaders
Interacting with the financial community on Twitter will help broaden your reach while at the same time expand your business knowledge.
Follow other financial service leaders, conferences and associations to build your base of content gathering for potential re-tweets
or reading general industry buzz. See: How a Twitter ‘storm’ extended the MarketCounsel Summit from hundreds to thousands of people and showcased the potential of tweets.
Ready, set, tweet
Tweeting involves a delicate balance of limited self-promotion mixed in with education and information for your followers, topped
with a dash of personality. Tweet out an interesting fact you learned while attending a conference, a picture from a family trip
to the Red Sox game or a comment about today’s stock market activity. If there is a way to link the tweet back to your company
website or blog this creates a direct invitation for your followers to learn more about you. These tweets tell your followers you
are up on your industry news and ensure that you maintain the personal connection.
The re-tweet and the hashtag
To bump up your account activity, don’t forget to re-tweet (RT) the people you follow from time to time with a comment and credit
to the source (an @ sign will work best). The re-tweet may lead to an additional follower or create a conversation between you
and the person/company you have re-tweeted. Use a hashtag (#) to add your tweet to a stream of tweets on the same topic. This is
very helpful when looking for financial advice. A good website that helps track hashtag trends is Hashtags.org.
200 million degrees of separation
When you do decide to connect
with someone new, make sure you
customize the LinkedIn InMail message you
are sending to them.
LinkedIn started out as primarily a career-building site back in 2003, but today is the largest site for networking business professionals
and reaches 200 million users. The second largest industry represented on LinkedIn is Financial Services. Of the millions of LinkedIn
profiles, 67% are adults with investments portfolios to manage — an attractive proposition and a long list of potential clients
to sort through. See: Advisor Tested: How LinkedIn can truly build your business and not just feed your ego.
Set up your profile page
Similar to other social media websites, LinkedIn makes it fairly simple to set up your profile page. The key is to fill it
out in its entirety to ensure you extract the most out of the platform. Remember to add your certifications, professional courses
or volunteer charity work to reinforce credibility and inject personality. Add logos and a profile picture to enhance the look
and feel of the profile. Also, include some helpful keywords in your headline to make it easy for the right people to find
you. If you specialize in managing retirement accounts or selecting high-growth stocks, then clearly spell out those specialties.
Join the cool kids clubs
LinkedIn Groups are a way to meet people by joining group of people that share your interests. But do not limit your involvement
to only financial advisor groups; it’s a good idea to join multiple groups that match your interests to have a more well-rounded
profile and more interactions. You never know where a new prospect will turn up.
Pay to play
In some cases it may be worth the extra money to upgrade to LinkedIn’s premium services. A premium level upgrade will give you
a few extra perks: you can access the full list of those who have viewed your profile, contact anyone with InMail, review expanded
profiles, employ more search filters and obtain better search results. There are three different levels within the premium upgrade:
business, business plus and executive, with varied levels of communication and searching features. Information about all the premium
service options can be found here.
Weekday updates
If you have noteworthy content to share a few times a week that is relevant and helpful, be it of a personal or professional nature,
this is the place to share it. You could post about your latest blog entry (include a link to your website) or an industry article
you recently read. Integrating a mix of blog posts, articles, videos or info graphics will make your profile page more attractive
to your connections. See: Sallie Krawcheck talks tough — and with disarming openness — online about the glass ceiling and lip gloss.
Making the connection
Making connections is the key to LinkedIn and connecting with your current clients is a must, since this gives you the opportunity
to see their first-degree connections. When you do decide to connect with someone new, make sure you customize the LinkedIn InMail
message you are sending to them; this will give the person more insight into why you are asking to connect with them. See: Dissecting the pathology of UHNW wealth managers who want brand building without marketing.
Be cautious when sending “blind” connection requests on LinkedIn — your account can be restricted if the recipients hit the “I
don’t know” response too many times. Customizing the InMail message and having a picture on your profile page will help people
recognize you. See: 5 ways for RIAs to avoid social media and ‘holistic’ wealth management overreaches in a share-happy e-world.
Read more about LinkedIn’s policies here.
Other helpful links:
Where to start
Using social media can be overwhelming at first, but the key is to start small with the one or two platforms that will be most beneficial
to your business. This will allow you to get to know the ins and outs of the social media platforms over time.
If you believe that your ideal customer profile is a C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn may be the best place to
start making connections with those clients. Families starting out who are perhaps on the younger side of investing may be using
Facebook more as a means of communicating. See: 6 ways that RIAs can hone their expertise in social media by acting more like journalists.
When you do decide to jump into the social media pool, make sure all your accompanying marketing materials hold the social networking
badges or logos so you can cross promote your account(s).
As more and more business is facilitated or generated online, becoming involved in the online conversation in the coming years will
be necessary to keep your business growing. The key is to have balanced social networking profiles that demonstrate your keen business
sense with a glimpse at your personal side, making you and your industry credentials stand out from the crowd.
Backed with a decade of experience in the SEM and SEO fields, Seth founded Champ Internet Solutions in March 2009. A pioneering SEO strategist and web marketer, Seth’s breadth of technological and business knowledge helps drives results in terms of SEO, e-commerce, marketing and integrated solutions for Champ’s clients. Seth earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a focus in E-Business Management from Champlain College, which was the inspiration for the company’s name.