Advisors: 3 Ways You Can Embrace Social Media

Successful financial advisors are busy financial advisors. You didn’t gain all those clients and their lifelong trust by sitting behind closed doors and waiting for them to arrive, right?

Odds are that you’re active in your profession, your community, your network , your church, your circle of friends, and more. While your involvement in those areas of your life may or may not have anything to do specifically with your line of work, they can all benefit your line of work.

When you’re engaged with these elements of your life, you’re adding new chapters to your firm’s story. You’re gaining knowledge and best practices. You’re giving back. You’re addressing challenges. You’re making positive change happen.

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Don’t you think that clients would like to know about these ways you’re growing and contributing? Wouldn’t these be factors in who they choose to trust with their financial assets?

Recognize What’s Relevant

From gaining new certifications to building community in your town, there is a broad range of what’s relevant to potential prospects and current clients. Consider the following questions.

Have you personally joined an organization like a local chapter of Rotary International?

Did a speaker at your most recent meeting strike a chord within you worth sharing?

Are you attending a national or regional educational conference from your broker dealer? What did you learn that you plan to implement on behalf of clients?

Have you added a new partner or area of expertise that would be beneficial to clients?

Have you decided to sponsor a little league team in your town?

Is your firm volunteering for a local non-profit to beautify an area?

Are your employees serving lunch at a food bank for the hungry?

These types of activities are all indications that you’re actively moving your firm and your community forward.

Tell your Story

Remember the old question: “If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, if you don’t document and share the ways your firm is getting involved, there will be a deafening silence.

Yes, there will be the immediate benefit to the participants of the activities in which you’re earnestly involved. But these efforts are also ripe with PR opportunities that will undoubtedly bring direct benefits to your firm.

The key? You have to tell your own story. Your activities will be amplified when you share them with hundreds or even thousands across social media networks. Maximize those opportunities!

Never Forget to Document

If you’ve scheduled a webinar, a conference, a charity event or a community engagement opportunity, be sure to add the word “SOCIAL” to the end of your calendar event title. This will keep social media on your mind when you get those calendar reminders and notifications in your inbox and on your phone.

Assign an individual. When a group is responsible for something, members tend to rely on someone else to make it happen. When you make one person your social media Editor in Chief, they know they’re personally responsible for making sure the team documents and shares ongoing activities.

Pinpoint the ideal proactive person on your team that will keep this top of mind.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that is definitely magnified on social media . Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts perform significantly better when paired with a striking visual.

In fact, “When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.” ( Source )

Let pictures do much of the “talking” on your social media feeds and pair it with a descriptive or clever caption. That means finding the right person on your team to capture your activities with a decent camera or even on their smartphone.

If you’re the only representative of your firm at an event, make it your goal to walk out with at least one great photo with another attendee.

It could be a featured speaker, another member, a colleague or a new connection. Upload it to your social networks, tag the individual and you might be surprised what kind of social media performance you’ll get!

Conclusion

Follow these basic tips and you’ll find that social media will soon become second nature for your financial advisory firm.

Also, keep Compliance in mind. You’ll eventually find what like and don’t like so that you don’t raise any alarm bells and get quicker approvals. But be sure to use their software as needed for every post so you get the hang of what tends to get you hung up in their nets!