Social Media Marketing Secrets for Financial Advisors
No-one ever said social media marketing was easy and marketing yourself online can be particularly difficult if the industry you’re in is quite traditional, formal and serious (like financial planning and investment management!). However, social media is a fantastic and free to use marketing tool that can help build your online brand as a financial advisor professional and help you to connect with potential clients. Because social media marketing is one of the strategies I help my financial advisor clients develop, this post is all about things you won’t find elsewhere.
We all know the basics of setting up professional social media profiles, posting content and liking pictures on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, but how can you really use social media to your advantage? What are the marketing strategies and ideas to get the most reach for your profiles? This article will highlight some of the very best social media marketing secrets that will help you excel online as a financial advisor. With some top social media campaign tricks as well as ideas on how to increase social media engagement! Get ready to get social, start posting and discover your creative side online.
Biggest AHA: Design is Key to Social Media Marketing
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression that content is king online, but did you know that design is a key element in professional social media marketing. In fact, design plays a huge part in online user experience. If Facebook, as a social media platform, didn’t feature an attractive and easy to use interface, would it still be an international success? The answer is no. Design appeals to the senses and if your social media posts are badly designed, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Let’s be honest, nothing screams amateur, more than a badly branded social media campaign.
Rest assured, you don’t necessarily have to have an eye for detail and design to get social media marketing right. In fact, there are plenty of free online tools that can help you to create professional and well designed posts for different social media platforms. One of the most popular websites to use at the moment is Canva.com. (See this post about using Canva in your marketing). This creative online tool offers a basic package that is free to use. Simply sign up using a Facebook account and utilize their social media optimized templates.
You can create Facebook profile pictures, Instagram stories, Twitter assets and even LinkedIn posts using Canva.com. It’s very easy to use and they also have plenty of tutorials on YouTube that you can watch and learn how to create beautiful and interesting social media marketing posts.
As a seasoned marketer and coach, I highly recommend looking into using Canva and creating visually appealing Social Media Marketing Campaigns that engage the right brain, emotional aspects for your target clients in using your services!
Join Facebook Groups to Increase Engagement
You can post on a regular basis on Facebook without actually maximizing the platform’s true potential. Engagement is a popular buzzword among social media marketing experts and there is a powerful reason why! Engagement basically means joining in conversations and discussions online. By breaking down the barrier between a professional or business social media profile and connecting with your target audience online, you can learn a great deal about your online clients.
Facebook groups connect people together who share a similar interest, or want to discuss a particular topic. Take financial freedom for example. You can search on Facebook for financial freedom Facebook groups and join a cluster of users who post, discuss and debate financial freedom topics online.
Sharing news, thoughts, ideas and posting questions, as a financial advisor you can join these highly targeted Facebook groups and provide valuable information and education. By leveraging Facebook groups you can position yourself as a financial expert and have prospective clients reach out to you.
Another way that users engage within Facebook groups is to recommend or provide feedback to others about positive services and experiences online. Perhaps your loyal clients and happy customers can tag you in a Facebook post as a trusted virtual financial advisor, so that other Facebook users can find you and send you a message about their financial advisory needs.
Share Valuable Educational Content on Social Media
If you have a blog, or you have created interesting and shareable content for your website, why not increase the reach and visibility of this content through social media. As a virtual financial advisor, you are an expert and your industry insight is valuable.
LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that is great for sharing financial advice and financial news. If you already have a LinkedIn profile, you can start sharing content straight away by posting it directly to LinkedIn. If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, what are you waiting for? It’s a free social media platform designed for business and professionals. Sign up to LinkedIn for free!
All users on LinkedIn have the ability to publish articles on the platform, but make sure that your profile is set to public if you want to maximize your organic reach. You can also join LinkedIn groups and post or share your content within a specific and targeted group, as you would on Facebook.
Video content is killer!
Video content is another great way to share financial tips and advice through social media. However we understand that it can be scary to create a video. But if you’re creating video content for LinkedIn, this can often be more formal and simple. Set up your camera so that you’re dressed professionally and sitting in a well-lit room, clear from any clutter.
Make the information you’re providing clear, precise and valuable. Video content for social media purposes should be easy to understand and they must always include calls to actions such as share this video, send me a message, visit my website etc. If you’re not quite ready for video social media marketing, post well written content with a clear call to action and website link on LinkedIn instead.
Use Hashtags!
Remember to use relevant hashtags on LinkedIn posts to increase your reach such as #financialplanning #financialadvisor #financialcoaching #financialadvisorforwomen etc.
Financial Advisors Using Instagram – Social Media Strategies
Facebook and LinkedIn aren’t the only social media platforms that a financial advisor can benefit from.
With the highest age demographic on the platform being 25-34, Instagram is a fantastic free resource to use as an online financial advisor. These days, there are more people than ever making money online and through social media marketing, so it’s time to capture the attention of the young and wealthy, social media active clients.
To grab attention and to put powerful social media strategies in place on Instagram consider collaboration with influencers. By appearing on the Instagram feed or Instagram Story of an influencer you can put yourself in front of thousands of potential customers and grow your social media following.
I have an active presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. I do have an Instagram profile, but I mostly use it to show people that I am a human being, meaning I post about things I love: food, wine, travel, etc.
There is a movement for financial advisors to use Instagram, so definitely look into it!
Budget and Your Social Media Campaign
Sharing content on social media is a great strategy to increase traffic to your website, improve your exposure online and position yourself as a professional financial advisor, and you can use social media for free, but you can also advertise! Even a small budget can get you views on your blogs and social media accounts. Budget is important though. Often people forget that social media platforms need to make money through advertising. This means that the content your post on social media will sometimes require additional budget in order to gain views.
To create a winning social media campaign as a financial advisor, you’ll need to consider whether you want to assign a budget to promote and boost the content you post. Your social media budget can be as affordable as $5 per day and this sum alone can often double if not triple your reach online. However, be realistic with your social media campaign.
Throwing money at a poorly thought out social media campaign won’t always give you the results you’d hoped for. With anything in life, take time to prepare your social media campaign, and prepare to succeed. Plan out your ideas, consider the design of the content you’re producing and assign a social media campaign budget should you need to boost the post if it under performs.
By being creative, consistent, engaging and realistic with your social media campaign budget, you can unlock the power of social media marketing as a financial advisor.
