Creating a social media strategy for financial advisers can be a tall task. Nowadays, companies use social media to market their products or services to consumers and build strong relationships with clients. However, most financial industry companies lack the knowledge to create a winning social media strategy.
Social media platforms have been a significant part of the marketing landscape for years. They have become an integral part of our lives, as we use them to connect with friends, family, businesses, brands, etc.
Using social media and having the right strategy can be beneficial for businesses. Companies can reach potential clients through different platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Google+, etc.
Financial industry professionals are looking for different ways to grow their businesses. With so many people turning to online sources for advice, it makes sense that financial advisers would want to take advantage of the social media trend.
This article will discuss some of the ideas on creating a successful social media strategy for financial advisers and why having one is essential.
Creating a Social Media Strategy in Financial Services
A social media strategy should outline the goals, tactics, and metrics to track and measure the progress.
When developing a social media strategy for financial advisers, marketers should steer clear of generic advertising methods. Financial advisers should provide real value that isn’t merely an advertisement for their services.
First Steps Towards Social Media Strategy for Financial Advisers
To begin with, financial advisers need to set business goals and objectives. Secondly, they should identify the Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Relevant-Time-bound plans. Finally, financial advisers or financial firms should outline an executive summary of what they want to achieve from social media.
Knowing the audience is vital for increasing brand awareness. Learning about your audience includes knowing their location, age, interests, which platforms they’re using, the best times to engage with them, etc. Consequently, financial advisers can create relevant content.
Such content should lead to likes, comments, and shares straight from prospective customers. However, for financial advisers to develop a solid social media strategy that targets a specific audience will take time.
Knowing the competition will help marketers understand where competing advisers excel and where they have room for improvement. Furthermore, comprehending competitors’ pain points is an opportunity to focus on social media networks where audiences are underserved. Additionally, it could be a step up to building relationships with prospective clients, which is of the essence when it comes to social media strategy for financial advisers.
Next Steps Towards Social Media Strategy for Financial Companies
Developing visuals – Visuals keep content entertaining and exciting. Customers expect more from content than information. Visuals include videos, infographics, images, and other multimedia.
Social media content calendar – Financial advisers should be active, post regularly, and engage with followers on social platforms. However, to ensure regular content keeps popping up to users, marketers use social media content calendars. Such calendars make it possible to schedule posts in advance. Scheduling instead of posting ad-hoc allows marketers to devise a strategic plan. Additionally, it helps the social media managers from forgetting to publish content.
Creating a social media strategy for financial advisers is not a straightforward task. Social media is a two-way street. This means that strategic planning must include listening and learning.
Final Steps Towards Social Media Strategy for Financial Advisers
Monitoring performance – Tracking the number of likes, shares, comments, etc.
To understand if their social media strategy is working, financial advisers should monitor its performance. There are several ways to monitor the success of a marketing campaign. For example, surveys can be a great way to find out how well a particular social media strategy works. Surveys can provide feedback from followers about what they’d like to see more of.
Find the balance and have fun! – The key is to find the balance between self-promotion and fulfilling the expectations of social media followers.
The benefits are clear: new business growth, increased competitiveness, and an improved customer service experience across all touchpoints.
What Works Best for an Online Business?
Social Media Marketing has become one of the most effective ways to market a business online, and it’s no surprise that many financial advisers are now using this type of marketing to promote their businesses.
Posting timely news and trends about financial markets on social media sites is an excellent way to reach different clients. In addition, social media marketing is now a powerful way to get people’s attention, so they can look for further information on the company website.
It doesn’t mean that financial advisers should start posting all over social media. However, it is essential to see what works best on each platform. Afterwards, focus on those channels where they could see the most incredible growth opportunity.
How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform?
Social media sites are playing an ever-growing role in people’s lives. Many social media platforms exist these days. However, most companies focus on the Big Four: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. An excellent social media strategy for financial advisers should include all four.
Whether a financial adviser wants to build a client base, make professional contacts, or stay up to date with industry news, social media can be a valuable tool.
Social media allows sharing of valuable content with others. With an active online presence, it could be done through posts, tweets, pins, likes, shares, comments, etc.
When we post content on social media, we give our audience something to consume. If we post informative articles, we are providing value to our readers. When we share funny memes, then we are entertaining our followers. If we post pictures of our kids, we show our followers who we are. These types of content help build relationships between ourselves and our followers.
In addition, advisers or advisery firms need to make sure that they are not only posting about themselves. Instead, they should be sharing helpful content that can help potential and current clients.
The critical thing to remember is not to force writing something just because it sounds good. Instead, the financial advisers should produce valuable content that provides superior quality to the audience.
Making Use of The Big Four
As mentioned above, there are four big players on the market.
Financial companies should focus on creating content for major social media platforms. Each platform has its type of content that performs best there. For example, YouTube is a video-sharing platform, so creating videos for that channel is essential. On the other hand, presence on LinkedIn includes posting a mix of posts and videos to get maximum engagements.
That being said, the focus should be on creating different content for different social platforms.
The least desired outcome is to create quality content, only to see it go to waste because the team didn’t post it on the right platform.
Conclusion
The world of social media is changing. The way we communicate, share and interact with each other has changed dramatically in the last decade. Social media are now a part of our everyday lives. In fact, according to Global WebIndex, 58.4% of the world’s population uses social media. This number continues to grow as more people join these sites every day. This means financial advisers should take advantage of this growing trend and start developing their social media marketing strategies.
