I meet so many advisers who are wary about and even afraid of using social media to advertise their services or business.
Every Chartered Insurance Institute meeting I attend it's like trying to change water to wine when it comes to advisers using Twitter or Facebook for social media engagement.
In my opinion social media works (I'm almost glad most advisers don't agree as our firm benefits from this). However, there are some rules to follow if you want to use these platforms for maximum effect.
The rules (as I see them)
1) Profile - whether it's Twitter or Facebook you need to have an engaging profile, this should include a short bio about who you are and what you do, contact details and a relevant profile picture - the summer holiday picture with a beer is not going to work (probably).
The last thing you want is someone on their way out wanting to leave that last minute comment on your Twitter page2) Keep it updated - this is the biggest failing! I've seen so many skeleton profiles, advisers started to make an effort but after a week they give up on it. Big tipL it takes weeks and months to get the snowball rolling, but when it starts it can be a great (free) resource.
3) Show personality - probably the best rule to follow. When it comes to posts you need to add personality, you need to show you as a person and if you have one, your team. Share their success, passing exams, taking part in charity work or even great client stories. Your posts should not say "Brilliant - Halifax 5 yr fixed now 2.89 per cent" - this is what the Financial Conduct Authority does not want! Instead, share success - for example, one of our recent posts talked about our Paraplanner Ella passing her RO5 exam.
4) Networking - another overlooked area. There are social media groups networking events that happen every week. For example on Twitter we have #nwaleshour every Thursday 8pm till 9pm powered by @Northwalestweets which has more than 15,000 followers in North Wales. Every tweet we make, they retweet to all their followers, we get such great brand awareness along with hits, followers and ultimately clients.
5) Linking - to make life more streamlined you can link your Twitter account with your Facebook page, this means your posts are replicated to the other. This can save time, but I would recommend keeping them separate because their formats are different.
6) Ownership - more of a word of warning, just be careful who you give permissions / login details to. The last thing you want is someone on their way out wanting to leave that last minute comment on your Twitter page.
To finish I just wanted to share some trends I've seen from our analytics data, but also speaking to new clients.
Social media is slowly becoming the new yellow pages, people ask one another where to find the best tradesman, accountant and financial adviser via these platforms. If you are not currently using this resource, I suggest you do, what's to lose?
We now have over 100,000 impressions a month on our Twitter account alone, this means 100,000 people are viewing our tweets/messages.
Don't get me wrong we are not getting that many new clients (I wish) but we are seeing a growing increase in engagement with social media.
