Social Media Success for Financial Planning

We had a great conversation today with an adviser who posed the question : what have financial planning businesses done to be successful with social media and has that activity generated business?

We see many advisers who have dabbled.

They have a twitter account, Facebook - but it's not a business site more an extension of their social world and blended with clients often it's happened very much by accident, they have a linked in profile and sometimes they've written an article on financial planning and posted it on a company site and perhaps tweeted it.

Maybe they've been a little bit more advanced and using Hootesuite that blog has been tweeted and made its way to Facebook, where it's scored some likes.

What next?

The question: "what next" is actually the wrong question...."what should I do first" is the right way to go.

Lon Safko, The Fusion Marketing Bible, 2013, discusses the three major tools of social media, what he calls "the Trinity" - blogging, micro blogging and social networks.

Blogging is vital as not only does it improve SEO results but provided your content is what your desired audience values then you hit the mark as becoming someone trusted and regarded as a subject matter expert.

Directing people to your blog via Twitter espouses Safko, works provided you have great content and content that is original or adds value. Retweets and tweets about articles might provide information to your followers but for originality or interpretation and WIFM why wouldn't they go direct to the original authors?

Either by making your content original or actually writing an opinion piece on a topic that is relevant to your target audience that actually adds value by making it easier for them to understand a topic makes you ...useful....followable.

Finally all this activity is great but pointless unless you can generate a community that you can engage, share with, bond with, consult and learn about - then you don't have a base to build your business from.

So actually the first step is to decide ....who is your market? Where do they congregate? What do they follow? What are they interested in? What are the concerns they have?

It's about listening. In the Hypersocial Organisation, Gossieaux and Moran gave countless examples of corporations listening first to their target market before engaging successfully versus those who embarked on a social media strategy that was quickly seen as a marketing push.

Demonstrating that you care, understand, empathise and share similar values to your target market are critical factors in successfully engaging them to use your services.

It has to be genuine else it is easily seen through.

So the answer to the question posed?

Businesses in financial planning that have successfully used social media have:

- listened to what their clients and people like their clients want

- they have created original content based on those insights

- they have communicated that content via blogging and micro blogging

- they have engaged their followers via Facebook - appropriately separated from their personal page - and twitter

- they follow people who can add value to thier target market and to their own business

- they have engaged their followers by doing what social media is designed for : communicating and engaging

- they then have offered face to face group engagements on the topics that generate a buzz

- they have attracted friends of followers

- they are consequently seen as leaders, opinion leaders, subject matter experts....someone who can be trusted ......

- they collaborate and contribute


And by doing this they have built loyalty and their business.