How Financial Advisors Can Use Social Media to Build a Brand

Most advisors know they should be using social media, but running a successful advisory business requires dealing with a lot of moving parts. When you’re handling a client crisis or slogging through the daily routine that comes with managing a team of financial professionals, it can be easy to let something like posting on Twitter fall by the wayside. After all, isn’t social media just a distraction from your actual work?

That might have been true 10 years ago, but times have changed. In today’s world, social media is more important than ever. Any marketing professional will tell you that employing a comprehensive social media strategy can help your practice connect with prospective clients and team members, engage with the media, showcase and strengthen your internal company culture and build your brand through thought leadership initiatives. Brands that understand how to engage their audience on these platforms can see significant benefit for minimal effort.

So, how can you get started with social media? The first step is to educate yourself on which platforms matter for your business and what kind of content to post on each.

Facebook

Having a presence on Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, can help advisors connect with their current clients and engage in targeted advertising to help find new ones. While the platform’s popularity has waned for younger generations, baby boomers are a dime a dozen on Facebook. Older, financially stable people are more likely than younger people to actively seek the help of a financial advisor. So, creating a Facebook page for your practice is a smart way to get your business in front of prospective clients.

Since many people use Facebook to access news and interesting information, posts that do well are typically links to click-worthy articles, infographics and interesting and eye-catching videos.

You can also use Facebook as a way to build your brand’s reputation as a thought leader in your space. If you have a company blog, post a link to every new article on Facebook. This strategy will not only drive more traffic to your website, but it will also provide you with insights about the topics your audience cares about most. It’s as easy as identifying which posts get the most clicks, likes, comments and shares.

Twitter

Twitter has evolved significantly from its humble — and somewhat silly — origins into a platform where world leaders spar and brands are built and broken. For advisors, it can be a powerful tool that fosters engagement with industry leaders and helps them keep up with real-time trends in their market.
What should you post on Twitter? Industry news, updates on employee wins and new hires, press mentions, blog posts, infographics and whitepapers are all good options, but the real magic of Twitter is utilizing hashtags to flag your content to the people who are interested in what you’re talking about. Keep an eye on the trending topics of the day, and try to craft content that relates to what your followers are talking about. Make sure to spend time liking and retweeting relevant posts from people and brands in your orbit, and try to include a visual component in your tweets, as people are more likely to engage with visual content than words alone.

LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn, exactly? A place to post the long-form version of your résumé that can’t fit onto one page? A way to hobnob with the movers and shakers in your industry? A good recruiting tool? The answer is all of the above. LinkedIn is a professional social network that can help brands connect with potential employees and stand out in their space.
Having a company page is important, but just as important is building a personal brand on LinkedIn and connecting with people you meet in real time. You can think of LinkedIn as a digital business card holder, a place to collect and store people who may come in handy in the future.
LinkedIn’s algorithm favors longer-form content, making it a good place to put thought-provoking musings on company culture from leaders in your practice. Other practical things to post on LinkedIn include pictures with inspirational, business-related quotes, links to press releases, blog posts on industry topics and, of course, job listings! According to LinkedIn data, more than 75% of people who recently changed jobs used LinkedIn to inform their career decisions. In addition, as Laura Virili explained in her presentation at the 2019 Hightower Advisor Summit, the premium version of LinkedIn can help advisors locate both prospective employees and prospective clients.

Instagram

This Facebook-owned photo and video-sharing app is all the rage with younger users, so it may seem like an odd place for financial advisors to have an active presence. But for advisory practices that are looking to attract a younger crop of clientele, showcase a well-crafted company aesthetic and engage a new generation of advisors, it can be a breath of fresh air.
Instagram is a great place to create a narrative around what kind of company you are, and you can really get creative. For example, you can show off the office you spent months meticulously designing or the events you spent months meticulously planning. On Instagram, you have an opportunity to present an idealized version of your practice and build a following of people who appreciate what you’ve made.

To learn about how Hightower can help advisors with social media, email advisorsuccess@hightoweradvisors.com.