Journal of Financial Planning: November 2015
You’ve heard social media marketing is a must. You know you need to engage potential clients in the places where they are: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the like. You understand there is value participating in the social sphere, but you haven’t quite cracked the code on how and where to invest your energy to make it pay off.
Rather than espouse theory on what could work, I want to share exactly what I do. This combination of three ways to engage has returned exponentially to me in direct clients and opportunities I could not have anticipated.
By implementing all three ways outlined here, you will know where to spend your time and gain the most leverage out of your effort:
Daily Interaction
You’ve been told to spend 10 or 15 minutes a day on social media, and you can have an impact. Although I don’t subscribe to this tactic as your only engagement, allocate time each day for commenting, sharing, and otherwise participating in the social media ecosystem. Daily interaction is almost always reactive as you respond to what others post.
For example:
- You attend an industry event and Tweet a photo, tagging others in the shot.
- You congratulate a client on a recent promotion you read about on LinkedIn.
- You comment on a post an estate planning attorney shares on her firm’s Facebook page.
- You “retweet” and “favorite” an article published by a journalist you want to meet.
- You read an article that is spot-on for your target audience and you post an update on your company LinkedIn page.
Weekly Sharing
An effective adviser marketing plan starts with weekly content creation or curation aimed specifically at the concerns and aspirations of your target client.
Whether you create a blog post, a video, or podcast, social media expands your distribution pushing your message from the limited traffic of your website out to your social followers. This often overlooked act opens up the number of people who may view, like, and share your content. Each time you upload a blog post or publish a new video, be sure to share it across all of your social media accounts.
For example:
- Sophia Bera publishes her latest blog post (www.genyplanning.com) and shares with her Twitter followers.
- Britney Castro records a new Financially Fit Women video and distributes it through YouTube. (www.financiallyfitwomen.com).
- Jeff Rose releases a new “Good Financial Cents” podcast and posts it on Facebook (facebook.com/goodfinancialcents).
Quarterly Campaigns
Proactive sharing of the story you want your target audience to hear comes alive through your quarterly content campaigns. Take a page from the advertising agency media playbook where you carve out distinct time periods across the year (quarterly works well) where you focus your content on a single theme. Plan and set it up in advance, streamlining the time you invest in the effort. Here’s how:
Select your first topic that you want to share (for example, “The 20 Financial Tasks Middle Managers Must Complete before Retirement”).
Identify all of the content you already have that fits this topic (blog posts, newsletter articles, write-ups from a financial plan, or client email excerpts).
Craft new content (think “tips”).
Pinpoint the “holes” in your campaign. Find resources, articles, photos, or other professionals who can provide the content. Fill in any remaining blanks with your advice.
Break down the content into posts for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or whichever platforms your audiences use.
Set up and schedule the content distribution in advance through Hootsuite or Buffer.
Announce the campaign at the start of each quarter to let your prospect email list, your clients, and your followers know what to expect.
The quarterly campaign is where you gain leverage in your marketing. You repurpose existing content, you have a reason to craft new content that you can reuse, and you guarantee that you will show up regularly with a message that reinforces what you want your target audience to read or see from you.
When you set up a campaign each quarter, you can rest assured that if your daily interactions fall to every few days, your weekly sharing slips to semi-monthly, you have to deal with the quarter end, or you want to take a vacation, you will have a campaign supporting you in the background.
Sounds like it’s worth the time, right?
Kristin Harad, CFP®, is a marketing trainer and conference speaker focused on teaching independent advisers how to automate and systematize marketing for better results. She offers hours of free marketing training at kristinharad.com.
Editor’s note
This article originally appeared on the FPA Practice Management blog powered by the Journal of Financial Planning, where Kristin Harad is a regular contributor. Visit PracticeManagementBlog.OneFPA.org and click on “subscribe” to receive an email each time a new blog is posted.
Learn More
For more on social media strategies, attend an on-demand rebroadcast of the September 2015 FPA webinar, “Introduction to LinkedIn for Business,”
presented by Susan Catalano, co-founder of consulting firm HireWorthy.
FPA members, log in to OneFPA.org, and click on “Virtual Learning “to access this and dozens of other on-demand learning opportunities.