Like, Tweet, Share: How Financial Advisors Can Get the Most Out of Social Media By Amy McIlwain, author of The Social Advisor: Social Media Secrets for the Financial Industry
Like, Tweet, Share: How Financial Advisors Can Get the Most Out of Social Media Copyright 2014 by Horsesmouth, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, faxing, e-mailing, posting online or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission by the Publisher. Unauthorized use, reproduction or distribution of the material contained in this report is a violation of federal law and punishable by civil and criminal penalty. Multiple copies of Horsesmouth reports may be purchased for business or promotional use for special sales. For information, contact: Horsesmouth, LLC. 1.888.336.6884 (Outside the US: 1-212-343-8760) Reports@horsesmouth.com 21 West 38 th Street New York, NY 10018 Edition 1.0
Editor's Note: Social media is growing in popularity among financial advisors but many still have questions on how to properly use different networks and worry about compliance issues. But social media can be a great way to grow and improve your business if used correctly. Amy McIlwain is an author, speaker and president at Financial Social Media. She speaks around the world to audiences from as large as 1,000 to small executive board rooms. She's appeared on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC as a social media expert. Amy has also written a book, specifically for financial advisors called The Social Advisor: Social Media Secrets for the Financial Industry. Her book is a best seller in the Amazon business category. Amy began her career in digital media 15 years ago selling advertising for a B2B magazine that focused particularly on financial advisors. In 2010, Amy launched Financial Social Media, a fullservice digital marketing agency that focuses on the financial and insurance space. To learn more you can visit her website, www.financialsocialmedia.com or call (800) 837-6330. 2
Compliance Challenges and Social Media One of the biggest challenges financial advisors have with social media is compliance. Being in a highly regulated industry, the advertising rules and regulations are a bit sensitive when it comes to social media. But that does not mean you can't embrace it. FINRA and the SEC have both laid out guidelines to help companies with their social media usage. Both FINRA and the SEC are following a very similar guideline and template for advising on social media use by advisors. They break content into two different types: static content and interactive content. Static content is treated the same as advertisements and need to be pre-approved by compliance before posting. Examples of static content are your LinkedIn profile, background images on Twitter and Facebook, and images on your LinkedIn business page. Interactive content is the conversation and communication you have over social media. For example, the conversations that are taking place online, your status updates, tweets the things that are constantly evolving and moving. This type of content does not require pre-approval. However, it does require archiving and a post-review so it is important to make sure that you're maintaining records of your interactive content. There is software out there that can do this for you, just the same as it will archive your email. Many larger firms have this software already in place for advisors to use. While FINRA and the SEC have given some great guidelines and regulations, every brokerdealer or compliance department may have their own interpretation of static and interactive and what does require preapproval versus post-review. It is important to talk with your compliance to make sure that you understand their rules when it comes to social media. Listening First Another challenge advisors are facing is not feeling comfortable navigating social media platforms and joining in conversations. Many feel as though they do not have the knowledge level of social media and technology needed to participate. I encourage advisors to start by listening. Social media is really just a conversation. There's a talking and listening aspect. The first step is to start an account. It doesn't have to be in your company name keep it a personal account. You don't even have to change the image yet but go in and start following others. Start listening to how your competitors and prospects are using it. You can get a feel of each platform by just listening and following initially. It is a great way to overcome the learning barrier. 3
Finding the Time The last key barrier that I hear a lot is, "I don't have time for this. I'm a financial advisor. I need to be meeting with clients if I'm making money." There are a lot of tools and resources available to help streamline your social media. You shouldn't be out there throwing darts in the dark. You need to put together a social media strategy. This isn't something you should just implement to the intern or the new hire because they are younger and they know how to get the stuff done technically. They don't know your brand or business well enough yet. This is your business's footprint online. More people are going to see you online than ever set foot in your door. If you are handing it off to someone younger to implement, make sure your strategy is being done from the top down. Once you have a strategy in place, you should put together content calendars and planning documents. There are social media management tools, like Hootsuite and Self Social, where you can plug in your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and schedule posts in advance. It allows you to post to multiple networks from a single click and effectively manage your social media presence. You can also use an agency like Financial Social Media. We are the outsource digital marketing arm for our clients. We meet with them to understand their brand. We build the content calendar, write blog posts, create the content and status updates in their voice. Then post those and share the analytics. This can also help overcome that time barrier. LinkedIn for Advisors LinkedIn is one of the main channels we're finding advisors comfortable with adopting. It is known as the business network that comes with social media. But you need to look beyond the resume aspect. When used correctly, LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in positioning yourself as an expert and in attracting prospects. With LinkedIn, there are various things you need to take into consideration. Some advisors will come to me and say, "Amy, I've had LinkedIn for a while, but it's just not doing anything for me." I stress that LinkedIn is like going to a trade show. You need to participate and get in the conversation. You should be joining groups, sharing links, and commenting on photos. It is important to be active and visible within this online community. It all starts with your profile. If LinkedIn is a giant tradeshow where people are out there networking, your booth is going to be your profile. You need to make sure that you have an attractive booth that people are going to want to visit and that it tells your story. You don't want to be the booth in the corner that is just a white table cloth and nametag. No one is going to come and talk to that guy. 4
You want to have a fully optimized profile. First, you want to make sure you have a professional headshot as your photo that is consistent with the headshot on your website, Facebook, and Twitter. You want to have the same digital presence across all of your networks. You should also fill out your headline. This is more than just a place to say, "President at XYZ Financial." Use this space to talk about what you do with descriptive key words. Before you do this you should brainstorm key words that people are going to be searching for when they are looking for your business. Maybe it's advanced wealth planning or retirement specialist. After you brainstorm these key buzzwords, you should use them throughout your profile to help with your profile optimization so that your profile shows up higher in a search for those specific keywords. Next, make sure your contact information is complete. Fill out your email address, your work phone number, and your website. There are three spaces for your website and you should take full advantage of this. Don't simply say, "Visit my website." Customize that copy to say, "Download our industrial awareness guide," with a link to your download, or, "Like us on Facebook," with a link to your Facebook page, or "Visit our website." Use those action items to really drive traffic. Moving on to your summary, this should be written in the first person so it has that personal element. Use this space to tell your story and what you are passionate about. Explain why you got into the business and what you love about what you do. Use a second paragraph to talk specifically about what you do at your company and what your company does to help clients. Then you move down into the various jobs and job descriptions which you want to fill out as much as possible. You should be using those key buzzwords again in this section. The skills section is next and this gets tricky with compliance. Recently, the SEC came out with guidelines to help clarify skills you can list on LinkedIn. You are allowed to have skills listed and endorsed as long as they do not relate to your ability to manage money. For example, you can post skills like public speaking and good customer service but not investments. There are also ways to set up your skills so only certain skills are visible but this is an area that you want to check with your compliance department on because it is a newer regulation. The SEC has recently clarified the rules on recommendations posted on social media. On LinkedIn, you are not allowed to have recommendations because you can control whether or not they are visible. Because you have that ability to selectively choose recommendations you are not allowed to use any because they do not want you only showing the positive ones. The SEC does allow advisors to have reviews on third-party review sites such as Google+, Yelp, Angie's List and Facebook. On these sites you can't control which reviews are posted so recommendations and reviews on third-party sites are allowed. 5
You can send people to those sites, too. For example, you can say, "Check out what people are saying about us on Yelp." The key is, however, you can't just send them to a single positive review. You have to send them to all of the reviews. LinkedIn is especially great for financial advisors because you can see whenever anybody is changing jobs. We know that when people change jobs, there is often a 401k that needs to be addressed. This can be a great heads up for advisors to see when a client or a connection may need your help. Another smart way for advisors to use LinkedIn is for introductions. Before your meet with a client, make sure you are connected on LinkedIn. Then go in and see who your client is connected with and see what other people you may be interested in meeting. Then you can ask for an introduction. One of our clients has doubled his referrals in the last six months just through that basic tactic. Advisors on Facebook I've found that advisors either love or hate Facebook. Some think that it is too personal while others really love using it. First, you need to understand that there are two different types of Facebook accounts: your personal profile and your business fan page. Let's think of Facebook like a giant shopping mall that has over a billion people. You clients, prospects, and competitors are there. And you need to have a presence as well. All of these people in this shopping mall are represented by profiles, so that is your individual profile. Your business cannot have a profile, so your business's presence is your Facebook fan page. That is your store in the giant shopping mall of Facebook. When you create your Facebook fan page you do it through your personal account. There needs to be a person that manages the store, but they are two very different things. Just because you use your personal account to create your Facebook fan page does not mean that your personal account will be open for people to see. Your fan page is the place where you can get people to like and interact with your content. You can share valuable information like blog posts and articles. You can also make it a little personal with photos or by talking about things happening in the office. This can help you build a relationship with your fans. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. So take this as an opportunity to stay top of mind for when those money-in-motion events are occurring. One of our clients got a $4 million client off of Facebook. Someone had been following him on Facebook and noticed a post from this advisor. It prompted him to reach out in regards to managing some of his money. That resulted in a $1.4 million account. 6
Facebook advertising is also a great tool for advisors. We've really seen a shift recently from organic traffic to the need for paid search traffic with Facebook. The level of detail you can go into with who you're strategically targeting on Facebook is incredible. For example, one of our clients noticed that a company put a public announcement that they were offering a pension buyout for 20,000 of their employees. This advisor wanted to advertise on Facebook to people who specifically worked at this company and were nearing retirement. We created a whole campaign saying, "Do you work for XYZ Company, and did you receive a lump-sum buyout offer? Learn if this is the best option for you. Click here." And we drove traffic to a landing page on his website. From this, he's been able to generate over 60 phone calls and nine hundred visitors to his website. He has 25 qualified prospects so far and it only cost him about $400.00. It is important to note that advertising like this needs to go through your compliance department for pre-approval. Twitter Twitter is the social media platform that I get the most pushback from with advisors, but when used correctly is can be an incredible tool for gathering insight, information, and driving traffic to your website. We're seeing more and more advisors slowly creeping onto Twitter. They are starting by listening and have realized this is not a platform they can ignore. The advisors that are really successful are using Twitter as an opportunity to position themselves as experts. They're reaching out to the media through Twitter. They are getting on their radar so they're considered a source. So when a journalist from the Wall Street Journal is looking for a financial advisor, they will be top of mind. They are also using it to find clients and follow CEOs and companies. That way, when they reach out via phone, it's not a cold call. They're already familiar with the brand and the name. Other Networks Advisors are getting on more and more social platforms. I've seen advisors on Pinterest creating Pinterest boards. 80% of women are on Pinterest so you can create a board on recipes or beach houses and then have another board on advising for women. You create a lifestyle board that interests your audience and then weave in your financial board. I'm also seeing advisors on Instagram. They have created company Instagram accounts to share photos from around the office or photos from client events. Then there is Google+. Personally, I was sluggish to get on board with Google+ because I didn t truly see it as a social network. What I have come to realize is that it's not really a social network but it is an incredible place for search engine optimization. Sharing things on Google+ will help you show up higher in Google' search ranking. 7
Creating Content One of the biggest things with any social media is content. It is all about content marketing and creating the content to share is the biggest piece of heavy lifting. Once you create the content, it doesn't take much more time to share it on Facebook or Twitter. If you are spending five hours a week working on one social media platform, adding another will only add another hour. Don't Feel Overwhelmed While social media may seem overwhelming, you just have to start small. Start by picking one network and follow businesses, competitors, mutual fund companies, your broker-dealer, and others of interest to you. Follow and see what others in the industry are doing. Then, when you feel comfortable, start sharing and communicating on that network. You can continue to build onward, or reach out to a firm like ours. We have a full social media start up package and can help you set up and optimize all your networks. We can write the copy and be your shortcut. A firm like ours can help you feel comfortable in taking the first step in social media and training you to eventually take it in-house. Remember, It's a Conversation One of the biggest mistakes advisors make when it comes to social media is trying to take traditional marketing techniques and apply them to social media. Traditional marketing is very one direction but social media is a conversation. You need to listen first and talk second. Don t just push out messages. You have to engage, interact, share and educate. Think of social media as a giant cocktail party. Who are the people you remember at the end of the night? You remember the people that had interesting stories and the people that listened to you. No one wants to follow up with the guy who walks around all night talking about how great he is. Don't be that guy online. Adapting to the Technology I know a lot of advisors don t think they need social media but I want you to take a look at technology. Email only became mainstream among small businesses in the mid to late '90s. Where would your business be today if you hadn't adapted to email? Communication is shifting twice as fast. Think if how quickly everyone had an ipad after it came out. The adoption rate was a lot higher than anyone had anticipated. That's what is happening with technology and social media. If you are not on these social networks, it is like not having an email address today. Unless you plan on shutting your doors in the next five years, it is time to get on board with this or your competitors are going to start taking your market share. 8