Creating an original, interesting online personality can help you set yourself apart from other financial advisors. One way to enhance that identity is to publish compelling content through social media.
“You can position yourself as an expert in a particular area,” says Shannon Sloan, director of new business development at Rich Media in Toronto, “or, at the very least, a commentator.”
Sloan recommends following these four rules when sharing information on social media:
1. Use a mobile-friendly platform
Make sure that the content you create is easily legible on tablets and phones, Sloan says.
“There is an interesting amount of research out there showing that some people are engaging on their phones first thing in the morning, on their desktops all day and on their tablets in the evening,” Sloan says. So, it is very likely that your clients and prospects will be viewing content on various devices.
If you don’t have the resources to make your entire website mobile friendly, you can at least make your blog page compatible.
2. Choose the right social-media channels
Figure out how much social-media activity you have the resources to maintain (especially in terms of person-hours) and choose your social-media channels accordingly.
“It’s better not to head out there with lots of gusto across six or seven channels,” Sloan says, “and then not be able to maintain three or four of them.”
Look to your client base when deciding which platforms to focus on, and then create a schedule so you’ll post consistently. For example, you might create a goal to post one article per week, and tweet on your Twitter platform twice a day.
3. Create a reserve of content
Plan your content well in advance so you can keep up with your posting schedule no matter how swamped you may be with other work.
“Once you have articles, quotes, and a couple of images in the can,” Sloan says, “in a very busy week when you just don’t have time to create anything new, you can reach back and take something from your repository and push that live into the social world.”
4. Monitor your results
The last piece of the social-media puzzle is monitoring your social channels and analytics.
“Pay attention to what’s getting retweeted, which articles are getting read and which Facebook posts are shared,” Sloan says. “From our perspective, it’s basically like having real-time focus groups.”
For example, if you publish a post on asset allocation and another one on bike safety, monitor your analytics so you can see which type of content resonates the most with your audience. “You can guide your content from there,” Sloan says. “So, it’s really important to pay attention to those analytics and those statistics.”
This is the second part in a two-part series on sharing content on social media.