Rather than spending thousands of dollars on marketing a website, financial advisors may want to consider developing their presence on Facebook, suggests an expert digital marketing strategist.

“Social networks are changing the way people search for businesses online, and connecting with clients over Facebook may be a lower cost, more efficient way to build a brand image,” said Tod Maffin author of Understanding the Facebook Generation in a keynote speech he delivered on cultivating brand loyalty in the digital economy at the Independent Financial Brokers’ Toronto Spring Summit, held in Mississauga, Ont. on Tuesday.

With 800 million active users, Facebook is the largest social networking website. It’s also where advisors are most likely able to connect with their clients and use those connections to reach out to their clients’ personal networks. For example, if a client has 500 “friends” or contacts on Facebook, interactions between an advisor and that client could lead to an advisor’s business being seen by all those connections via the “News Feed” — an area in which clients receive news or “status updates” on announcements, photos that their “friends” have made to their profile pages.

To begin reaching out to clients on Facebook, Maffin recommends that advisors set up a “page” for their business as opposed to a personal profile. A page on Facebook is different from a profile in that it represents a person or business as an organization and it is completely open to the public, whereas personal profiles are not. In addition, a business has a “Like” button associated with it, where people viewing the page have the option to like or dislike it.

According to Maffin’s analysis of Facebook’s EdgeRank tool — the algorithm Facebook uses to govern what news or status updates appear at the top of a client’s news feed — status updates by an organization a client has clicked the “Like” button on don’t always show up on top of the page. In fact, they only make it there 15% of the time.

“Regular status updates that are straightforward information updates on an organization or business is what Facebook filters out the most,” says Maffin.

The key to having a “status update” appear at the top of a client’s news feed is creating a news item that a client can physically respond to — either by clicking the “Like” button attached to that news item or commenting on the item directly.

When clients like or comment on a news item, that action appears in all of their friends’ news feeds, and most likely near the top since news items from “friends” are what Facebook prioritizes ahead of status updates from “Pages.”

Maffin offers three tips for creating “status updates” that drive clients to action:

1. Ask a question. By asking a question about a financial topic on Facebook, a post is much more likely to go viral. For example, a post could read as follows: “Click on ‘Like’ if you agree that critical illness coverage adds to a client’s quality of life, or comment if you disagree.”

2. Include a personal photo. EdgeRank appears to favour photos, said Maffin. Not only does a photo have more potential to go viral and be shared among many clients and friends of those clients, it can help an advisor build an online persona.

3. Create a public poll. “Whenever someone votes on a poll, your brand appears in their news feed,” said Maffin. The poll then has the potential to become viral, as every time a client responds to the poll, it then shows up in his or her news feed.

For more information on engaging clients through social media, visit Maffin’s website, http://bit.ly/ifbcgetinfo.