A great Facebook strategy starts with a great Facebook page. Setting a strong foundation is a necessity if you want to build a community and share updates that engage. Too often, financial advisors make their page with little regard to how it looks, or the experience it provides for a prospect.
Why should you care about what this page looks like? After all, you’ve got a great website and great posts on the feed. If a potential new client visits, they are going to scrutinize your Facebook page to the same degree that they’ll look at your website. They want to see that you are professional, pay attention to detail, and are consistent about who you are as a brand.
It’s time to take a hard look at your Facebook page and give it the upgrade it deserves. Most likely, your page will need to be approved by compliance, so take the time to build it right the first time. That way you can “set it and forget it.” Follow this guide to build a page that impresses.
Business vs Personal Pages
If you haven’t done so already, we highly recommend setting up a business page for your financial advisory. While you can (and should!) use your personal page to promote your business, you should direct customers to a business page. Business pages allow for more followers, enable advertising opportunities, and offer formatting and contact information that you need as a business. In this day and age, customers have come to expect business pages for whoever they’re working with.
Optimize Profile & Cover Images
These images create the first impression of your brand on Facebook. They need to be high-quality, visually interesting, and representative of your brand. Make sure whatever image you use mimics the branding and imagery on your website for a consistent experience.
Your profile picture could be your logo, or your headshot if you’re the sole advisor at your firm. (Though, if you’re working on succession planning, this might not be a great choice). Make sure the image doesn’t get cut off in the circle-shaped frame. Remember that the image will show up fairly small on Facebook, so avoid anything too text-heavy that would be hard to read.
Your cover image is a great place to show off the branding and personality of your advisory. Consider a photo of your team, a landscape image of your community, or a photo of your office. Again this image should be high-quality – make sure it’s not blurry. Once you add it, take a look at your page on different devices (computer, mobile, etc.) and make sure nothing important is cut off. Cover images are fun to change seasonally, or for an upcoming event that you want to highlight.
Create a Strong About Section
A business page includes a number of fields to provide info for prospects and clients. This includes:
- Contact information
- Mission statement
- Company overview
- About
- Awards
- Products
You’ll want to take your time to write these sections. Make sure they are accurate, grammatically correct, and speak to who you are as a brand and what you provide. Fill in as many of the categories as possible.
Keep Your Page Updated
If a prospect hears about your business, goes to your Facebook page, and notices you haven’t posted in a few months (or even years!), they may lose interest. An abandoned Facebook page gives the impression that you don’t care about the latest technology, your community, or staying engaged with clients.
A strong financial advisory Facebook page is updated regularly. At the very least, you should post weekly. This can be a mix of posts, including:
- News about your advisory
- Links to your email newsletter
- Sharing blogs from your site
- Sharing blogs from third-party sites
- News and announcements about your community
- Promoting client events
- Images and videos showing off your team or office
And we could go on! As an FMG Suite subscriber, you have access to our Social Foundations tool, which provides you with ready-to-go social posts to schedule to your pages. Supplement those posts with some custom updates and your Facebook page will shine.
Stay Engaged
It’s important you log on to your Facebook page a few times a week to monitor any messages or comments. For one, Facebook will show visitors a page’s “response time”. If a prospect can see that you never respond to Facebook messages, they may be turned off. Second, unanswered comments on Facebook posts may make it seem like you’re just posting to post, not to actually interact with your followers. Make sure you are staying engaged with your audience and responding to all comments that come through, either publicly on a post, or to your Inbox.
Consider Advertising
Unfortunately, Facebook has become a bit of a “pay-to-play” platform. Just to reach all of your followers you’ll likely need to put some money behind it and boost a post. While this may seem frustrating, Facebook actually has an extremely robust advertising platform that can help you reach new clients and grow your network.
Boosting a post is a good idea because it will show your update to more people. The more people who see it, the more likely you’ll get likes or comments. Then, when someone visits your page, they’ll see that the community is engaging with your posts. This provides strong social proof that your business is reputable and active in the marketplace.
Now that you know how to build a Facebook page that puts your best foot forward, you can start posting and growing your audience. If you’re looking for more guidance about Facebook, this broadcast provides a great step by step guide.
