By now, social media has been around long enough for people to know what works and what doesn’t. As a critical part of any business’s marketing plan, acing your social media strategy can help you achieve major results. Whether you are just starting out or need a little refresh, you need an update on how to best run your profiles in order to get leads, earn website traffic, and increase awareness of your brand! What you’re looking for is a way to ensure your social media success.
Many financial advisors were initially skeptical of adopting social media as part of their digital marketing strategy but the results are now speaking for themselves. Now that you know it works, you’ll want to make sure you’re fine-tuning your skills and being efficient when it comes to planning and preparing. To help you out, we’ve put together our top four “S’s” to help you lead a successful social media strategy!
The 4 S’s to Social Media Success
In this everchanging work of social media marketing, it’s pertinent that your strategy has what it takes. Ensure the success of your plan with the goal tips below.
1. Set Goals for Social Media Success
Any good marketing plan starts by establishing goals. If you know the results you’re looking for, it’s much easier to set a plan. Your goals can help inspire your target audience, the sources you use, the posts you put out, etc. You can use social media analytics to track progress. Data about the popularity of certain posts, followers, and engagement can all be indicators of what is working and what isn’t. Keep a log to see how far you’ve gone and help you make any changes that may be necessary.
Also, make sure you’re evaluating your goals often. They may change or need to be updated depending on company growth, new services offered, or a change of location. Perhaps one of your social media goals falls into one (or more) of the following categories:
- Increase brand awareness
- Drive traffic to your website
- Generate new leads
- Grow revenue
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate more press mentions
- Research and learn more about your ideal client
Most social media platforms make it easy to track any of these metrics, so there’s no excuse to fall short. Start today and see how far you can go!
2. Setup Profiles for Social Media Success
Setting up your social profiles is the first step you’ll take and it’s very important that you do it well. First of all, you’ll want to make sure all of your information is filled out on your social profiles. This means adding your firm’s location, contact information, a link to your website, and a brief description of your company and services. This ensures that potential clients can find everything about your business in one place. You also need to make sure that this information matches across all of your profiles for optimal SEO performance. Not only that but people will get frustrated if they encounter inconsistent information. It also helps show your attention to detail and transparency, which are paramount characteristics in the financial industry.
Your social media profiles are helping you build a brand so you also need to make sure the messaging and design elements are the same across all profiles. This includes your company name, logo, pictures, color palette, and profile photo. When clients encounter consistent imagery and branding, it helps build stronger brand recognition in their minds.
Kelly Financial Planning has a strong Facebook profile with its logo for the main image, and its cover photo shows actual team members, not generic stock photos, and utilizes their brand colors.
3. Strategize for Social Media Success
Strategizing your social media channels doesn’t have to be rocket science. There are plenty of resources out there to research and learn from. It’s important to have a game plan to ensure your social media efforts are maximized. Creating your social media strategy combines many different elements but here are some tips to keep in mind:
- Know your target audience: Identify where your target audience is spending time. That way, you can have a strong presence there and get your brand in front of them more often. Sprout Social reports that the biggest Facebook users are women (89%), 18-29-year-olds (88%), and those earning less than $30,000 while LinkedIn’s biggest users are men (31%), those earning $75,000 or more (45%) and users with college experience (50%).
- Engage and be present: This means putting out consistent content, liking and commenting on other posts, and tagging other influencers. By publishing more content, you’ll be earning more time in front of users and they’ll be more likely to gain attention. You can also build your brand by tagging industry leaders and sharing or commenting on your posts. If they mention you or share your content, that is another great way to get noticed.
- Track your metrics: Take advantage of the tools offered by social media business pages! You can track profile visitors, new followers, likes, etc. This will all help you get a better picture of how your posts are performing so you can make any necessary adjustments.
4. Schedule
Scheduling posts is the key to keeping organized and ensuring you’re getting the “best bang for your buck.” It will help you consistently post, which is another key factor to being successful on any social media platform. One thing to note is that each platform has its own best time to schedule when users are more active. Check out this post on the Best Times to Post on Social Media to see which posting times work best on each platform.
For example, on Facebook, the best time to post is Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Scheduling services like Hootsuite make it easier to keep on track and will set you up with a great way to stay organized. With services like this, you’ll be able to load content once or twice a week and have it sent out automatically. Instead of having to remember to post, it’ll be ready when you schedule it. This is a great tool for any advisor who constantly finds themselves busy but still wants to maintain their social media presence.
Struggling With Social Media?
