麻豆传媒

5 essential tactics to build your social media brand

HubSpot, a company well-known for their digital marketing expertise, surveyed over 1,500 social media marketers in January 2024 to find out what they鈥檙e doing and what strategies are working. Three activities stood out as priorities.¹

1. Creating engaging, authentic content 
2. Incorporating video in their social media marketing
3. Connecting with their customers in the right channels

Is the investment worth it?

You may wonder if investing in social media marketing is worth it for you. According to Financial Advisor, having an engaging social presence is one of the basics for financial professionals who want to build brand awareness and gain new clients.² Since it鈥檚 free to post on your social media accounts, the real question is do you have the time to invest?

53%

of people research financial products and services on social media.³

Given that 24 percent of people use social media exclusively or almost entirely to search online,⁴ including social media in your marketing plan may be worth the time.

Unique considerations for financial professionals

Keep in mind that you face unique compliance and regulatory constraints when using social platforms to post content and communicate with prospects. Having a clearly defined social media strategy can help ease the compliance process and lead to better engagement with the right prospects. 

Here are a few tips from today鈥檚 social marketing experts to help capture your audience鈥檚 attention, grow your client base and drive business.

1. Establish your brand on social media

Whether you鈥檙e building your personal LinkedIn profile or business pages, maintaining consistency across all online spaces helps boost your credibility among clients searching online to learn more about you. These tips can be used to begin:

• Complete your profile summary or About section
• Use the same branding or imagery across your social platforms
• Include standard details like office hours, phone numbers, etc.
• Make sure these details are consistent across your social platforms and online spaces, including Google My Business, Facebook, LinkedIn and your personal website.

2. Optimize your messaging

After establishing your pages and online presence across multiple platforms, developing a plan for sharing messaging can feel overwhelming. Begin by thinking through what sources you may be able to use for curating sharable content and how much time you have to create your content. Publishing the same content on every social media platform can be efficient but remember to optimize the content for each platform to help boost your reach and engagement. Start with the same content and edit your posts so they鈥檙e tailored for each platform. If you鈥檙e a beginner, starting with text-based posts or resharing article content from publishers or carriers might be best versus a more advanced approach like creating videos. 

Here are a few content ideas to help you post on different platforms:

• Blog posts can work well on Facebook.
• Quotes from those blog posts may be better for Instagram.
• Thought leadership or company news is suited to LinkedIn.
• Videos can work well on multiple platforms, but plan for viewers to watch them on a mobile device and include subtitles in case they鈥檙e scrolling without sound.

3. Share your people

• Sharing your company news is important, but thought leadership from your colleagues with expertise can help drive more engagement, discussion and reaction, adding the social element to your social media marketing. Putting their perspectives front and center can also help add value to your brand. If you aren鈥檛 sure how to start, these ideas may help:
  • Quote your own in-house colleagues as sources.
  • Ask your firm鈥檚 professionals with expertise on specific topics to author their own posts. 
  • Is there a colleague in your firm serving a special niche market? Post a special feature (or periodic special features) from that person.
• Balancing your content mix can help drive engagement, foster trust and keep your posts centered on your audience. The 4-1-1 rule can help. The principle is for every six posts you make, make four of them from other sources, one from your business and one promoting your services. Sharing content from your organization鈥檚 professionals with expertise on specific topics is a natural way to use this strategy.
• Before other financial professionals share their opinions and points of view, establish a vetting process before posts go live. This allows you to make sure their writing aligns with your company standards, vision and brand, as well as meets compliance standards and advertising regulations.

4. Post the right content at the right time on the right channel

Relevance - Content marketing experts say high-quality content can help drive more traffic to your website, whereas high-volume, but low-quality, content generally does not.

Frequency 鈥� Instead of overloading your audience with quantity, focus on posting fewer well-crafted pieces of useful, timely content. 

Time 鈥� In looking at the data, the best times to post can vary depending on the social platform. These are the sweet spots according to current social media trends¹:

Channel 鈥� It doesn鈥檛 matter what you post if your audience won鈥檛 see it. Marketing on the social platforms where your audience spends time can help maximize your social media marketing effectiveness. From baby boomers to Gen Z, the top three platforms they use to research financial services³ are:

5. Engage consistently to connect and build relationships with your followers

Consistency is key. Posting regularly can get 40 percent more traffic than sporadic posts, according to experts.⁶ The reason? Across each social platform, engagement and building relationships carries weight. On many platforms, engaging with your audience and making connections is equally as important as sharing content. Showing up on a regular basis with authentic, relatable content and comments on content from your connections helps create opportunities to start conversations with your followers, and engaging with them helps build those relationships.

Three steps you can take today

1. Google yourself to see how findable you are online.
2. Set up your business pages or personal profile.
3. Set aside 15 minutes a day to engage from your page or profile, share content or start conversations in the comment section.

Insights on 麻豆传媒 Connect. Tips, tools and resources to grow your business by helping clients retire with confidence.

¹ 鈥滸lobal Social Media Trends Report,鈥� HubSpot and Mention, 2024.
² 鈥�5 Top Lead-Generation Strategies for 2024,鈥� Financial Advisor, March 1, 2024.
³ 鈥漇uccessful Financial Professionals Use a Multi-Pronged Approach to Expand Client Base,鈥� LIMRA, April 4, 2023.
⁴ 鈥滻s Social Media The New Google? Gen Z Turn To Google 25% Less Than Gen X When Searching,鈥� Forbes Advisor, May 31, 2024.
⁵ 鈥�13 Ways to Boost the Impact of Your LinkedIn Page the Rest of 2024,鈥� LinkedIn, August 9, 2024.
⁶ 鈥滳ontent Quality vs. Quantity: The Content Marketing Question for 2024,鈥� Aspiration Marketing, Updated August 8, 2024.