Social Media for Advisors without Followers

This article first appeared in Advisor Perspectives on December 8th, 2020, and can be found here. 

Building your brand, positioning yourself as a thought-leader and cultivating an engaged audience is crucial to growing your advisory business in 2021 and beyond.

Get real about your social media presence.

I want to set the record straight – the amount of followers you have on social media has nothing to do with your reach.

Repeat after me:

The number of followers I have is not a reflection of how likely I am to attract prospects from social media marketing.

The number one thing stopping advisors from growing their businesses on social media is the lack of a strategy, not a lack of followers. Social media performance is not the same as website conversions. It's how advisors post to social media that makes the difference. This is why simply posting on social media isn’t enough.

A successful social media presence shares several distinct features, allowing any advisor to enhance their social media footprint, even if they don’t have many followers. Let’s run through how to use social media to grow your advisory business:

1. Share the right content

Many advisors will choose their most successful blog post and expect it to perform just as well on social media. But content on your website is not the same as the most successful content shared on social. Each fulfills a different purpose and targets a different chapter of the buyer’s journey.

A blog on your website is there to drive conversions and capture leads. It tells visitors why they should choose to work with you and helps them find you through search engines like Google.

A post on social media is there to drive awareness. It is personal, entertaining, humorous and catches the attention of your niche audience.

The key is to provide the correct framing for a post to assure that the chosen content is engaged. Consider this example from Thomas Kopelman. The post on the right provides the reader with more context, showing what they should expect from clicking the blog link. This connects the social post to the content by demonstrating the tangible value of following the link.

2. Tailor posts to attract attention

Attracting a reader’s attention on social media requires entertaining features that relate to the user and draw the eye. Here are a few tricks to help users take notice of your posts:

• Every post should include an image to help catch the eye and provide extra context. The content of the image is up to you, though recent data has shown that different types of images can impact performance depending on the brand. Just make sure that the image isn’t overloaded, too much color or text can be distracting instead of attention-grabbing.

• Emojis add variety to text and make a post feel more personal. They have the unique benefit of drawing attention to specific areas of your text. Calls to action, special offers and announcements can be highlighted using emojis. Make sure not to use too many emojis and that they are appropriate for your message and target audience.

• If you’ve been reading my articles in Advisor Perspectives, you know I’m bullish on video. Videos provides information without overwhelming a reader and overloading the post. GIFs provide a similar opportunity and are typically used for humor.
• Tell a story. If you can reframe your message to give context through a narrative then do so. Stories are entertaining and personal, humorous and educational.

3. Expand audience reach

Your audience most likely follows other people and interests on social media. Depending on your content, you can mention and tag people and use hashtags to call attention to subjects, attracting the attention of your niche audience.

Doing so increases how often your content appears in your audience’s feed and allows it to appear in other categories or subjects your audience might follow. This provides your posts with greater reach and can attract more attention by including a recognizable name or subject.

This example from Alexander Wealth Planning discusses finances by focusing on wine, creating a connection to discuss the two, while branching their content into other categories.

4. Always keep your goal in mind

Why do we go on social media? We don’t scroll through our feeds to solve problems or learn about the latest tax strategies. We visit our social feeds when we’re bored, needing a break or looking for entertainment.

Successful content on social media keeps this in mind while adjusting to your marketing goal. For example, if you want to attract local clients, then think about what they might do locally that is entertaining. What events are happening in your area? How can you relate these events to the subject of your content?

5. Post frequently

Posting more content increases the likelihood of user engagement. But there is a balance.

Similar to email marketing, you don’t want to spam your audience. But, you want to post enough to show you’re active, engaged and aware of the trends in the industry. Posting at least once a day is best for optimal activity. Audience members will eventually become curious when they see enough of your posts and want to discover more.

However, don’t sacrifice content or quality for quantity. If your posts don’t provide value or respect the reasons for using social media – a break, entertainment or boredom, then frequent posts can reduce social performance.

Instead of worrying about your follower count, focus on implementing these five strategies and growing your reach organically by posting the right content at the right times to the right group – this is the heart of social media success.