Social media management platforms have become critical components of every business. It’s a powerful device to reach your audiences but you need to be careful because miscommunication or misinterpretation can also damage your brand identity. Advisors need to follow these steps:
Analyze target audience –You should know your audience in order to determine in which platforms your business should be present; it is important to understand where you’re current and potential investor base gather. You need to spend some time compiling your knowledge about your clients in social media and current customers who are engaged with these platforms. You should consider asking the following questions:
- What is the demography of the audience you want to attract?
- What kind of messages will help you to engage with your audience?
- What type of content do I primarily seek to share?
Understand the significant features of each social media platform - It is important for any business professional to first understand the benefits of different social media.
- Facebook: Provides the opportunity to engage investors in a conversation and educate them with picture, video, and text. It also provides some handy tools such as “Offers” which can allow your business to grow its online engagement with customers through special deals reserved just for them. Kanak Jain of ASK Circle has used Facebook to offer financial planning services at a concessional rate on his Facebook page.
- YouTube: Is a great forum to share tutorials and videos which can provide potential customers a basic understanding of the knowledge and skill set your local business provides. This could be a recording of an investor seminar conducted by you. Alternatively you could look at shooting your own video on interesting topics and upload them on Youtube.
- Twitter: Allows you to easily update people on your business progress or events in a line. This helps you to engage with your clients through quick updates on events and developments.
- LinkedIn: It is mostly utilized by people for networking and generating referrals. LinkedIn is also a great venue to share content from your blog, YouTube, etc. It also has a function by which small businesses can portray their expertise and provide guidance in a question-answer format. This is ideally suited for IFAs
Content - Post genuine and unique content that is relevant to your business. Your clients will like it, comment on it and share it. Each time they share your content in their page, even their friends will have the opportunity to look at various new content that you upload. This will help you to reach to larger number of audience.
Build relationship and not sell online- This is a very vital rule that any business should follow, that is to use social media as a means to build relationships and not hawk your products. If your fans like you, business will follow. Carry out useful interaction relating to investment goals and strategies.
