Why Advisors Do Social Media Wrong (And How You Can Get it Right)
Hundreds of years ago, people had their portraits painted by an artist. They’d hang it on a wall at home in a gilded frame reserved for family and guests to feast their eyes upon. Their portraits were regal, but let’s be honest… kinda flat and cold and they only represented one moment in time.
But now when I think about a portrait, it doesn't hang on a wall. It lives online and you own it. You are the one who paints it. It's not for a handful of people to see because you invite them into your home. It's for everyone to see with a Google search, whether you want them to see it or not, whether you own that portrait with intention or not.
Your portrait grows and evolves. It's a living, breathing thing. It's this brand of you, and if you do it right, it's authentic, it creates connection and trust, and one of the most powerful places to show this portrait is on LinkedIn.
However, I read a stat that said that 99% of people in financial services are missing the mark with social media. (Yikes!) So I paired up with FMG Chief Evangelist, Samantha Russell, and we put on a webinar (with nearly 1,000 advisors in attendance!) to help you shape your portrait online. To teach you how to put a face, a heart, and a soul on your biz. Because remember, people do business with people.
Do you need a personal page and a company page?
Short answer? Yes.
It’s important to have a company page to share valuable content that allows prospects to understand how your firm helps its clients.
But check out this chart that shows the difference in followers between the founders of companies and the companies themselves. This is our reminder that people do business with people. You can’t call a logo to go out for coffee, but you can call a person. And while your brand should have a voice and be trustworthy, humans just naturally put more trust in an actual human. That's why the personal brand is so powerful and why a personal account will always perform better than a business account.
Data collected on Twitter May 2023
Having both a personal and company page also allows you to re-share posts and drive attention to your business.
Fix your URL
If you signed up for LinkedIn years ago, your page URL was set up as your name, followed by a bunch of numbers and letters. Personalize your URL in your LinkedIn settings to allow search engines to find you better and display your LinkedIn as the first result.
Customize your banner and profile pic
Use Canva to create a custom banner. It’s fine to put your company logo on it, but my #1 tip is to say something on your banner about who you serve and/or how you help.
For your profile pic, make sure it’s up to date and actually looks like you. Look at the camera and smile. Studies say that people find people who show teeth to be more likable.
Optimize your headline
A lot of people just put their title as their headline, but it’s more helpful if you’re specific about who you serve and what kind of value you bring to the table. “Financial advisor for physicians in Philadelphia, helping you reduce debt and save for retirement” is a lot more specific than just Financial Advisor. Think about how you can articulate your unique value.
Don’t make your About section an obituary
So many people write their About section like an obituary, like they're dead. “Stacy Havener is the founder of Havener Capital. She has a podcast. She went to this university. She was a delight.”
Nix it. Write this section in the first person. Just that one change will have a huge impact on the connection this section is going to create.
Only the first few lines show up when someone views your page so it’s important to hook them to get them to read more. Start with who you help and how.
Next, you can unpack it, tell them who you are and why they should choose you as their guide. Weaving in both personal and professional details will help you form connections.
“Every paragraph’s job is to get you to read the next paragraph.”
Featured section
Adding a featured section is a great way to provide valuable information and links to people visiting your page. You can add media here or links to:
A landing page
An email newsletter you want people to sign up for
Your YouTube channel
A LinkedIn post you want to highlight
To get started, on your profile page, click on Add profile section > Recommended > Add featured.
Posting Tip: Zero Click Content
Up until about 2021, everyone on LinkedIn posted links to their blogs or podcasts or some article they read.
RIP link promoters.
These days, social media platforms want you to stay on their platform as long as possible so they prioritize showing people content where you get the majority of the information without needing to click off. It’s called zero click content.
It doesn't mean that you can’t ever share a link, it just means that the gist of the information is in the meat of the post itself. These posts are a little longer because they have more value right in them. Sometimes they have emojis or bullet points so they’re easier to skim.
Keeping the content on your post allows for more engagement too. People don’t tend to click off the platform, go read your lengthy blog post and then say, oh I better go back and comment. Most likely they read it and go on with their day. But if you give them the value right in the post, they can leave a comment — and comments are currency. (More on that in a bit.)
Show your face; it’s science.
“No one wants to see my mug.” “This isn’t Facebook.” And all the other things people say to me when I tell them to show their face. But here’s the thing. There’s a psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference for things or people merely because they are familiar with them. It’s called the mere-exposure effect.
We see this play out in advertising (buying a specific brand because advertising has made it feel familiar), music and TV (think of how songs and characters grow on you after repeated exposure), or food (Mom’s cooking).
Seeing posts or updates from a specific person or page frequently on social media platforms can lead to a preference for that person or content. Additionally, social media algorithms are said to prefer content with faces. Try showing yourself behind the scenes. Stories resonate when they touch on something that's a shared human experience: having a cup of coffee with your colleagues, reading a book, doing something you enjoy.
Engagement
Even more important than what you post is how you show up and interact with other people. When you engage with other people’s posts, others see your comment; you create conversation.
“Social media is more like a telephone than a television.”
If you wake up every day and commit to leaving 5-10 comments on LinkedIn, you will be blown away at what starts to happen: Reciprocity (if you too are posting). And new connections.
Comments are the currency of social media. When you give a comment and you get a comment, you’re exchanging relevancy, and you’re telling the algorithm, “Hey, this is somebody whose content other people should see.”
Be intentional with where you comment. You may want to focus on:
Someone that you want to do business with
People that you admire
Someone you want to have on your podcast (or you want to get on theirs)
Somebody who's influential in the industry that you serve
Posts of 2nd degree connections that show up in your feed (because your trusted 1st degree connection commented)
Time saver: I have a bookmarks folder on my browser toolbar that links to the people’s pages whose posts that I comment on most frequently.
Connect intentionally
Once a week, take time to connect with any new clients, prospects, and people you met or are corresponding with. You can also connect with:
Current and former colleagues
Fellow members of associations, communities, groups
Current and former clients
Current prospects and investors
Industry friends, partners, vendors
People that fit your target market
People that viewed your profile and fit your target market
Generate leads
In the webinar, an advisor asked, “Does social media actually drive prospects to your door or should it just be viewed as a way to continue to build your brand awareness?”
Yes, it drives prospects. 100% yes.
People follow and pay attention to you even when they're not commenting and liking. I’ve had people contact me what seemed like out of the blue, but have actually just been silently following me for years.
Which led to another question.
How do you attribute success to a social platform?
Chris Walker from Refined Labs (he's a great follow on LinkedIn!) shared this chart below, which in a nutshell says if you try to attribute all of your leads using some kind of software, the software attributes leads to web search inaccurately. But if you ask people to self-report, the attribution looks much different and you begin to see the power of dark social, (the sharing of content through private channels that are difficult to track such as private messaging, email, podcasts, community discussions, and other methods that don't leave a public trail).
Paint your portrait
The reason that social media is so powerful is because people want to solve problems and harness opportunities with someone that has been there, that they've seen over and over, that has proven their credibility. Someone familiar. If you paint your portrait with intention, the connection for your prospects becomes almost instantaneous.
