You are represented on LinkedIn, a few clients follow you on Twitter and you have a couple of hundred Facebook friends. So why isn’t the world beating a path to your door? Building a reputation online takes planning and a commitment to engaging with fans and followers on the various social media platforms.
One young adviser, Yianni Tsimopoulos, shares his social media experience with Professional Planner Online.
First, let’s start with some statistics. In Australia there are approximately 74,000 monthly searches for ‘financial planner’ and 40,000 monthly searches for ‘financial adviser’. Are you getting your share of these inquiries?
Advances in technology provide wonderful opportunities for advisers to improve their client interactions and make the client advice experience more tangible and fun.
Just ask yourself, what has a greater wow factor: sitting with clients drawings diagram on paper or swapping a tablet with them that wirelessly projects the image onto a 50-inch display on the wall of your meeting room and then emailing a copy of the presentation to them with all the notes attached?
I know which direction my business is heading and we’ve only received a positive reaction from our clients. One of the greatest challenges of financial advice is its intangible nature. Using touchscreens, big displays and an integrated content-management system (CMS) helps bring the whole process alive. Just as importantly, it is much more fun.
Similarly, social media are a brilliant way of communicating with people and building your brand. To me, ignoring social media is like ignoring the telephone. They are communication channels that are only going to become more popular, so why not get used to and master them?
Social media builds trust
I’ve sought to use social media to address the biggest obstacle there is when you first meet a prospective client: trust. Why should anyone trust a stranger with their retirement or their hopes and dreams?
In the past we’ve relied mainly on referrals to help accelerate trust. Social media adds to this because they allow you to broadcast your public persona very broadly at low cost.
When I am initially referred to someone, the first thing I do is Google him or her. I want an insight into just who they are before I meet them. After that, I compare my own impressions with how he or she is represented on the web.
The worst outcome is when I get nothing or little substance from a web search –yes, it still happens! When prospective clients Google you, even before they have met you, do they get a good insight into your values and personality?
Client relationships
Social media are also essential in our ongoing client relationships. I believe that increasingly people will want to decide which medium they use to access us and that this will change over time in different surroundings and using different devices.
Each contact channel needs to be of great quality and consistent in theme. Together the different channels combine to create a tapestry that should be congruent with your values, message and value proposition.
But it also needs to be real, to reflect your personality.
Room to experiment
Social media are, of course, double-edged swords. This is especially true for those in the sensitive businesses of financial planning.
It’s one thing for a baker to crow about his cupcakes on Facebook or for an athlete to talk trash about an opponent on Twitter.
It’s something else entirely for an adviser to talk business online; there are rules, after all, that govern advisers’ public communications to protect investors from being misled.
And nuance – so crucial when discussing money and investing – can be lost in the world of social media.
Within the context of our regulatory regime, I am just as concerned with compliance as you are when having a conversation with someone.
If you need to disclose something when talking with someone, make sure you disclose it in your social media. If you don’t need to disclose, relax. In fact, I would encourage you to focus less on specifics and more on values and principles.
Still, there’s plenty of room for creativity. And many advisers are finding that they can help their business without even talking business.
I am not saying it is easy – in fact it will challenge almost every communication habit you have. But the rewards of embracing technological change are worth it.
Yianni Tsimopoulos is the managing director of the Nationwide Group of Companies, a wealth advisory firm offering a range of financial services.
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