Social media: great in theory, missing in practice

The case for financial planners using social media to both promote their businesses and stay in touch with clients has been overstated, according to one expert who argues that such hype is best left to product pushers.

While the use of social media has grown exponentially as many businesses dedicate a vast amount of time and energy to maintaining a presence, it would appear that word of mouth remains the hottest ticket in town.

PlannerWeb, a provider of online services to financial advisers and accountants, reports a very different experience to that of Zurich research released last month.

Zurich found growth in social media usage by Australian financial advisers has far outstripped the growth experienced in the community overall.

Philip Kewin, general manager of retail life and investments at Zurich, said that the latest research proved the “extraordinary growth in advisers using social media; especially the more business and news-related platforms, such as Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube”.

Digitally dismal

However, PlannerWeb director Peter Graham said his experience had been quite different.

“Zurich must be referring to how many have added social media links,” he said.  “In short, though, things aren’t anywhere near as good as Zurich thinks.”

According to PlannerWeb, 11 per cent of financial advisers use social media, a further 6 per cent have added this function to their websites but would like to use it more, 20 per cent would like to do more but don’t have the resources or time, while 31 per cent are unsure what to do and 32 per cent do not use it at all.

Respondents social media presence was recorded as: none 46 per cent, Linkedin 43 per cent, Facebook 31 per cent, Twitter 17 per cent and Google+ 14 per cent.

It also found that 39 per cent of planning practice websites were more than three years old.

Anecdotally, Graham knows of only two or three accounting practices that have placed adverts on Facebook, with no feedback on the success of this strategy as yet.

Increasingly, this means that planning practices should be looking beyond websites and content to a full digital marketing infrastructure, but since few practices have even a written marketing plan, most of this remains little more than theory.

A strategy that discounts the hysteria around social media and focuses on a few key elements appears most sensible.

“Hype of the past may work for product sellers but it way overstates what’s possible for professionals such as accountants and planners,” said Graham.

“However, social media is a sales and marketing channel, so a practice needs to be involved to some degree. Not doing so is a risk to new business, fails to demonstrate you’re as up-to-date as many clients would like to see, and has an adverse impact on some marketing strategies such as intergenerational.”