7 Tips to Help You Stand Out on Social Media

It is indeed a time of transition and resilience for your advisory business. And while we know social media is an essential part of your financial practice’s brand strategy, it’s arguably more important than ever before. In fact, one of the most impactful shifts we’ve seen practices make this year has been the decision to spend more time and energy on their overall digital marketing and social media presence. More specifically, practices are actively engaging their target market to help separate themselves from the pack. But, what exactly can you do to stand out among your competition?

Below are my recommendations to help you execute a strategy to strengthen your online presence and increase brand recognition.

1. Narrow your target market to focus on a specific niche: Time and time again, we see great success from targeting one demographic and sticking to it. By doing this, you create an area of expertise for yourself and your financial practice. Down the road, your clients and prospects will start to associate you with this focus area.
2. Share content with your audience in mind: Whether you’re creating original content or sourcing curated content, you’ll want everything to speak directly to the folks you’re trying to attract. With this approach, you’ll capture the audience you want to work with and feed them with information you know they want to hear and learn about. LPL Financial advisors can leverage the Social Media Content Library for pre-approved articles.
3. Collaborate with centers of influence (such as attorneys or CPAs): Collaboration is one of the best ways to separate yourself while staying relevant and continuing to build a network. Tagging or mentioning this individual or organization often means they’ll receive a notification and are more likely to share your post with their network. This in turn can expand your reach online. It also means anyone who values the centers of influence opinions or recommendations will consider you and your offering before others.
4. Think outside the box: Original ideas play. Get creative by inventing, or better yet, reinventing yourself. Try something new. Draw inspiration from a hobby, local charity or client event you host and work it into your content strategy. This can also help you connect on a more personal level with clients and prospects, furthering the relationships you build with them.
5. Crowd source for ideas: Keep in mind, your network might have financial questions you can answer with your content. You might consider sharing a post asking what they want to learn about, and leverage their responses to help fill out your content calendar. At the end of the day, being able to offer solutions directly correlating to the problems they face is why they work with you and value your recommendations.
6. Define and measure success: Once you’ve decided what success looks like for your practice, don’t forget to set time aside to review and measure. For example, maybe you’ve set a goal of seeing increased engagement on a specific platform or perhaps you’re looking to book a certain number of webinar attendees. This will look different for everyone and that’s okay. Setting time aside on a monthly and quarterly basis will help you identify what is working and what is not. Which brings me to the last point…
7. Be flexible and adapt to change: If we’ve learned anything about life and business in the past six months, it’s the only thing that’s consistent is change. Knowing this doesn’t always make embracing it easy, but it can certainly help you to plan for it. Be flexible and understand what that works today may not work in a few months. The biggest thing you can do for your business is adapt over time to stay relevant.  

Well there you have it. Hopefully these recommendations have hit home with you and inspire you to take action. They aren’t complex but they will require some strategy. If you’d like to get started with your digital marketing plan but not exactly sure where to start, contact LPL Marketing Consulting. You can reach out by phone at (800) 877- 7210 X6700, option 1 or by email at [email protected].

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IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES

You should consult your compliance department for information about the rules and use of social media and the review of any and all marketing materials.

All company names and products noted herein are for educational purposes only and not an indication of trading intent or a solicitation of their products or services. LPL Financial doesn’t provide research on individual equities.

Katie provides strategic, customized marketing consultations to independent advisors, banks, and institutions on website design, content creation, and social media best practices. View full bio.