How a Communications Experiment Can Help Grow Your Financial Advisor Practice

You may not consider yourself a writer, but that’s okay. You can learn. As a communications specialist at an LPL Financial advisory practice, I’ve heard it over and over from other folks... “I’m just not a born writer.” Good news: no one is! While spoken languages are a natural feature, humans invented written languages. Writing is an important tool to use in your business to communicate with clients, to entice and set the tone for your brand. To get started, create a content experiment and find a solution that works for you.

How will it be worth my time, effort, and resources?

• Start for your own sake. Writing crystallizes thinking. Once ideas are on the page, they can be examined, reviewed, and refined. This clarity could benefit any area of your practice.
• Start small. To be a runner, you just have to run. No need to revamp your diet, schedule, and wardrobe the moment you decide to try. Likewise, nobody’s saying you have to master the skill overnight.

What about compliance?

With the use of Social Patrol, your profile content and interactive content such as posts, comments, messages and other actions are automatically captured and monitored for most approved platforms, as long as you have the tool installed. Here are a couple of suggestions to get you started on the right track with your content experiment.

• Practice first. Familiarize yourself and install Social Patrol to learn how content is monitored, and also learn how you can post without pre-approval.
• Give yourself a head start. Launch and develop your content plan well before you want to begin posting. Decide where in your regular routine you could add submitting a regular batch of content to MRR.

How do I get started?

One word at a time!

• Design your content experiment without being concerned with how many views, likes, or shares to expect. Instead, create a habit-based goal: “What would happen if I posted to Facebook twice a week, or blogged monthly, or shared a quarterly video?” Then try it.
  • Pick a theme. The best starter topics are things you already know:
    • Your specialties or niches
    • Keywords, concepts, or phrases fundamental to you and your practice
    • Stories or metaphors you use most often with clients
  • Pick a medium. Start wherever you feel the least resistance, whether it’s a blog, a video, or even a photo caption on socials. You can always expand later.

How will I know what’s working?

You’ll know it when you see it. Stay in experiment mode.

• Collect data. Keep going until patterns emerge. Early data points may be murky but meaningful. They may pop up online or offline. By reading our weekly email newsletter, for instance, our clients were already familiar with our latest thinking on a topic by the time their next appointment started. Conversations got deeper faster. Content also reduced the volume of individual clients calling with similar questions.

Consistent content is a superpower. When your audience learns what to expect from you, and you keep delivering, it’s possible to increase the level of trust. It’s the same phenomenon as clients passing our office on Main Street, noticing the lights on, and thinking, “Oh, there’s the gang working away, still at it...”

And we feel that our patience has paid off. Our client-centric content has encouraged many second-degree connections to reach out. It’s our belief that nurturing our existing network through content has helped us grow—and also increase our assets under management.

You can build a system that works for you, too. Content creation is an ongoing experiment that starts when you do. Good luck!

Questions and Consultations

If you have questions or would like to schedule a one-on-one consultation, or if you’d like to subscribe and receive email alerts when new articles become available, contact LPL Marketing Consulting at (800) 877-7210, Option 9, Option 5, Option 1, or email Marketing Consulting.

If you’re interested in LPL managing your digital marketing plan for you, ask us about our Marketing Solutions program.

Consult your compliance department for information about the rules and use of social media and the review of all advisor marketing materials.

LPL Financial and 228main.com and separate entities.

Caitie Leibman (she/her) is Director of Communications at 228Main.com and a former English professor. You can read, watch, and listen to Caitie’s work in The Weekly Note newsletter or find her on Twitter or LinkedIn.