More and more businesses are launching themselves into social media as a way of reaching out to their customers. Some, it must be said, have been more successful than others. For a financial advisor social media such as Twitter and Facebook can seem like a golden opportunity to contact large numbers of existing and potential customers with one short status update. Is it really as easy as it appears on the surface? Or are there techniques for financial advisor social media usage that can make the difference between success and failure?
Anyone who participates on a social media website, whether they are using the site to keep in touch with friends or as part of a financial advisor social media marketing strategy will quickly discover that the benefits of social media depend largely on how much effort you put into using them. If you update your status frequently with interesting posts that encourage your readers to enter into discussions with you and with one another or even to share your posts with readers beyond your immediate circle, then you are more likely to find social media rewarding than if you rarely update and fail to enter into discussions with the contacts that you make on the site. For a financial advisor social media are only likely to prove effective if you are focussed on how your readers can benefit from interacting with you. If your tweets and status updates amount to nothing more than a stream of plugs for your business, your contacts may feel that you are participating only to sell them something and, after a while, may ignore you, or even block you so that they do not see your posts.
For a financial advisor social media can be a useful way of keeping their business in the minds of their online contacts. However the most successful exponents of financial advisor social media are likely to be those who use it in a social way, rather than merely promoting their services. That means taking the time to create and participate in discussions and giving their contacts a compelling reason to take notice of their posts.