LinkedIn is the prime place for financial advisors to focus their social media efforts.
According to Putnam’s most recent Social Advisor Survey, more than 90% of financial advisors using social media are seeing asset gains and they are primarily focusing their social efforts solely on LinkedIn.
This shouldn’t be a shock, considering LinkedIn is primarily used for professional networking and has more than 575 million users worldwide, with more than 150 million users in the U.S. alone.
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LinkedIn is Powerful
LinkedIn is both powerful and unique because it allows you to specifically target new prospects based on their job title and geography, unlike other social channels. This is an effective way to help you gain new qualified prospects that just might match your ideal client profile.
Once you connect with clients and new prospects on LinkedIn, they will start consistently seeing your content in their feed. The key is to provide content that is relevant to their specific needs. If they deem your shared content as valuable, not only will you distinguish yourself from your competitors, but these highly qualified prospects will begin engaging with you, building trust and creating a truly extensive organic reach. Now, that’s powerful!
However, to reap these rewards, you can’t fly blindly. You have to first know what you are doing.
Education and Training
According to Putnam, those advisors who are seeing asset gains from using LinkedIn have gone through some sort of formal social media training, either through home office resources or through an investment company partner.
They also subscribe to a premium level of service, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator Pro provides its users with advanced search filters, improved visibility into extended networks, access to different sales tools and the ability to make notes on user profiles. You can subscribe as an individual user or get a subscription for your team.
Your Headline, Profile and Photo
It goes without saying that it is imperative to have a great LinkedIn profile. When you have a complete and well written profile, it makes it easy for clients and prospects who are searching for you to find you. Be sure to create a headline that reinforces your value proposition. You have 120 characters to sum up your expertise and intrigue your prospects. A succinct headline will boost your searchability.
Next, develop a profile summary that reinforces your brand, is compelling and describes what makes you unique as a financial advisor. This is an opportunity to use your elevator pitch and share your mission statement. It should also communicate how you help your clients solve problems and overcome challenges.
While your profile summary should be professionally written, try to strike a nice balance of making it professional while also making it conversational in nature. In other words, drop the industry jargon and buzzwords. Personalize and humanize it as much as possible. The best connections on LinkedIn happen when people feel like they are connecting with another human. The first impression begins with your headline and profile.
Finally, be sure you select a high-resolution headshot that is professional for your LinkedIn photo. You should be dressed professionally, smiling and ideally it should be a head and shoulders shot.
Making Connections
Personalization is key when it comes to making LinkedIn connections. Connection requests that are generic are simply not effective.
Personalizing your connection requests with a message will increase your chances of the recipient accepting your request. Include any common personal connections you have in your message. If you don’t have any personal connections to them, identify a common interest from their profile or their shared content.
Sharing Content
Once a prospect accepts your connection request, resist the temptation to immediately jump into sales mode. Focus on cultivating a relationship and consistently creating, as well as sharing high-value content that reflects the interests of your ideal clients and prospects.
LinkedIn has quickly become a go-to content publishing platform. It drives more traffic to blogs and company websites than other social media channels. It is also a source that users trust to get professional, high-quality content.
As an added bonus, the content that you publish becomes part of your LinkedIn profile, which helps to position you as an expert and thought leader to your clients and prospects.
Use Video
Whenever possible, use video. Video content is a huge opportunity for financial advisors.
Think about it – when clients and prospects see your face and hear your voice, it allows you to create a deeper, more emotional connection with them. It is the next best thing to face-to-face meetings.
LinkedIn research actually shows that video is five times more likely than other types of content to engage LinkedIn users in a conversation. What’s more, LinkedIn users spend almost three times more time watching videos compared to time spent with static content.
You do not have to have the latest camera or equipment to post video. Simply using your smartphone will do the trick nicely.
The Bottom Line
Many prospects who are looking for an advisor will research your LinkedIn profile and not just your website when they are doing their research. In addition, you have the ability to identify and search for new highly qualified prospects using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a tremendous social selling resource and financial advisors who make it a significant part of their practice are gaining both assets and clients.
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