Market views: Utilising social media

The internet, new media and social media are continuing to grow in popularity and importance for interacting with people. What should advisers be doing to make the most of these opportunities?

Matt Morris, LifeSearch

The world of new media is important for advisers to understand and develop for sound business reasons.

At a basic level, making your website as Google-friendly as possible and using tools such as blogging will improve your search ranking and bring in more leads.

More complex is the world of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube – the four giants of social media.

Most people acknowledge they provide big opportunities to boost a company profile, but few have figured out exactly how to utilise them.

Success with social media is not easy to metric and will not happen overnight. In the same way, you cannot assess the value of a networking event by how much business comes out of it directly.

It takes time and patience and the benefits are not immediately obvious.

For advisers, Twitter and LinkedIn are more useful than Facebook.

If you have a specific campaign in mind then Facebook is good for generating support and interest.

But if you wish to have regular dialogue with customers, colleagues and competitors, Twitter and LinkedIn are the places to be.

LinkedIn is especially useful for networking, particularly for those advisers who live well outside the big cities and cannot afford the time spent bouncing between events and lunches when they should be meeting clients.

Meanwhile, YouTube provides a useful addition to client communication. For people who may be interested in speaking to you, an intro video on your website linked to YouTube explaining who you are and what you do will offer reassurance to potential clients and boost your Google ranking.

Dean Mason, Masons Financial Planning

Twitter is just five years old and Facebook less than ten. YouTube, LinkedIn, MySpace and all the others were unheard of a decade ago.

Now, they can be a pivotal tool in any adviser’s marketing strategy if used wisely. They’re free to use, of course, although there are many ‘social media experts’ who will charge a lot of money to ensure you make the most of them.

These people don’t know our industry, so you are better off using a PR with financial services experience to point you in the right direction.

An IT friend said he and his colleagues rarely communicate outside Facebook these days and I have earned three clients in the last year purely through my personal Facebook page, where I don’t promote the business at all.