As a financial planner, there are two main ways that you can use LinkedIn
As a financial planner, there are two main ways that you can use LinkedIn. Neither is better or worse than the other – but it’s important to be clear on why you’re here.
Too many professionals flock to social media in order to ‘get more clients’ and find that it doesn’t work for them. Most often this is because there is no strategy in place, or it’s not properly refined to meet their objectives.
In our experience, from observing what most financial advisers do on LinkedIn, there are two ways that you can leverage LinkedIn to add value to your business and your network.
(1) Stay in touch with industry professionals and build professional rapport
This is great for building accountability, bolstering qualifications and creating a sounding board of mentors and colleagues who can help you upskill and add value to your clients. There are many other ways to do this too – from online courses and events to personal in-office groups, professional associations and training days – so it doesn’t necessarily have to happen on LinkedIn. However, it happens a lot here, especially for financial advisers.
If this is part of your strategy, then great! But… if your expectations are more closely aligned to finding and engaging with clients, then this strategy works better in closed groups rather than out in the public LinkedIn sphere.
(2) Stay in touch with clients and build a network of prospects
Traditional lead generation is fast becoming a think of the past. From our dealings with financial advisers, I’d put my neck out there and say it doesn’t seem to be working at all anymore, but there may still be areas where it’s a viable option (albeit with a limited shelf life – see this poll here).
A model that we have used extensively and is showing excellent traction is to leverage the softer side of selling – the side the Seth Godin refers to as telling stories rather than selling products. This approach assumes that if we can deliver a great experience to our current clients, they will talk about us inside of their networks.
This is great for financial advisers because most people don’t Google ‘Find an adviser in Bergvliet‘ when they need financial advice. What most of us do is we ask our family and friends about who they use… AND THEN WE GOOGLE THAT PERSON. Leveraging your LinkedIn space to engage with existing clients makes it easier for prospects to find you and decide whether or not they will take the next steps to getting in touch.
Not only will Google find your website and your blogs, but it will most likely find your profile as LinkedIn has a very high domain and page authority ranking.
This whole shift in communication culture changes the way that financial planners need to market themselves and engage with digital communication. None of us can simply set up a profile and hope for the best.
We need to be intentional about our online communication and have a strategy for why we are here.
I hope that helps!
