Content Rules or Content Rules

by Neil D Wernick

Social media success can be thought of as the result of a progression of necessary steps from curiosity to new business.   As most financial services professionals have discovered already, each step has its problems, threats, challenges, and opportunities. The bad news is that there are few ways to avoid this process if your core concern is to harness the business potential of social media.

The good news is that there are abundant and readily accessible resources for finding help through at least the first three steps:  Curiosity, Compliance and Strategy. Once you have navigated your way through a sea of social media choices and arrived at a manageable suite of social websites that best fit your practice (e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus), your next challenge has been to assure that you are doing this in accordance with your firm’s social media policy, guidelines, and supervision.  Strategy involves learning how to optimize the compliant use of each selected and approved website.   Each of those social media platforms has a unique set of options for full and productive use.  There are many individuals and firms who work for or with the leading websites and provide everything from general guidance to hands-on consulting for optimizing your social media time.

It is only after you have at least a basic understanding (and better if you have an advanced understanding) of each social platform’s features and benefits that you should pursue what is likely to be your immediate, top-priority social objective:  Brand-Building. The most important success driver for effective social branding is the value of your content to the people you care about most.  

Contrary to what many financial advisors believe, most of the good (i.e. long-term) clients are not looking for investment tips, esoteric models, market analysis or even market predictions.  What they want or, more accurately, what they need from their financial advisor is assurance and reassurance that they have a well-reasoned investment strategy that can withstand market turbulence and accommodate major changes in their lives and family circumstances. 

It is very likely that a majority of your (prospective) clients experience a predictable path of major financially-related events during their lifetimes. They appreciate accurate and reliable personal finance information relating to:

1. Getting married;
2. Saving for a first home
3. Planning and saving for college
4. Caring for an aging parent
5. Saving for retirement; and
6. Managing retirement income

There are also core topics that are of great interest to (prospective) clients at different times in their lives, including:

• Budgeting
• Credit
•  Investing principles
• Wills
• Charitable giving
• Trusts and estate planning

Content is one of those areas where clients and prospective clients generally know what they are looking for and they know value-added content when they see and read it.  To build a solid brand using social media you must consistently deliver a steady source of accessible, timely and relevant information focused on the dynamic needs of your (prospective) clients.

Not sure what information your clients are looking for?  Guessing can be socially fatal.  Using any of a number of approaches (e.g. phone call, brief mail or web-based survey), ask your clients about the content that they would find most helpful.  You may want to give them some examples to facilitate the conversation.  By asking existing clients about their information needs and preferences you will likely be learning something important about the content needs of your prospective clients as well.

Different clients have different information needs at different points in their lives so vary your subjects but keep to a manageable set of identified, priority topics. The task is to develop or acquire streams of content that address each and every one of the critical topics as identified by clients.  Many broker-dealers and investment companies have robust content libraries that may address some of the priority topics. Working with preapproved content certainly expedites your posting schedule but make sure that such content is appropriate for your (prospective) clients.  It may be necessary occasionally to rework or repurpose some of that content to meet your clients’ needs or the limitations of specific social media platforms (e.g. Twitter’s 140-character maximum).  In doing so, you will want to include a link to more information on the subject, ideally on your website or blog.

When using, writing or repurposing content, keep in mind that your primary goal of most social media activity is to build and continually grow your personal and practice brand as a subject matter expert and (potential) trusted advisor.  In this way, you stand the best chance of engaging (prospective) clients in conversations that lead to business retention and new business relationships.

Neil Wernick is a seasoned, globally-experienced financial industry executive who coaches professionals and their firms in the art and science of digital marketing, communications and client relationship management. You can find him on LinkedIn and @neilwernick.  Contact neil@rifkinwernick.com.