On the internet, no one knows you’re a financial advisor — so it’s up to you to show them.
“Advisors need to think about what kind of archetype they want to represent in the minds of clients or prospective clients,” says Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist and human resources consultant in New York. “What do you want people to think, believe, feel and do when they come across your digital trail?”
As COVID-19 vaccines bring a return to normal within reach, many advisors plan to keep some aspects of their practices digital. Advisors who ramped up their use of social media, websites, online videos and podcasts to market themselves to potential clients or to keep in touch with existing clients by necessity during the pandemic often found that this strategy worked for them.
So what’s the best way to stand out digitally without sticking your head too far above the crowd?
First, Dattner says, curate your virtual self. Make sure there are no online images of you floating around in rowdy or unsavory situations that might make your clients uncomfortable trusting you with their money. Also consider that any political or activist stances you take online will alienate some percentage of your clients or prospects even if they attract other, more like-minded, people.
“You have to assume that anyone doing deep enough due diligence on you is going to come across everything online: charities you support, controversial issues you tweeted about, donations you’ve made, your performance in the 5K fun run,” he says.
Many brokerage firms expect advisors to have a (compliance-approved) social presence to help lure in prospects — often called “social selling.” Independent RIAs often do this as well via web pages and multiple social media and video channels. Given this, Dattner says, it’s important to define your strategy for social media, including how much content you want to distribute, which messages you want to spread, and how to balance thoughtful content with the sizzle that will encourage readers to focus on it.
“What sells online and on social media is controversy and discord, so it’s tempting to do that, although it’s probably the opposite of what you want,” he says.
Advisors may also want to consider how much content they share themselves on their own Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts compared to how much others share about them, since a referral can be powerful, Dattner says.
Gail Golden, a Chicago-based psychologist and business consultant, suggests that advisors think carefully about how they present themselves in video meetings with clients.
“The extent to which I can mimic the experience of seeing you in my office or yours is part of the experience and the respect,” says Golden, author of Curating Your Life: Ending the Struggle for Work-Life Balance. Formal business attire, especially when meeting with older clients, and a professional-looking video background — real or simulated — is key, she says, as is making eye contact by looking at your webcam, not at the person’s image on your screen.
For all social media interactions, Golden says, the most important rule is to think before you speak or post — the moral equivalent of mentally checking whether your grandmother would approve of what you’re doing before you do it.
“Do not put anything out into the virtual world that you would be unhappy to see on the cover of a major publication,” she says.
Such a mindset can be useful for financial advisors struggling with how much of their true selves to reveal online. Golden suggests being overly cautious when possible since it’s never possible to truly delete anything in the virtual world.
“I’m extremely careful about my digital presence,” she says. “This whole notion of ‘bring your whole self to work’ — no.”
As advisors increase their digital presence to attract new business, they should realize that prospects have also become more sophisticated. While potential clients may be looking through your posts, videos or website to evaluate them, they are also doing the same research on a half-dozen other advisors they’re considering hiring, says Mike Orr, a vice president with social marketing software company Seismic in Toronto, Canada.
“If you don’t have an authentic brand that stands for something, you won’t be part of the conversations that are happening to get a new client,” Orr says.
What works, he says, is finding “inspiration that enables you to provide insights: opportunities to educate, share value, tell your story or share parts of yourself.”
Consistency across your posts is important, but you have to differentiate your brand from the rest of the universe. “You can’t be exactly the same as everything else out there,” Orr says.
Raymond James, a Seismic customer, encourages its advisors to use social media to grow their own practices, says Maggie Kokemuller, vice president of advisor marketing at the St. Petersburg, Florida-based brokerage.
The firm’s in-house marketing agency produces pre-approved pieces that advisors can post or send to clients to spark conversations for free or at a nominal price. Most of the firm’s 8,000 advisors make use of this material, Kokemuller says. Alternatively, Raymond James advisors can hire the firm’s marketing team to design customized content for their own practice. Anything advisors post using the firm’s web or social channels routes past a supervision desk to get approved first.
The decision, Kokemuller says, can depend on an advisor team’s relationship with its clients, which can run the gamut from formal to family-like. The key, she says, is for each advisor to “identify where your brand falls on that spectrum and be authentic to that.”
Kokemuller observes that some advisors choose to build their professional and client networks around local politics or values, which means they sometimes post about issues that can be unpopular with a segment of the audience.
“Some things we say, ‘steer clear of,’ because they’re controversial, but we generally, unless it’s a compliance concern, aren’t going to tell them to shut something off,” she says.