Organizations of all sizes should encourage their employees to effectively utilize social media. In today’s financial services world, the powers that be are still trying to over control the messages. Instead, they need to find ambassadors within their own ranks to vastly expand their reach.

Two speakers touched on this topic at the 2016 Social Business Conference for Financial Services hosted by LIMRA and LOMA in Boston.

Consider Un-Marketing

In the opening keynote, Scott Stratten, a disruptive and un-traditional sales, marketing and branding expert, touched on a key marketing hurdle. He said that the narrative is created by the people who work for us. That is because people are more trusting of strangers than they are of brands.

Stratten further pointed out the harsh reality for organizations that try to do all their marketing using just the marketing team, stating, “The average reach for a Facebook brand page is two percent. Your industry might be worse.” Thus, the ivory tower approach to marketing is not always effective.

Stratten suggested asking your organization, “How does your end client want to interact with you?”

Activate Influencers

Amy McIlwain, the global industry principal for the financial services industry for Hootsuite, spoke about getting the word out via employees.  Many firms now have a social CEO. Tim Hockey, president at TD Ameritrade, and Mark Casady, chairman and CEO at LPL Financial, were two executives that were noted as good examples. Still, sharing using social media is still not widespread within financial service firms.

“Social media is fundamentally changing the way we communicate,” said McIlwain. She believes social media is now the primary distribution of content and showed a statistic that social media accounts have now surpassed emails accounts.

Digital natives, those that have grown up with social networks in their lives, can share a message to a much larger audience in a more meaningful way. To take advantage of this potential, firms must build a social enterprise that goes beyond the marketing team and taps into all employees, especially the internal influencers. They might include those at the c-suite level, executive spokespeople, department heads and internal thought leaders. 

Building A Social Program

McIlwain recommended the following steps to get started.

·      Have a strategy. Know what are you are trying to achieve. Track key performance indicators.

·      Develop guidelines and trainings. It is time to expand media trainings to include social networks.  Influencers might have a more strict policy due to regulations. Know what audiences to reach, as there are different reasons to use different social networks.

·      Identify the best influencers. Who are the most open to it? Get some wins. They have to want to share updates. It is illegal to force them. Plus, if forced it would not be authentic.

·      Assess social and technology skillset. Where are they with the technology? Do they feel comfortable using the smart phones for these purposes?

·      Audit the existing presence. Do they have a LinkedIn profile? Does it look professional? Are there people out there impersonating your employees? 

·      Recognize participants. Retweet their tweets from corporate accounts, giving them recognition. Give them the opportunity to stand out and feel special.

·      Analyze. Is the program driving more website traffic? Are you developing deeper relationships with employees? Learn from the results and make adjustments to your campaign.

Harness the power and benefit from a social company

The marketing messages can also be humanized if they come from the employees. By having more employees being social, it can attract new customers and partners, while also building stronger relationships with groups like the media. Additionally, company leaders can get authentic feedback from social networks, as it comes directly from clients and prospects and is not filtered through the company ranks.

McIlwain also believes a program like this helps with internal relations, with increased employee retention and better recruitment.

For many in the industry, they should start taking advantage of the power of their employees.

Note: Hootsuite does have a product that helps firms “amplify” social sharing from employees within an organization. It is designed to expand reach through employee advocacy.

Mike Byrnes is a national speaker and owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC. His firm provides consulting services to help advisors become even more successful. Need help with business planning, marketing strategy, business development, client service and management effectiveness? Read more at ByrnesConsulting.com and follow @ByrnesConsultin.