Financial advisors are more connected digitally than ever before. And when it comes to prospecting and growing your business, social media is one of the best places to leverage your digital presence.
Not only can you share relevant content and show your industry expertise, but it’s a great place to showcase your brand and authenticity to connect with potential clients.
And while every social media platform has pros and cons, LinkedIn offers staggering advantages, as it is the best for prospecting new clients. In fact, according to HubSpot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.
But how can you use LinkedIn to help grow your business?
In this article I share some ways you can optimize LinkedIn to grow your business and address some of the most frequently asked questions I receive from advisors.
Question 1: What are the best ways to post so that the LinkedIn algorithm will work in your favor?
LinkedIn uses a series of calculations and rules to determine how to distribute and display content, often referred to as the LinkedIn algorithm.
Getting the algorithm to work in your favor is crucial because it can impact the overall performance of your post, and when it comes to “hacking” the algorithm, here are a few things that can help:
• Engagement is critical. For every one thing you post, make sure you comment on at least five other users’ posts.
• “Comments are currency.” When posting, make one of your goals to get as many comments as quickly as possible. Faster comments equal a better chance the algorithm shows your posts to others.
• Tagging others in your posts or commenting on other users’ posts is a great strategy to earn more visibility. Ask engaging questions to get them involved and make them want to respond.
• LinkedIn wants to keep people on their app rather than clicking away to another platform. The site will show more posts that are “native” or don’t link to anything. When you post, only link out sometimes, as LinkedIn rewards those who keep users on the platform.
Question 2: What are some hashtag best practices?
Hashtags are a great addition to your social media strategy and can impact the growth of your online visibility. When using hashtags, don’t use more than three. But to be the most effective, hashtag the terms that your audience will be looking for.
For example, rather than posting in #marketing, #socialmedia, etc., you can post under #financialplanning, #wealthmanagement, #investmentmanagement, or something similar. This will help your content show up to your target audience.
Question 3: If you have a personal profile and a business profile, which one should you focus on?
We recommend focusing on either your business or personal profile, depending on the size of your business. Focusing on your personal profile should be the goal if you're a business owner and only have one to two employees. But once you hire more employees, creating a business profile would be a good idea.
And once your firm is known as its own entity, then you can work to grow the brand and network with others. And remember to ask your employees to use their personal pages to share content that tags the business page or reshares content from the business page at least one time per week.
Question 4: What’s the difference between LinkedIn Premium and Basic?
While Premium and Basic are both excellent, Premium has a few significant differences to highlight:
• The free account gives you 100 profile searches, while the first paid level gives you 300 searches.
• You can see who has viewed your profile over the last 90 days, while the free version shows you only five days.
You can do a lot with the free version, especially if you are sharing quality content and engaging other users regularly. However, LinkedIn Premium is a good investment for your business, as it allows you to focus on the niche audience you want to target, which will ultimately grow your business and improve your ROI.