Financial advisor Malik Lee posts daily on LinkedIn and Twitter, and regularly lectures at local colleges in Georgia.
“I’ve been posting catchy hashtags on Twitter and recently I’ve added photos of me lecturing at universities like Kennesaw to posts on LinkedIn because it doubles the number of likes and follows,” Lee told Financial Advisor.
Eventually, Lee will add live streaming on Facebook and YouTube, and Periscope on Twitter, to reach prospects once those avenues are cleared by compliance. It’s all part of a long-term plan to develop his platform as an influencer on social media.
“Being an influencer is where the industry is headed,” said Lee. “If you're not influencing the masses on social media right now, then you’re losing out on a whole segment of the population that are potential new clients.”
An individual or firm having influence over potential buyers, an influencer targets activities around their market of potential buyers—fans in the case of celebrities or followers on social media and messaging apps in the case of financial advisors.
“The way technology is trending these days, everybody is an influencer,” said Max Huc, CEO of 1Degree, a messaging app that facilitates real-time, two-minute interactions on Apple's FaceTime.
Some 79 percent of financial advisors are acquiring new clients through social media, compared to 66 percent in 2014, with the average annual asset gain from these clients being $4.6 million, according to a 2015 study by Putnam Investments.
“The advertising eyeballs are moving to the mobile devices we hold in our hand, and as the world is becoming more connected, the authenticity of community and relationships is what is driving true new client creation,” said Neelam Brar, the moderator and host of a District Co-Work panel in Manhattan on September 19 called "AdTech: Media and Social–Where the Eyeballs are Moving and How Brands are Reaching Them."
“When you can create relationships through direct messaging using tools that are trackable and measurable, for example, there's a lot more accountability of the financial planning service you will receive and on the quality of what you can expect,” Brar said.
Thirty-two percent of influencers who work with brands cite Facebook as the best platform, followed by Instagram at 24 percent, according to SheSpeaks data.