In my experience, engaging doctors, the suddenly wealthy or other target audiences requires content personally created by an advisor. That will differentiate you. Your ideas about events in the news and your advice on important items relevant to your target market make excellent social media content.
And you will benefit in a surprising way. An important aspect of content marketing often lost in the social media soup is that the activities necessary for your success don't only engage your audience, but they engage you as well.
To be able to publicly communicate ideas of value day after day, month after month requires you to stay informed and prepared to discuss what's important to your audience. To be sure, creating your own stream of original content requires commitment, discipline and research. It's real work and responsibility.
Doing this work will, however, force you to think more clearly and strategically. It will compel you to explain your ideas more articulately. It will make you more accountable to your clients. Gains in personal and professional development are fundamental and real. You can't fake the knowledge, experience and professional dedication that come with continuously researching ideas necessary for your clients to succeed. Doing this work is empowering and attracts prospects to you.
Indeed, if you are doing the research and strategic thinking necessary to give clients prudent wealth management advice, then not creating your own social media content is a missed opportunity. The value inherent in your ideas is social media gold. In doing the research necessary to advise your clients, you've done the hardest work. Not communicating your knowledge is throwing away an opportunity.
If you spend a few hours learning about social media and setting up your streams, you should be able to adopt a strategic plan that will enable you to benefit from telling a larger audience about your ideas for managing their wealth more wisely. That's who this column is for: those of you who are great at being an advisor but who don't know how to use social media to let the world know that.
On a practical level, whether you are researching mutual funds using technical analysis, providing physician groups with 401(k) solutions, or specializing in financial solutions for Persian jewelers in Great Neck, N.Y., you must update your target markets with your analysis. Your ideas are your best content.
While this may sound simple enough, few advisors create or curate original content. Applying Pareto's rule in my estimation would overstate the number of advisors regularly producing content.
That's because most advisors never produce enough good content for a sustained period to benefit from social media. How much content do you need to create to start to benefit from social media? My guess is that you would need to post to Twitter three times a day targeting three well-defined niches and blog at least twice weekly for a year. That's about the minimum amount of content you'd probably need to produce to start to benefit from your effort.
Producing this much content is not difficult. But my guess is that fewer than 10% of advisors have done this. Here's guidance on turning your ideas into social media content.
Pick A Medium. You may be a lousy writer but a fantastic speaker. You may love PowerPoint or podcasting. You may hate Twitter but enjoy making a video daily. It doesn't matter which of the social media Web sites you choose to focus on, but find a medium for communicating. Your favorite medium might be the written word. You may like creating mind maps. It does not matter which medium you choose. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites let you communicate in video, writing, PowerPoint or pictures. It's all content. Use what you like best, what's easiest for you. Optimally, you'll use different mediums because some people who consume your content learn best from pictures while others prefer to read and still others are auditory learners.