Succeeding on Facebook For Financial Advisors: Boosting Your Online Presence

In 2020, Facebook has 2.6 billion monthly active users and there are over 60 million active business pages! Wow! Those numbers speak for themselves when it comes to using this platform. So, how do you make the most out of this social platform and drive traffic to your website from it? We’ve got some top tips that will help you to succeed on Facebook in 2020.

Tips to Help You Succeed on Facebook

Step 1: Building Your Brand

As a Financial Advisor trying to promote your business online, it is vital to focus on your differentiating factors. Before starting any new marketing effort, including social media, you should answer the following questions:

1. What Is my unique value proposition?: How is my practice different from other Financial Advisors in my area?
2. What is my biggest strength?: Is it my services? My Process? My Approach?
3. Why do I do what I do? Do I want to educate others? Help people invest? Get out of debt? How can I communicate my “why” to prospective clients?
4. What Types Of Clients Do I Serve Best? Do I have a niche?

Your answers will serve as a guide when building your Facebook profile. If you start to wonder at some point – “should I post this?” – you can refer back to your answers to these questions to see if the content is in line with your goals. 

For instance, if you are a Financial Advisor seeking to attract new clients who are 5-10 years away from retirement, then your online marketing approach should be to produce content specifically geared toward this group. For instance, you might share Facebook posts with content on topics such as:

• Social security
• Taxes in retirement
• Rolling over vs. Cashing out 401 (k)s,
• Healthcare options in retirement
• Affording bucket-list travel adventures

The more enticing and interesting the content you share, the more clicks, “likes”, comments and shares you can potentially get.

Step 2: Creating the Page

You’ve just established your approach. The most important, and initial direction that will now guide you through the rest of your journey is complete. Next, you can create your Facebook page for your business.

Before creating a company Facebook page, you need to make sure that you already have a personal account.

In the process of creating your Facebook Business Page, you will connect this page to your personal account. Your personal account becomes an Admin to your Business Page, where you can post through your company page, track success, and manage your business account.

On the homepage of your personal profile, direct your mouse to the top right and click on the arrow pointing down.

Next, click on ‘Create Page’ – this will then direct you to create a company page.

Now you are on the ‘Create a Page’ step.

Click on the type of business you are promoting. Follow the remaining steps which include: choosing a category for the type of business (i.e. what industry is your business related to? In this case, consider: Finance).

Continue to fill out the next steps which include:

The “About” page is a brief description of your practice, which should include a DIRECT link to your website page. After all, the main purpose of social media is to link it back to your website, which contains further content and information for clients to truly get to know your business. In return, these potential clients can arrange a meeting with you, the Financial Advisor.

Next up, edit the remaining content of your Facebook page by:

• Adding a profile picture, which will typically be your firm’s logo
• Adding a cover photo that represents your firm and is consistent with your overall brand

When deciding on your pictures consider the following: How do you want to be portrayed at a first glance by potential clients?

Watch this video for instructions on creating a Facebook Company Page.

Step 3: Creating the Results

You’ve established your goals and you’ve set up your page. Now it’s time to implement your action. This is when you need to consider setting up a systematic social media plan, which includes the types of posts you want to post (from your own content), share (from other company’s pages), reply to (on other company’s pages), etc.

To really keep up with your Facebook presence, schedule what you want to post in advance for an entire month. Take a look at a sample editorial calendar which includes the typical functions of an Online Marketing Action.

This is extremely helpful for any type of business. By keeping track of your action, you can record and see what types of posts are working and what isn’t working.

Activity on your Facebook page would not be effective without recording your success. After a month of posting and sharing, it is important to analyze activity. By doing so, you can take appropriate action for your next posting schedule.

On your company page, the top tab, click on ‘Insights’ – this will direct you to the following page:

From here, you can analyze and view the below all within a specific time frame:

• Likes
• Engagement
• Posts
• Reach

With graphs, you are able to see your peek points and plummets, and from there, take appropriate action for your next Facebook Social Media Marketing Plan. What if you notice that a post is performing particularly well? If you see this, then you should consider boosting this post. Boosting your social media posts is a marketing tactic that is used to exponentially boost the number of people who see your content. It is very simple, and even just $1 a day can make a tremendous difference.

Average brands only reach 6% of their fans without using paid advertisement

NEIL PATEL

 

The quote above from Neil Patel shows the importance of boosting and post and why you should do this.  So, what type of content should you boost?

Boosting Posts

1. Posts that have a strong call-to-action, such as download a whitepaper, eBook, or can lead you to your website because of a blog or a webinar.
2. Boost a post with strong imagery, as those generally perform well.
3. Boost a post that is already performing well on its own.

How Do you Boost a Post?

• Step 1: Choose a Post to Boost
• Step 2: Choose Your Audience
• Step 3: Step Your Budget
• Step 4: Set the Duration
• Step 5: Boost the Post

With the right approach and appropriate plan of action, Facebook can help grow your Financial Services Business. These steps provide the basic outline of the course that you, as a Financial Advisor, can take when developing your Social Media Presence through Facebook.

Adding Video

100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook each day, so adding video to your social platform is a great way to display information about your firm. Something to keep in mind is that when you do upload a video, make sure you do it natively, rather than just sharing the link on your post. When you upload a video natively on Facebook, the user experience is much better, the video is displayed as a full image across the timeline, it auto-plays in the news feed, and the organic reach is much greater since people won’t be leaving the platform to watch the video, but rather can watch it directly on the platform.

How do you do this?

1. Choose to Add the Video in the Share box at the top of your Home page or Timeline.
2. Click Upload Video
3. Select a video file from your computer.
4. You can type any explanation or comment into “Describe the Video” and give it a title

Adding Images

Facebook users are sharing 684,478 pieces of content per minute, so it’s important to stand out in the shuffle. Sharing strong imagery is a great way to do this. It’s no longer just something that is a nice addition, but rather images need to be a part of your social strategy. In fact, according to Social Media Today, content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. How should you best do this?

There are some great tools out there, and you should definitely be utilizing them. One of them that we use at Twenty Over Ten all the time is Canva. Canva is a free visual content creation tool specially made for non-designers. It has a large library of pre-designed, pre-sized templates, plus thousands of premium-quality design elements ranging from custom fonts to free stock photos.

In the above image, Twenty Over Ten had an upcoming webinar, so creating the image in Canva really can draw in an audience and make them take notice of your post. Additionally,y it has the information briefly on the Canva.

You can create font and colors easily that are consistent with your brand, which makes this tool crucial for your social media strategy.

Carousel Images

Another option is to include images on Facebook in a Carousel. It’s very simple and can really boost engagement. To do this, you simply:

• Select Create a Photo Carousel from the Photo/Video Upload section. Then add the link. It will populate the images and allow you to add more.
• 

In the above image, Twenty Over design, Logan Roush was showcased as a part of our “Team Tuesday,” and by uploading additional images as Carousel images, clients can see some of his work showcased after the main image in the post.

Inviting People to Like Your Page

If you are trying to grow your online presence on Facebook and boost your following, then you can invite people to like your page. It’s simple, all you do is:

1. Go to your Page and click Community in the left column.
2. In the right column, click Invite your friends to like your business page name.
3. Enter a friend’s name in the search box and then click Invite next to their name.

It’s simple and quick and can really grow your following quickly.

Doing Facebook Ads

Facebook advertisements are great for connecting with your audience, especially as the algorithms are constantly changing. It can be difficult at times to connect organically, that’s when ads can give you a boost. The steps below can help with this.

1. Choose your objective. Log into Facebook Ads Manager and select the Campaigns tab, then click Create to get started with a new Facebook ad campaign. …
2. Name your campaign. …
3. Set up your ad account. …
4. Target your audience. …
5. Choose your Facebook ad placements. …
6. Set your budget and schedule. …
7. Create your ad.

The different types of ads are Image Ads, Video Ads, Video Poll Ads, Carousel Ads, Slideshow Ads, Collection Ads, Instant Experience Ads, Leads Ads, Dynamic Ads, Messenger Ads, Stories Ads and Playable Ads. If you’d like to learn more about creating effective ads for Facebook, then check out our post on proven methods for generating leads using Facebook ads.

Sending Targeted Posts

In email marketing, we have discussed the importance of catering content to a specific group and that is why it’s so important to segment your lists. The same goes for sending a targeted post to a specific group. You can upload your contacts into your Facebook account in order to target posts towards a specific audience. It can be done in these four simple steps.

1. Add your customer list: You can create your Custom Audience in Ads Manager. Once in your account, go directly to Audiences, then go to Create Audience > Custom Audience > Customer list
2. Prepare your customer list: Select the identifiers to include, then add the customer list you want to use for your new Custom Audience and give it a name.
3. Review your customer list: Confirm that you mapped your identifiers correctly or check to see that all errors are resolved. You’ll get one of the following notifications:
4. Upload your customer list: Once your list has been added and is ready for use, select Upload and Create.

That’s a Wrap

Now that you know how to boost your Facebook capabilities and get the most out of this social platform, it’s time to continue to check-in and make sure everything is running smoothly. You can do this in your analytics, and if something needs tweaking, then by all means do so. If something is performing well, then you know to continue doing what you have been doing. People are spending more time than ever on social, so it’s pertinent that you make the most of this by putting out good content so that your leads can soar!