Not long ago, the term "content marketing" existed only within the marketing world, if at all. Yet the idea of using content to tell stories and market to customers has been around for centuries. These days, content is king and queen, and professionals in every industry — including financial services — are leveraging content in multiple ways to create awareness around a topic that is meaningful to their target audiences.
For advisors, an important part of an effective content marketing strategy is to use social media as a way to increase trust and amplify whatever content you produce or curate. Thanks to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the exchange of information and content has never been easier or more immediate. And yes, it can all be done compliantly.
In this year's B2C Content Marketing survey, 93% of respondents reported that they use social media to market their content. The key is to make it part of your marketing process to attract and retain customers, create awareness around your products and services, and grow your business.
Here are five ways to use social media to get the most out of your financial content marketing efforts:
No. 1. Advertise on Facebook
By advertising on Facebook, you can hyper-target your content to reach people with specific attributes, including location, age, gender, education level, and particular likes. Facebook can even target users based on life events they've shared on the network that are important to advisors – such as announcements of a relationship change, a move to a new city or town, or the birth of a new baby.
Armed with this information, you could use ad dollars to literally get in front of the exact types of prospects you want, when those prospects are most likely to be interested in your services. You also get deep visibility into how well your ads perform, such as number of impressions, clicks and likes, to gauge your return on investment.
No. 2. Break up content into several "nuggets"
If you've created a substantial piece of content (such as a newsletter, white paper or guide), consider dividing it into multiple, smaller pieces to share on social media. This repurposing of content will allow you to get the most out of a single piece. For example, if you publish a monthly email newsletter that you send to all your clients and prospects, it probably has multiple topics or headlines. Highlight one headline in a social media post and link it to the hosted version of your newsletter; the next day, highlight another headline, and so on.
This way, you get multiple social media posts, each with a different angle, all driving viewers to one piece of content.
