The internet, new media and social media are continuing to grow in popularity and importance for interacting with people. What should advisers be doing to make the most of these opportunities?
While you can have a business page on Facebook, Twitter and especially LinkedIn (effectively ‘Facebook for businesses’) can be useful.
Having a LinkedIn account is fast becoming essential and advisers who don’t embrace this will lose business – I keep in touch with many existing clients with this.
It also helps to ‘follow’ the right people on Twitter. Clearly, you don’t want to pepper your account with potentially offensive or irrelevant information, but telling the world a little about yourself as a person works well (such as family or interests).
However, networks and regulators don’t quite get it yet, so make sure you do nothing which could be construed as giving advice. If in doubt, check with them before you post it.
Kevin Carr, Protection Review
Being an IFA is very much about client relationships and social media is all about relationships.
Sites such as Twitter are not replacing face to face, phone or email communication, at least not yet; they are simply a new way of communicating in addition to what already exists.
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. A new member joins LinkedIn every second, and more than 140 million tweets are sent every day.
While much of this is non-business related, a growing element, including financial services and the protection industry, is using social media successfully because there are many uses for both personal and business use.
It is a great way to keep in touch with contacts, media, competitors and to quickly broadcast information and opinions across the industry – from the budget or RDR to last night’s TV or football.
LinkedIn is arguably essential and Twitter is fast becoming so, while Facebook is perhaps less important – unless your business doesn’t have a website, in which case why not save money and use a Facebook page instead?
But let’s be realistic. Social media isn’t going to win new business overnight. It will take a little time and effort. While I have little doubt it will positively influence both business and brand, the results won’t be instant.
