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Monday, April 28, 2014

The New Reality: Financial Advisors MUST integrate social media in their marketing - or suffer the consequences!

According to Google, 74 percent of all affluent baby boomers will use their search engine to research a company or service provider before responding to an advertisement or promotion.

There is no question that technology has changed the way society communicates.  Social networking has unbelievably enriched our lives.  With every wonderful evolution we are able to access more people and more information faster, yet with each step towards getting answers faster, it takes longer to establish a true relationship.

How do you, as business professionals who are dependent on face-to-face meetings, establish credibility and trust in a society that develops first encounters online? What can advisors who haven’t embraced the digital era do to start making the web work for them?

You need to understand and embrace social marketing, develop a strategy and integrate it with your other marketing tactics.

Online social networking is a form of social media used for interacting with other individuals or groups with common interests.  These interests can be dating, sports, education, professional networking or entertainment. Today, word of mouth marketing takes place on social networks and is called social media marketing.  The object of social media marketing is to get people to recommend you to friends, family and co-workers.

That said, once you are ready to embrace social marketing, you need to develop a strategy and be engaged. You can’t simply set up Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profiles and expect people to come to you. It’s crucial to be an active participant. In order to create awareness, you must reach out and ask people to connect with you. You also need to have a consistent voice.  Content is king. It’s important to post, comment and interact consistently. 

The more active you are on social media, the more you will establish that you are a credible person who has a personality, is a thought leader and a subject matter expert. 


As a financial advisors, having an active and up-to-date presence on the web is CRITICAL to generating new leads now and in the future.