Lockdown has meant we’re spending far more time online, whether it’s to work from home or to maintain a social life. Figures from Statista show that nearly 45 million people in the UK used Facebook during March – that’s around two-thirds of the population! Whether we’re playing a virtual pub quiz or working out with Joe Wicks, there is currently a huge online audience.

The challenges of self-isolation have had other knock-on effects. Social media has quickly become less about an individual’s profile and more about creating a sense of community whilst we’re all staying at home. We’re rebuilding and maintaining relationships online, and that’s not just between friends and family.

For financial advisers and planners, many of your traditional client relationships will have changed overnight. Phoning your clients in the first instance has been important and Zoom is fantastic for formal meetings, but what about maintaining relationships with clients, more informally and regularly?

What you need is the online equivalent of bumping into a client at the gym, down the pub, or in the supermarket when you aren’t anxious about staying two metres apart and how long it’s now socially acceptable to natter. Social media can help fill this gap and could make you stand out amongst your competition.

Posting articles, blog posts and updates across social platforms can:

• Reassure clients that for the most part, it’s business as usual
• Allow you to show empathy
• Reinforce your expertise and authority
• Give clients something valuable to read (that isn’t always coronavirus related)
• Demonstrate that you have a long-term, post-pandemic business and marketing plan

Which platforms?

At Yardstick we typically utilise three platforms; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. They are arguably the most appropriate for the financial services sector. Celeste had a little rant about Instagram last month!

Each platform has a slightly different audience:

• Facebook, by some margin, has the highest reach in this country. It’s estimated that around 71% of adults can be reached via the platform, and Facebook Ads can really focus on a particular demographic. The mix of users is relatively even, with 48% men and 52% women last year.
• In comparison, Twitter is much smaller, with approximately 13.7 million UK users. The user split between men and women is around 60/40 and it’s generally accepted that people use Twitter to consume news. It can, however, be a really powerful platform for individuals and business to amplify their ‘brand’, especially within the financial services community.
• You likely are one of the 20 million LinkedIn users in the UK. Driving more B2B traffic to blogs and websites than any other platform, like Twitter, users are 60/40 male and female. Interestingly, 40% of active users use the site daily.

We usually post content across all three platforms but bear in mind the audience for more targeted campaigns. If you’re looking to connect with professional connections, LinkedIn is likely to be more successful than Twitter. If you’d like to build relationships with people in their 50s planning to retire soon, a targeted Facebook Ad can be very successful.

Spring cleaning your profiles

Phil’s mentioned this before – each of your social media accounts lets you display a banner image. These are often overlooked and rarely updated. Now is the perfect time to update yours to include your contact details, and make it clear you are still open for business and taking on new clients.

Also, make sure that all profile information fields are populated and up to date. If your office hours have changed to accommodate having children at home, make sure your profiles reflect that.

Make the most out of this situation

Ultimately, your clients, prospects and professional connections need information, confidence and reassurance right now. Some will welcome a little light relief too. So, for the lockdown period, why not give them what they need more frequently?

We’ve written quite a bit about the content available via Yardstick Membership. What we sometimes forget to mention is that for a small additional cost we’ll also post the articles across these three social platforms throughout the month.

If you need any help with content, updating or managing your social media platforms, get in touch. You can email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300.