Social media for finance is a hard nut to crack. In smaller businesses, the task of maintaining a social presence often falls on the intern, the marketing person or really whoever has free time.
This random selection of whoever is available suggests that social media is a task that everyone can do. Au contraire, I say!
Acing a social media post is a fine balance of understanding your audience and delivering content that’s both unique and valuable. That takes both skill, experience and attention.
Even for a content creator, building a social calendar of engaging content month after month can be challenging. God help you if you’re an intern on your first day.
Lucky for you, we’re pretty good at the whole social media malarky so we’ve thrown together a great social media roadmap for all you ambitious financial firms out there. Read on for all the why’s, who’s, where’s, what’s, when’s, how’s and how much’s!
Why should financial services use social media?
Over the last ten years, social media has grown exponentially. From the number of platforms out there to usage to active users, everything is much bigger than it was a decade ago.
The business side of things are changing, too. While social media started off as a way to reconnect with old friends, most modern businesses are on social media and are using it to attract new customers.
If you’re not on social media, where are you?
Yes, it takes time. Yes time is money. But let’s think ahead for a second.
A fully digitalised Gen Z is already entering the market. With Gen Z, everything starts and ends with the world wide web. If you want to reach the younger generations, you need to know where they hang out online and then you need to be there!
Products and services are being automated at an impressive speed and fintech companies are stealing a march on traditional offline financial service companies.
So, before you do anything else, go and create your social profiles and line up some killer content.
Who should you target with your social media?
To be able to create great and meaningful content, you need to know who you’re talking to. Next time you’re seeing a client, ask if it’s okay that you use them in your persona profiles?
If that’s cool, schedule an extra 10 to 15 minutes to write down some notes on who your customers really are? Here are some things to think about when building your personas.
- Background: job / career / family
- Demographics: gender / age / income / location
- Goals: main goals in their job
- Pain points: challenges/problems
- Solutions: your solutions to their problems
- Quotes: about goals / challenges
- Objections: why are they not using your service already?
When you’ve written up several different customers, you should be able to identify key trends and have a clear-cut idea of who your ideal customers are, what they struggle with in their day to day job and how the solution you are offering can bring them any value.
Where should you publish news from your financial services?
There are hundreds of social media platforms. Create accounts on as many platforms as you like but choose two or three platforms to focus on.
Using your buyer personas from before, you should have an idea of who your customers are and what social media platforms they use. It’s almost always a good idea to focus on these platforms.
What kind of content should a financial service company post?
You’ve found out who you’re writing to so now you just need to find out what to write and how to distil your knowledge into bite-sized chunks of useful content.
We like to think of our social media efforts as part of a few bigger themes and campaigns. We’ve got a few different things going on. The content we write these days is mostly aimed at you guys, the traditional financial sector.
This means that a lot of our social media efforts are about promoting content that we’ve written to help solve your pain points — just like this blog.
Another part is our presence in the digital industry. We like to keep on top of industry news and developments and we like sharing our thoughts and resources with like-minded marketing folk.
Last but not least, we like a good laugh, so if something is funny, it’ll often going on our social media!
You need to have a think about what your goals are. Why are you on social media?
Say you want to create awareness around a new bank account for young people starting university.
Here are a few content ideas for your social media:
Create mini visual case studies explaining key benefits
Case studies are always a great idea! It gives potential new customers a point to relate to and builds trust. I.e. Here’s Craig, his zero interest overdraft helped him learn to manage his finances without damaging his credit score every time he forgot the odd phone bill.
Share content from your blog
If your blog tackles some of the related problems that students face moving away from home for the first time, social media is a great way to promote these posts! This could be articles such as ‘6 ways to save money on food shopping when living in halls’, ‘how to calculate your budget’ or ‘tips from a graduate: how to have fun and save money at the same time’
Re-share third party useful content
You should never be afraid to share others’ work if it’s unique and relevant. Say you are based in Glasgow — there’s no harm re-sharing and reaching out to Glasgow University if, for example, they’ve written a great article listing all the best budget-friendly places to grab lunch in the city centre.
How do you post a good social media post?
“How do you post on social media?” What a dumb question, eh? We all know how to write up and publish a good status once in a while.
Don’t we?
One of the reasons why corporate accounts often end up poorly maintained is because there’s no time scheduled for social media marketing. It’s a task that anyone is welcome to pick up, whenever they have news to tell.
Let me tell you a little secret, there’s always news to tell or comments to make. If you do not regularly use your social media accounts, people are probably not going to listen the day where you actually do decide to post your news.
To ease the load and grow your social media following, split your efforts into two. Schedule a bunch of posts in advance via Hootsuite (or a similar publishing platform) so you’ve got a steady stream of content going out. Then top it up with some live sprinkles.
When is a good time to post on social media?
It’s worth considering the timing of your posts. When is your target audience online? Do they scroll through their Twitter feed during their lunch break? Do they check LinkedIn at 3 pm when they’re mentally done with the day? Do they go through it all on their morning commute?
Try different times you think might suit and keep an eye on the performance of your posts. You’ll quickly find out what works and what doesn’t.
If you’re using Hootsuite then try using the AutoSchedule function and see if the Hootsuite algorithm can tap into your followers’ schedules.
How much should a financial service company post on social media?
‘How often should we post?’ is a question we hear a lot — I mean, a lot — and our answer is always a bit vague: It depends.
Personally, I recommend you schedule a relatively packed calendar in advance — say 4 to 6 posts per week — and then post things sporadically in between when you’ve got real news to tell or if things relevant to you and your business are trending.
There are different views on whether you should spend money on promoting posts or not.
Here at Digital Impact, we like to promote our posts once in a while when we have something we’d like the world to see. A few pounds goes a long way in the world of boosting posts on Facebook.
If you’ve got some genuinely great content or something you want the world to know, it’s a great way to get it out there for a very reasonable price.
There’s a bit of help to get you started with your social media.
We offer full digital strategies for financial companies allowing you to lean back, watch your enquiries grow — and focus on what you do best, helping your clients overcome their problems!
Curious to see what we can do for your financial service company? We offer a free digital consultation where we will talk you through your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities along with what we can do to help you take your business to another level. Ready to kick-start your marketing? Claim your free digital consultation today.
