As published in Financial Planning Magazine, July edition.
One of the biggest fears that professionals and professional services firms have with building social influence and empowering team members to use and interact on social media is the fear of reputational risk; in layman’s terms, a professional social media disaster.
These fears can generally be summed up in two ways.
Firstly, the fear that we will say something wrong, break compliance protocol or perhaps initiate some viral ‘flame war’ against us and/or our company.
Secondly, a client or customer will comment negatively about us or our company via social media and that will likewise trigger an avalanche of social hate against us and our firm.
These, of course, are natural fears and without a plan and proper focus are legitimate risks to us as professionals and to the firms within which we operate.
It takes me back to the days when I started as an adviser in a large firm and I had to go through a three-month induction period before I would be allowed to have a corporate email account. The reason a corporate email account now is a given is because we know how invaluable it is and we are all expected to know the rules of engagement for email.
Other forms of digital communication, including social media, are equally, if not more valuable, and all we need to do to set ourselves free from the fear of damaging our reputations is to understand the rules.
So, here are my four best tips to save you from social media disaster:
1. Be active on social media
This sounds a little contradictory, especially considering most professional firms are dealing with reputational risk by simply avoiding social media. The problem, of course, is that whilst we have our heads in the sand, our clients, ex-clients and potential clients are talking about us whether we are there or not.
Not being on social media simply means we have no idea what is being said about us as individual professionals or about our firms. The best way to be able to manage, direct, diffuse and deal with any potential issues is to actually be where our clients are talking.
2. Have a crisis plan and an expert on-call
At the end of the day, there is always a negative side of anything and one day at some point in time things are going to go a little ‘pear-shaped’. However, taking the obvious pathway like blocking people or deleting posts or even entire social media profiles is not the optimal way to deal with things.
There have been times when I have needed to publicly apologise for expressing myself poorly online or to deal with a client issue or concern in a public forum. But when things go a little wonky, I have a plan and a process that removes emotion and makes sure we take the considered approach and to gain the ‘high ground’. That means team members know when to step back and who is allowed to post when things look like they are getting out of hand.
For many of our clients, we provide the emergency expertise to deal with a crisis that only comes from a wealth of experience, so make sure you also have an expert on call and have them help you build your crisis plan.
3. Understand that public complaints are a golden opportunity
Let’s face it, we all know there are difficult people out there and we all know things don’t go perfectly every time. However, what distinguishes the truly great professionals and businesses is what they do when confronted with difficult people or difficult circumstances. It is a proven fact that if you deal with complaints in a proactive and ‘client-first’ manner on social media, you actually gain significant credibility with your followers, leading to greater engagement and enhanced reputation. Remember, always be calm, always be reasonable and always take the ‘high ground’.
4. Manage your personal Google results
Chances are people are ‘Googling’ you whether you like it or not. The advice firms I work with survey their clients, with over 60 per cent of responding clients having admitted ‘Googling’ their adviser, indicating that the results they found had somewhat affected their opinion of their adviser.
It is important to understand that being unable to find you on Google is almost as bad as finding something negative about you. The more we rely on Google to validate decisions, the more our clients base their perspective of your reputation on what they find. After all, how good a professional can you be if you don’t actually show up anywhere?
The most powerful tool for easily ranking in Google is also the most effective social platform for most professionals – LinkedIn. The more complete your profile is, the greater your activity and the more connections you have, the higher the chance you will rank highly when someone searches for you. Make sure to be consistently checking that Google shows people what you want it to when they search for you.
Baz Gardner, a former financial adviser, has become a ‘household name’ in the financial services community over the last two years for raising professional industries into a new social age through his company, The Social Adviser.
You can connect with Baz on LinkedIn – au.linkedin.com/in/bazgardner