This blog post is derived from a White Paper of the same name as published in the Australian Journal of Financial Planning.
With all of the attention on Social Media these days, it is just as important for a business to know what not to do as it is to know the right thing to do. But not to fear, in this blog post, we will give you some essential tips on the right ways to grow your business through an effective online strategy. Avoiding these top four mistakes will save you a lot of unnecessary costs, and potentially, embarrassment.
Leveraging your influence and ability to connect to a large audience is an amazingly powerful business growth tool, but if you get it wrong, at best you can waste both time and money, and at worst damage your reputation, costing yourself clients.
These four mistakes can be adapted to suit almost any business, however, at The Social Adviser, we focus on professional services firms. These issues are the things we most often see executed incorrectly by financial advisers, accountants, solicitors/lawyers, and consultants; in other words the givers of professional advice.
You will notice that all four points on my list are closely related and are the result of a fundamental misconception we professionals seem to have about how to represent ourselves and our businesses online.
Missing opportunities
In the old days, it was drummed into me to always ask your client for referrals. Whilst this approach has some merit it, it is very inefficient when compared with what you can do with the tools of a Social Adviser.
Remember to always take opportunities to link from one aspect of your digital strategy to another. Even if the correspondence is as mundane as a normal client admin issue via email, draw their attention to a relevant blog post, video or Facebook discussion that you think your client may enjoy and preferably share.
Interesting trumps smart
I have seen this in almost every professional’s blog, website or newsletter. We tend to be so focused on our own business and trying our best to represent our technical skills to our clients. After all they are paying for those skills, so we should demonstrate them, right? Wrong. The fact that they are interested in you, or are already your client, is by now an indication that they already believe you have the skills. Try to create interesting content that your clients will actually enjoy reading and want to share.
Talking about you
The more you talk about yourself, the more you sound like an advertisement, and research shows that most people do not trust advertisements. If you do it right Social Media provides the opportunity for your clients to refer you easily, seamlessly and without even having to think about the fact that that is what they are doing.
Thinking Social Media is an Ad
You might think to yourself: ‘Hang on; you are always talking about how to grow your business using Social Media?’ Yes, that is true but it is not about advertising, it is about networking and building relationships at scale. Create influence and give people a chance to feel like they know you; that you are someone they can trust and want to form a professional relationship with.This blog post is derived from a White Paper of the same name that was published in The Australian Journal of Financial Planning. You can read it in its more detailed entirety here: