Boost Your Social Media Strategy: 6 Twitter Tips for Financial Advisors

Marketing yourself and your firm on various social media platforms is one of the best (and free!) marketing tool available, especially since users reportedly spent 20%. more time in apps during the lockdown, so if you want to get your content to where people are, then start leveraging social media as a part of your marketing strategy. While it’s important to have a presence on multiple social media platforms, Twitter is a great place to start because it is a fairly simple channel to use and it also allows you to deliver a great deal of content to clients and prospective clients several times a day when used correctly.

There are over 330 million monthly active users on Twitter and 145 million daily active users, so if you aren’t on this platform, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with others. If you are targeting a younger audience, Twitter can be especially helpful for reaching them in a creative way. However, knowing how to create a relevant profile in the world of tech-savvy millennials can be challenging but with a few simple tricks, it can be a lot more simple than you may expect. Read on for top tips to make your Twitter page a valuable addition to your marketing plan for your financial planning practice.

6 Tips to Boost Your Presence on Twitter

1. Your Profile

The basic first steps for getting set up on Twitter include choosing a handle, profile picture and creating a bio. These should be simple, yet recognizable and consistent with your brand.

• Profile picture: Choosing a clean, professional headshot or logo for your profile picture is key.
• Handle: Your Twitter handle is also important as it’s how people will seek you out on the platform. So choosing a handle that makes it clear what financial planning firm or broker-dealer you are associated with is important. I recommend using your name followed by your firm’s name. Whatever you decide to use as your handle, it should be easy for your clients and prospective clients to find.
• Bio: Your Twitter bio shows up at the top of your profile and should include any keywords for your firm’s services, as well as a link back to your website. If there is something unique about your firm, such as specialty services, make sure to mention that. There are thousands of advisors using Twitter so anything that helps you stand out will drive more traffic to your profile and website.

Twenty Over Ten client, Cogent Strategic Wealth has a strong Twitter profile run by their CEO, Michael J. Evans. His profile picture is clear, the background photo has the name of the company with a tagline and he has included a bio, location and a link to their website.

2. Tweeting With Purpose

Current and prospective clients should be able to count on your Twitter page to deliver helpful information they may want to read. Sharing pertinent and insightful content is not only how you acquire new followers, but also how you keep them engaged. Followers will lose interest quickly if your content becomes stale, uninteresting or doesn’t pertain to them. I see a lot of financial advisors sharing content varying in topics from wealth management to retirement planning and more. The content you share should also be in line with the services your financial planning firm or broker-dealer offers. When done correctly, a good Twitter page will continue to add to your client expectations and will encourage potential clients to reach out.

One of the most important things to remember when choosing what to post on Twitter is adhering to compliance guidelines. Many financial advisors hesitate to get started on social media due to compliance red tape. However, current guidelines do give financial advisors flexibility when it comes to social media.

Twenty Over Ten client, Mark Sharp Retirement, does a great job of posting useful blog content that offers advice to his audience, as well as, “Friday Factoids.”

3. Use Imagery

A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s true and I have the stats to back it up! In fact, tweets that contain images are 34% more likely to get retweeted than posts that have no photo at all. Relevant photos capture your audience’s attention and can add more context to your posts especially when you have a limited character space. Supplementing your Twitter content with an asset like an infographic is a great example of giving your captivated audience something to connect with beyond a bunch of text. Thankfully, there are a lot of really great (and free!) resources for stock imagery, infographics and more.

Twenty Over Ten creates and uses infographics for social promotion

4. Include Links

Linking back to your website and other pertinent content from affiliate sites is another great way to “beef up” your shorter Twitter posts and increase awareness for your financial planning firm. Including links in your posts is a great way for your audience to learn more about topics that may be of interest to them and also positions you as a valuable resource for useful information. Tweets that contain a URL to a website or landing page have a 26% greater chance of getting shared. I recommend using free link-shortening tools like Bitly to save even more character space in your tweets.

Additionally, if you share a link from a third-party source, this is a great way to “network” with other followers virtually, therefore growing your followers, and it makes them more likely to link back to one of your posts on their Twitter platform.

On our Twenty Over Ten Twitter account, we frequently share posts from third-party sources as can be seen in the above tweet, where we shared a useful article from Social Media Today.

5. Follower Engagement

Replying, retweeting and favoriting your followers’ posts on Twitter is a great way to engage with your followers and also grow your follower base. Responding to questions and engaging with your followers illustrates your firm’s promptness and attentiveness to clients. Twitter is also a great platform to showcase your firm’s personality by being open, honest, insightful but also funny and relatable.

6. Use a Scheduling App

Make your social media efforts easier and more efficient by automating your content distribution with a scheduling app, such as Lead Pilot, Hootsuite or HubSpot. These resources allow you to load in and schedule multiple Twitter posts as needed. This helps encourage more frequent posting during a busy workday. However, it is still important to log in periodically to check your profile to stay engaged with your followers.

With Lead Pilot, you can easily create, deploy, and monitor your social posts with just one click. Using this tool can boost your presence and by connecting with new leads and staying in contact with older ones by easily creating social posts. With Lead Pilot, you can

• Schedule your content to make sure you stay in front of your audience
• Automatically archive your posts so that you can meet regulatory compliance
• Create infographics, videos and more hand-select content to share from the library or create your own

Final Thoughts

By deploying these simple tips into your Twitter efforts you can begin to build a page that is both a great marketing asset for your firm and a useful resource for clients and potential clients. Keeping up consistent branding, developing fresh content and engaging with your clients are the first steps to creating a successful page. Over time, your page will continue to grow and gain attention!