According to recent studies, there’s about 2.46 billion social media users worldwide. And we can only expect to see this number grow in the next couple of years. With so many people using social media, it was a natural move for businesses in many industries to turn to social media in order to get their brands noticed. But what about the businesses in the financial industry? How can they embrace social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter? Read on to find out.
Advertising
Let’s start with the obvious – just like businesses in any other industry, financial service companies can use social media to attract more clients. This means you should start a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter page and use it to communicate with potential clients. You can do this by posting news about your business or sharing videos and articles relevant to the financial industry. What’s so great about advertising on social media is that unless you want to go for featured ads, it’s absolutely free. So, even if you’re just a small financial service company trying to break through, you can still use it to attract clients. Just make sure you don’t post too often as that can get your posts labelled as “spam” which is something you definitely shouldn’t be aiming at.
Prospecting
One of the most popular social media platforms used for business purposes is LinkedIn. If you have a premium account on this platform, you can connect with almost anyone. This allows you to create searches according to the profile of your preferred customer and find those who might be interested in turning to your business in the future. If you decide to do this, bear in mind that you should limit your searches to 2nd degree connections. Also, make sure you ask for referrals if necessary. It’s also important to mention that LinkedIn has a tagging feature that can make organizing your contacts a real piece of cake.
Customer service
Today, people want to get real-time responses from their service providers. If the service company doesn’t respond quickly enough, users actually tend to share their frustration with other people on social media. And there’s no need to say that no company wants negative publicity. That’s why more and more banks and insurance companies are turning to social media as a channel for interacting with their clients. So, if you’re running a financial service company, you should definitely think about offering customer service on at least one social media platform. If you don’t have enough time to respond to every message or comment yourself, make sure you hire someone who will do it for you.
Market research
When starting a new business, it’s very important that you conduct a market research in order to make sure investing in your idea really pays off. So, no matter if you want to become a freight broker or operate an insurance company, you should first turn to social media and conduct a proper market research. This includes learning the language of your clients in order to come up with the right marketing appeal. Another way you can use social media when conducting a market research is track recent trends that might help you get your business off to a good start.
Branding
There’s no need to say that every business out there needs a strong brand in order to be able to stand out among the crowd. While there are many things you can do to improve your financial brand, using social media definitely is one of the best among them. Just take a look at it this way – today, all you have to do in order to speak through the voice of your business is use Twitter. And with so many people using social media today, they’re always going to form an opinion about your company based on what you’ve tweeted and posted. So, tweet the right things and you should be able to see your client list expanding.
Social media really is shaping the way financial industry of today works. So, if you’ve been thinking about entering entrepreneurship and starting a financial service company, you should definitely think about embracing social media as much possible.