Is LinkedIn worth the trouble?
For those looking for the shortened version – the answer is a resounding YES!
In fact LinkedIn is really not optional for financial advisers any more, as the opportunity cost of not using it is simply too great to ignore now. You must have a presence on it and it must be a very strong presence.
Why? Well here are a few reasons.
Your professional profile
Your website tells people about your business and the services that you provide. Your LinkedIn profile on the other hand gives you the opportunity to tell people about you, the businessperson. This is your opportunity to demonstrate your career credentials, your skills and your experience. You also have the opportunity to include recommendations from happy clients. Your LinkedIn profile offers you the opportunity to connect on a personal level with prospective clients.
Give yourself a head start
It’s always great to have something in common with a prospect when you meet them, to get off on the right footing! Maybe you went to the same school, shared a common previous employer, are in the same sports club or have an unusual interest in common. This gives you a conversation topic for those first few minutes as you draw each other out into the conversation. LinkedIn is a rich source of this information and might help you to press the “happy” buttons from the word go…
A valuable research resource for prospects too
We all use Google to check out potential suppliers before we contact them. The same applies to financial advisers. I think it’s safe to assume that almost 100% of prospective clients will carry out some research of you and your business before entrusting their money with you! Your search (Google) results hopefully will list your website and your LinkedIn profile.
If you’re not on LinkedIn, what does this say about you? To many people, it shows a lack of professionalism, not having your finger on the business pulse. Equally damaging is having a very poor presence on LinkedIn. A badly created profile, with a very small number of connections hardly sends out the message that you are the best provider in town to meet the needs of a potential client.
Driving traffic to your website
It’s all well and good having a great website, however you’ve got to ensure that people actually get to visit it and see your content. And this is where LinkedIn plays such an important role. You can share content that is housed on your website out via LinkedIn. And of course if any of your network interact with your content by liking it or sharing it themselves, your content then is highlighted to a whole new network of contacts, leading these people back to your website where they hopefully will learn all about you.
Helping your search engine results
Social media in general and LinkedIn as one of the main platforms now plays a significant role in achieving excellent search engine results. While of course it remains very important to have your website pages set up correctly, with well written content featuring your chosen keywords, that on its own is not enough. Fresh, original content that is endorsed by other people earns a lot of brownie points with Google and helps push your site up the search results. And LinkedIn is one of the most effective places for this to happen for you in a business context – when you share your business related content and your insights, and others then interact with them.
Providing great insights
Another benefit of LinkedIn is the insights that you can get. You can a real sense of whether your content is of interest to people, and more importantly, who is actually finding it interesting. As people, like, comment upon or share your content, you learn who is reading and finding your content of interest, in a way that no other medium (except email marketing) will deliver. Maybe it’s worth your while reaching out to these people and suggesting a coffee?
The benefits of LinkedIn are huge and can’t be ignored by financial advisers. Is it time that you learned how to get the full benefit from it?
