Thought Instagram was just for selfies and influencer-paid promotions? Think again. Instagram can work for financial advisors, just like you! Getting the hang of using Instagram as a powerful marketing tool won’t be easy. But with a little bit of preparation and thoughtful execution, Instagram can become one of your favourite business marketing tools. Read on below to learn how to make Instagram work for you.
Common Instagram myths debunked
Instagram Is Like Any Other Platform
Instagram is, in fact, not like any other platform. The format of content on Instagram is so wildly different from — say — LinkedIn, that you won’t be able to recycle (copy-paste) content from one of your social media accounts to Instagram. Keep this in mind as you create your Instagram content.
Instagram Is About Food & Selfies
There’s much more to Instagram than just food and selfies. Several major companies, including financial firm UBS, use Instagram to connect with a demographic they never tapped into before.
Financial Advisors Can Only Post About Investments
You don’t need to post content strictly related to investments, financial planning, or your business operations on Instagram. You can be creative with your posts and show your financial advisory firm in a different light. If, for example, you’re enthusiastic about volunteering in your free time, then post about it. If you’re having an event, post about it. If you make a new hire, post about it. Allow your clients to get to know you and your firm.
Why should Financial Advisors use Instagram?
When used correctly, Instagram offers several benefits to financial advisors. According to Instagram themselves, 81 percent of users believe Instagram helps them research products and services; thus, you’re going to want to stay active on the platform to reach more potential clients.
How to make Instagram work for you
Optimize Your Bio Link
Ideally, your marketing should run on the hub-and-spoke model. This means that you have your hub (website) and several spokes (social media accounts) that lead back to the hub.
Instagram allows you to add links to your bio so you can easily redirect people visiting your Instagram account to a different page. Ideally, you should set the link in your bio as your personal website or the website of your financial advisory firm. Then, whenever you post something new on Instagram, you can have the caption urge visitors to check the link in your bio for more info.
Geotag Your Posts
If you’re sending out a post from your office or wherever your business operates from, be sure to add the location to the post. If you didn’t do this while initially posting, you can always go back to the post and edit it.
You may be wondering why it’s important to geotag. Instagram bunches up all posts tagged from one location together and sorts them according to top posts or recent posts. If you (and hopefully your clients) send out fun or informative posts tagged at your business location, it’ll build awareness on Instagram surrounding your brand.
Use Instagram’s Save Post Feature
This strategy doesn’t directly affect how you interact with clients on Instagram, but it could help your Instagram marketing strategy.
Instagram allows you to save a post and sort them into a collection for you — and only you — to view later. Though you don’t need to sort these saved posts into collections, doing so will make it easier to find what you’re looking for later on.
You can use this feature for research and inspiration. Here are some collection ideas you may want to try out:
- Ideas for future posts
- Great captions you could adapt to your own content
- Visual and aesthetic inspiration for future posts
- Competitors’ posts
Use Highlights
Use the Stories Highlights feature of Instagram to showcase what your business is all about and share more information about your services as a financial advisor.
Stories usually disappear after 24 hours. Highlights make stories available on your profile permanently and compile these stories into categories.
With Stories Highlights, you’re going to want to post evergreen (timeless) content. Here are some basic Highlights categories you can create:
- About. You can post info about yourself, your business, your values, your mission, etc.
- Locations. If you work out of different locations, talk about each one and share photos taken from each location.
- FAQs. As the acronym implies, you can list here frequently asked questions and their answers. This will save you a lot of time when responding to customers since you can simply invite them to refer to your FAQs Highlight.
- Services. You can list in this section the various services you provide as a financial advisor.
Post at the Right Times
Aside from the content of your posts, it’s also important to consider what are the ideal posting times that will allow you to reach your target demographic.
To get started, you can do a little trial and error. Try posting at different times of the day and days of the week to see which posts got the most engagement.
If you don’t trust your gut and would rather depend on cold hard data, you can use the analytics tool built into Instagram. You can find this under the Followers section.
Finally, it helps to know who your ideal clients are. When do your clients wake up? When do they get off work? Do they work from nine to five? When are they most likely to check Instagram?
Today, Instagram is much more than a teenager’s social networking platform of choice. It’s a business tool that allows you to share content with potential clients in a graphics-focused format. Now that you know how to use Instagram as a marketing tool, you’ll be able to reach people you never thought you could.
I hope that you’ve found this post on how to make Instagram work for you useful.
If you need help getting started with Instagram, contact myself or a member of my team here.
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