5 (More) Social Media Shortcuts for Financial Advisors

With all of the responsibilities that come with running your own business, keeping up on social media can be a daunting task. Once you commit to building your online presence as part of your marketing strategy, however, you must be an active user in order to reap the benefits. But how can you possibly find the time to keep your momentum going, research fresh content to post, and engage with users?

To help you meet this challenge, in a previous post we compiled five social media shortcuts for financial advisors—but now we're back with even more! The simple tips discussed here will both save you time and boost your online presence in the most efficient way possible.

Do you publish a weekly newsletter? How about a monthly blog? You can repurpose existing content by posting it on your social media platforms. Here’s how to do it: 

• If you send a newsletter out to your e-mail subscribers, upload it to your website and then share it with your followers on social media. This is a fast and easy way to reach a wider audience (i.e., users who don’t subscribe to your newsletter).
• If you post regularly on a blog, consider refreshing outdated posts and then sharing them on your social platforms. Keep in mind that a complete rewrite is not necessary. Instead, look for any outdated information and update only what’s needed. You’ll drive new traffic to your blog while getting more life out of your older posts.

Another time-saving strategy is to use the same content but then tweak the social media posts that promote it. For example, if you publish a new blog post, create multiple social media posts with different copy and schedule those to go live throughout the month.

As you begin to post regularly on social media, it’s important to measure what’s working for you—and what’s not. Most social media platforms have built-in analytics that you can use for free, but I also recommend Sprout Social, which has in-depth reports for each platform that you can directly export.

One word to the wise here: The amount of data available with any social media analytics tool can be overwhelming, so you’ll want to focus on only those metrics that have an impact on your business. For example, if one of your goals is to drive traffic to your website, look for those posts that have the greatest number of clicks and write additional posts about those topics.

Having trouble keeping social media top of mind? Try blocking time on your calendar each week for anything social media related, which may include finding content, writing and scheduling posts, and putting in placeholders if you know of something on the horizon that you’d like to share. If you don’t want to do it all in one day, block time for a couple days during the week. For me, setting aside time every Monday to plan out Commonwealth’s social media posts for the week has been a successful strategy.

Whatever schedule works for you, the key is to do these tasks consistently, so that social media becomes a part of your normal workday routine.

Even if you schedule social media posts in advance, it’s still important to monitor any activity. That way, you can respond in a timely manner to users who engage with you. But if you’re on multiple social media platforms like I am, it can be time consuming to log in to each site individually to see if your posts have gained any traction.

Here, one time-saving shortcut is to set up e-mail notifications within each platform, so that you’ll receive alerts when someone has engaged with your posts. You can decide what types of notifications you receive (new follow, retweet, etc.), as well as the frequency of these e-mails (instant or once daily). If you don’t want to overwhelm your inbox, you can even set up mobile notifications, which will display only on your smartphone.

I can tell you from experience that one of the more time-consuming, although worthwhile, aspects of managing social media profiles is researching articles to share with your audience. To help make this task more manageable, keep a running list of potential articles as you find them. The next time something grabs your attention while you’re browsing online or someone forwards you a piece that’s interesting, simply copy and paste it into your list. Then, when you do have the time to write a post, half the work will already be done!

In some cases, you’ll want to share an article right away. Fortunately, most online articles now include a Share Now button that makes it quick and easy to share the content with your followers. Just be sure to add in a sentence or two on why you think this article is beneficial. Remember, your followers want to hear from you.

Social media can be a robust part of your overall marketing strategy—but it doesn’t have to be overly time consuming. Using the shortcuts discussed here, you can effectively and efficiently maintain and manage all of your social media profiles to help build your online presence, establish your brand, and reach your ideal clients.

Have you found success using other time-saving tips to manage social media? Do you use an analytics tool? Share your comments below!