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Tag: LinkedIn marketing

One tweet leads to $4.1 million sale: Gary Vaynerchuk at #LLSMC

For more #LLSMC updates, see our recap of day one or learn why LIMRA selected Hearsay Social as its Elite Strategic Partner for social media.

We’re glowing after a fantastic second day at LIMRA’s Social Media Conference for Financial Services. After our team closed out the day with a discussion on the path from compliance to ROI, we hosted all our customers and partners at a dinner over the Boston skyline. Thank you so much to everyone who attended!

Earlier in the day, Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), co-founder and CEO of VaynerMedia and a well-respected social media thought leader, keynoted the conference with a presentation bullish on the power of social sales.

Obsessed with social selling, he said the only reason he believes in social media is because it helps sell.

Gary’s chief belief is that every person’s job is to be a storyteller. (Fittingly, much of his talk drew on his own personal experiences of growing up in the Soviet Union, emigrating to the U.S., and eventually establishing a presence in technology and social media.) Relationship managers like financial advisors and insurance agents are successful when they are telling stories, not just trying to sell directly. And they distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack by telling different stories and by telling them in different ways. That’s where social media comes in.

One of his friends, who tweeted “thinking about moving,” eventually bought a $4.1 million apartment after a progressive insurance agent reached out in response to the tweet. This is just one of many successful social sales examples, and it’s a sign of the times we live in.

“We are living through the biggest culture shift of all time,” said Gary, referring to the unstoppable proliferation of the consumer Internet over the past two decades and social technologies today.

Gary Liu (VP Marketing, Hearsay Social), Paul Desimone (VP, Compliance and Regulatory Services, LIMRA), Erik Qualman (author of Socialnomics), and Augie Ray (Director of Social Media, Prudential)

Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote set the stage for several great presentations throughout the day by executives from John Hancock, Mass Mutual, Prudential Financial, Fidelity Investments, Northwestern Mutual, Google, LinkedIn, LIMRA, and more.

In his session, Augie Ray (@augieray), Director of Social Media Prudential, called attention to the fact that, though banks and insurance companies are in the “trust” business, they are at the bottom of the trust rankings, according to a study by Edelman. Fortunately, social networks provide a way for real advisors and agents to correct that gap.

Ameriprise, as an example, allows people to find advisors that they have shared connections with on LinkedIn.

In a later session, a representative from LinkedIn confirmed the power of your professional network. Ben Ortman (@ortman_social), Social Business Connector and Innovator, Global Accounts, LinkedIn, explained that the key is to find individuals with relevance in mind. Build trust and strengthen your relationships so you can reach out at just the right time.

All in all, a very informative day at #LLSMC! To read more, see our recap of day one or learn why LIMRA selected Hearsay Social as its Elite Strategic Partner for social media.

Greg Bailey (VP Marketing, Pacific Life), Clara Shih (CEO, Hearsay Social), Jim Kerley (President, LIMRA Services), and Michael Lock (COO, Hearsay Social)

Smiling faces en route to Hearsay Social’s #LLSMC dinner on Thursday.


https://twitter.com/SEIAmyS/status/370686656829214720

5 steps to building a great LinkedIn Company Page

Significantly more than just a recruiting tool, your LinkedIn Company Page is an ideal place to showcase your business, from its products to its people.

With more than 225 million members around the world, LinkedIn is the go-to place for professionals to network online and learn about your company. Before they do business with you, potential customers are researching your company and looking to understand who you are. Today much of this research happens online before engaging with a live company representative. Treat your LinkedIn Company Page like prime real estate to inform these millions of professionals on the latest news from your company, products and services you offer, business opportunities, and job openings.

Here are five easy steps to building and maintaining a great LinkedIn Company Page:

1. Make it complete

Having a complete profile is essential for both individual professionals as well as businesses. Your LinkedIn company page should not only describe what your company does at a high level, but also drill down on specific specialties. LinkedIn lets each company explain in detail their various products and services, so make sure to represent all your company’s different lines of business (if you have them) or different products. For example, an insurance company may take this opportunity to present both its home insurance policies as well as its life insurance policies.

2. Choose a strong cover photo

Today, it’s understood that the key to driving engagement on social networks lies in the effective use of visual content. On LinkedIn, it’s no different. The first thing visitors will see on your company page is the large cover photo, so make sure it looks professional, reflects the attributes of your brand, and gives the visitor a reason to look around some more. In the below example, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans highlights its family-based values and logo, complementing its dedication to providing financial services.

Feel free to update your cover photo periodically to reflect new product launches, expansions, or simply to refresh the look, while always staying true to the brand.

3. Share great content regularly

As always, the glue holding any social network together are its members and the content they share amongst each other (hence the “media” in “social media”). To that end, it’s imperative that businesses share content with their audience from LinkedIn Company Pages. As your customers and prospects increasingly turn to social networks to research your company, the opportunity to present them with relevant news also grows.

Share business updates from your company, but don’t be entirely self-serving. Before posting an update, link, or other media, ask yourself the question, “Would I want to read this story?” Just this brief sanity check will hold you to a high standard when sharing content. In general, share a medley of content that will truly interest your followers, not just ads about how your company is so great.

4. Get employees involved

Your influence depends entirely on your people. The easiest way to expand the reach and engagement on your LinkedIn Company Page is simply to encourage employees of the company to like and share updates from the company with their own networks. Specifically, encouraging employees to share job openings is always a great idea to boost recruiting efforts (and can often be tied to referral bonuses). Additionally, many companies take employee involvement a step further by distributing content directly to employees through a social sales and marketing platform like Hearsay Social.

Another smart tactic to drive even more traffic to your LinkedIn Company Page: if your employees have their own professional websites, have them embed the LinkedIn Follow Company button.

5. Measure results and take action

Regularly reviewing your LinkedIn Company Page insights is crucial to improving your social strategy over time. From “page visitor demographics” like industry and company size to click/view rates, you can gain a solid understanding of who your audience is and what kind of content resonates with them. Knowing this enables you to iterate and steadily increase your reach while also driving further engagement. In the end, it all comes down to following the data.

In addition to supporting individual pages on LinkedIn, Hearsay Social also allows brands to manage their LinkedIn Company Page directly from the same platform. Hearsay Social Brand Solution supports brand marketing teams so they can effectively plan, publish, and measure messages on the LinkedIn Company Page using the same enterprise platform already deployed across their field and compliance teams. Not only does the platform help brand teams manage content published to the LinkedIn Company Page, but Hearsay Social also supports compliance and archiving needs as well.

Check out this SlideShare for even more tips on building a great LinkedIn Company Page:

Thrivent Financial's path from social media compliance to ROI: Lessons from LinkedIn's Financial Services Summit


LEFT TO RIGHT: Knut Olson, SVP, Financial Network, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans; Paul Johnston, VP and Deputy General Counsel, Thrivent Financial; and Hearsay Social COO Michael Lock.

Many financial institutions get started on social media only to manage risk, but with the appropriate policies and processes in place, social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter can be extremely valuable for sales representatives. Yet many firms still struggle with making the transition from social media compliance to ROI.
At LinkedIn’s Global Financial Services Marketing Summit in New York last week, Hearsay Social COO Michael Lock (@michaelhlock) sat down with representatives from one of Hearsay Social’s customers, Thrivent Financial, to discuss their organization’s social selling success. Thrivent’s Head of Sales, Knut Olson, teamed up with his Head of Compliance, Paul Johnston, to share how they have gone beyond social media compliance to enable their financial advisors to sell socially.
Before using Hearsay Social, Thrivent was tracking social media activity for compliance manually, and it was so time-intensive that they could only allow a small number of field representatives on social. Eventually, however, they had to catch up wih the field.
“Social media is here,” said Paul. “Whether or not we like it from a compliance and legal perspective, our sales reps are going to be using it.” To make compliance manageable, Paul recommended assigning a single team or person to focus on understanding the technology and regulations. “The rules are changing rapidly” said Paul, and the “functionality of social networks is changing rapidly.”
It really helps having a point person to keep an eye on these constant changes. Also, Paul described how important it was to establish expectations cross-functionally, so that everyone remains flexible and can adjust as regulations or technology changes in the future.
Technology for his field sales organization, Knut described, was intended to “accelerate a human process that is already part of the business.” So, in their relationship-based business, social media was a no-brainer. Hearsay Social has Thrivent Financial sales representatives to attract prospects, build stronger relationships with customers, and grow business overall.
You can watch the full session here:

See more from the event:

LEFT TO RIGHT: Knut Olson, Michael Lock, and Paul Johnston.

Reestablishing trust via social media: Hearsay Social keynote panel at LinkedIn's Global Financial Services Summit


The Hearsay Social team was delighted to join LinkedIn and executives from across the financial industry in New York last week to discuss how marketing and sales strategies are evolving due to the seismic shift in online behavior from social media.
The impressive lineup of industry experts discussed everything from the state of the economy to the future of regulation and compliance on social media to an audience of 300 senior marketing and business leaders from around the globe.
Our CEO Clara Shih, who blogs regularly about social enterprise topics on LinkedIn, spoke on a fascinating keynote panel alongside Sallie Krawcheck (@SallieKrawcheck), Past President of Merrill Lynch and Herb Greenberg (@herbgreenberg) of CNBC. In their discussion, moderated by Dan Roth (@danroth), Executive Editor at LinkedIn, they discussed the impact social content on LinkedIn has had on them and their businesses. With some examples from some of the financial services firms Hearsay Social works with, Clara highlighted how social content can help financial advisors become experts in their field. Here is the video recording:

Earlier in the day, Jill Schlesinger (@jillonmoney), Senior Business Analyst at CBS News, gave a talk on the state of the economy, and encouraged organizations to speak to consumers in ‘their’ language: “If you can’t figure out a way to communicate with people in a way that they can take that information in, its useless.” She also highlighted the importance of regulation to consumer protection:


Eileen Loustau, Global Director of Social Media at Blackrock/iShares, highlighted how social media can help organizations ‘humanize’ themselves. Saying, on social media, “try to be a person, not a company.”


A recurring theme throughout the day was how pervasive social media has become across financial services firms. Already, 1 out of every 3 professionals on the planet is on LinkedIn, according to David Hahn, Vice President of Product at LinkedIn. And those numbers are only growing.

Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih and Jennifer Grazel, Global Head of Category Development – Financial Services, LinkedIn


See more from the event:

How social sellers make it to the top: Insights from LinkedIn Sales Connect

Earlier this month, we at Hearsay Social had the opportunity to be a part of LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ inaugural summit, hosted by Mike Derezin (Global Head of Sales, Sales Solutions, LinkedIn) at the W Hotel in San Francisco. It was an incredibly inspiring event about how the selling discipline has evolved in the social era. I myself learned a tremendous amount and wanted to share the top takeaways.

Selling experts panel, from left to right: Jill Konrath, Kurt Shaver, Miles Austin, Koka Sexton.

 Most of your customers are on social networks–that’s a given. But did you know that 75% of them are influenced by what they read there? In the social media era, buyers are more educated than ever before. (The Corporate Executive Board recently reported that the average B2B buyer is already 57% of the way through the purchase decision before even engaging with your sales rep.)

Traditional cold outreach today is essentially ineffective. Mass emails and brute force phone calls are annoying to your prospects, not helping to close deals. On the contrary, social selling tactics are helping businesses today increase sales through relationships and social data that help them find the right people, make introductions, and refine their messaging.
Typically, the path of a social salesperson follows four stages. First, a salesperson must establish and enhance their profile on the appropriate social network, typically LinkedIn or Facebook. Then there’s the initial wave of connecting with present and former colleagues, friends, and even family. You never know what connections will come in handy.
Once the social salesperson has set up their profile and connections, they must consistently work toward building their brand and establishing themselves as an authority in their particular area of expertise. This is done through status updates and sharing of original and third-party content. In the final stage of this path, the social salesperson reaches 2nd- and 3rd-degree contacts, and the process repeats.

Jill Konrath speaking at the Summit.

Many of these topics and others were discussed at LinkedIn SalesConnect earlier this month. One panel, dedicated entirely to “Social Selling,” included panelists Koka Sexton, Sr. Social Marketing Manager LinkedIn; Kurt Shaver, Founder, The Sales Foundry; Miles Austin, The Web Tools Guy; and Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling. Jill conducted a large-scale research study looking at top-performing sales reps versus their average peers and found four major differences in whether and how they used social networking sites in the selling process.
Here are four ways social sellers make it to the top, based on Jill’s study:
1. Top sellers do their homework.
Top sellers have mastered use of LinkedIn as a research tool. They always research prospects before reaching out, compared to their regular sellers who often cold call without context. By the time top sellers reach out via phone, email, or InMail, they are able to speak knowledgeably and credibly regarding their prospect’s role, company, and industry, and to reference past job experiences as well as mutual connections.
2. Top sellers invest in growing their networks.
On average, top sellers have much bigger networks and invest in continuing to grow those networks compared to their peers. Top-performing reps make a habit of connecting to existing customers, who can provide valuable references or introductions for future deals. Jill says that “social networks make it so that reps don’t have to fight the delete button” because they can go in warm.
In addition, top B2B sellers connect with not just one or two contacts at a prospect organization but many contacts. They hedge their bets, refusing to put all their eggs in one basket lest a particular contact become unresponsive, act as a gatekeeper, or leave the company. To continually update their knowledge on accounts, sellers can create targeted prospect lists with saved searches on LinkedIn.
3. Top sellers invest in a professional presence on social networks.
They take the time to always include a photo and to ensure that it is professional yet personable. Top reps articulate relevant skills and experience, and share content to showcase their subject matter expertise. Importantly, top sellers write their profiles as they would want the customer, not a recruiter, to read it. Instead of bragging that they are “the #1 rep” or “a hard closer,” they view their profiles from the customer’s eyes and ask “do I appear like someone a customer would want to work with?”
4. Top sellers invest in content (status updates and groups)
Top sellers understand LinkedIn has evolved from just a place to post your resume to a full-fledged content sharing network with streams and groups. They set aside a few minutes every week, if not every day, to share timely status updates and relevant articles they find across the Web. In addition, the best performers also make a point of joining highly targeted groups on LinkedIn to find what their customers and/or peers are talking/asking about. These are triggers that help top sellers stay top-of-mind in a low touch way and keep in contact with their customers.
Congratulations to Mike and the entire LinkedIn Sales Solutions team on a great event!

Financial services leaders from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo to join Hearsay Social at LinkedIn FinanceConnect

Content and conversations fuel the customer journey in the age of social media. Strategic content marketing drives deeper connections with your customers, which ultimately drives more business.

Next Thursday, May 2, at LinkedIn FinanceConnect, executives from the financial services industry, including Claire Huang (CMO, JPMorgan Chase), Lisa Shalett (Head of Brand Marketing and Digital Strategy, Goldman Sachs), and Rachel Perkel, (SVP, Head of Wealth Management Marketing, Wells Fargo Bank), will join Silicon Valley leaders LinkedIn and Hearsay Social to discuss how to use content to best leverage social sales and marketing.

Whether you’re seeking to understand how to balance social media rewards or risks, concerned about traversing the social media regulatory landscape, or just interested in the LinkedIn Influencers program, the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team has prepared a stellar event.

If you’re attending, be sure to catch Hearsay Social on the following panels:

Compliance track: 2013 Regulatory Landscape  (3:15 – 4:00 PM)

  • Yasmin Zarabi, Senior Director of Legal, Hearsay Social
  • Joe Price, Senior Vice President, Corporate Financing/Advertising Regulation, FINRA
  • Iain Duke-Richardet, Director – Head of Technology & Licensing Compliance, RBC
  • Sean Shore, Manager, Business Conduct, National Bank Financial Wealth Management
  • Lisa Shalett, Head of Brand Marketing and Digital Strategy, Goldman Sachs

Navigating the social media regulatory landscape can be daunting, especially for global firms. In this session, we will discuss the current state of social media compliance and how innovative compliance organizations can evolve to stay ahead of future regulatory and technology changes.

LinkedIn Influencers Roundtable (4:00 – 4:45 PM)

Only four months old, the LinkedIn Influencer program delivers fresh and frequent content to our insight-hungry member base. Three of our most prolific influencers join us to discuss the impact that the combination of content, social, and the professional audience has had on their lives and businesses.

Compliance track: Path from Compliance to ROI (4:00 – 4:45 PM)

  • Michael Lock, COO, Hearsay Social
  • Knut Olson, Senior Vice President, Financial Network, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
  • Paul Johnston, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans

Many firms get started in social media in order to manage risk, but with the appropriate policies and processes in place, LinkedIn is a valuable asset to the field organization. How do successful firms make the transition from social media compliance to ROI?

How to use LinkedIn to drive leads

In the past, we’ve spent time talking about the value of social marketing, how to engage your audience, and how to track ROI on those efforts. In 2013, social selling will prove just as essential.

What is social selling?

Social selling is all about extending what you do as a salesperson on a daily basis into the social media world. That means building a community, making connections, sharing valuable and relevant content, and doing all this in a way that demonstrates you as the thought leader in your space. Social selling isn’t shouting “call me for a quote” on LinkedIn. Instead, through your interesting articles and thoughtful InMail messages, your audience will naturally go to you for advice and their business.

Here are four easy steps to boost your social selling efforts on LinkedIn:

1. Build your community

You’ve heard this many times before, of course, but make sure you have the following fields filled out on your LinkedIn profile:

  • Summary: Create a rich summary of your background. Don’t just tell your audience what you did, tell them why you did it. People will be interested in your career path and the lessons you learned along the way.

  • Photo: Upload a recent professional headshot. Don’t use stock images or vacation photos. This photo should represent what you look like when you arrive in a sales meeting.

  • Background: Fill out your educational and professional background as well as many fields as you can.

The next step is to find your audience. Search for groups by your industry, alumni groups, and for your own company page. Don’t just passively join, join the conversation. Respond to threads, answer questions, and emerge as the group thought leader. If there aren’t any active topics in the group, start one yourself.

LinkedIn makes it really easy for you to find new connections as well; they provide recommendations in the right column of “People You May Know.” If you know them, connect! It can’t hurt to have too many connections in LinkediIn. The more people in your LinkedIn professional network, the more people that will see your status updates and have the opportunity to engage with you and your business.

2. Listen for social signals

Maybe you’re tired of seeing a thousand kitten and baby pictures posted to social networks. Some of these seemingly pointless postings, however, indicate significant life events that you should be aware of as a business owner. What’s important to your connections could be important to your business.

If you see life events such as a job change, city change, promotion, new baby, new home, or marriage, these are important events in your connections’ lives that require significant financial decisions. For example, your connection could be wanting to create a will now that the baby is born or maybe they need to join investments after they get married. These are the kinds of social signals you should be monitoring.

Tip: To engage about a life change, simply reach out and say, “Hi Mike, congratulations on the promotion! I’m so glad that all of your hard work has paid off at Company X. Just wanted to say hello and congrats!” This isn’t a sales pitch, it’s a reminder pitch. Maybe you’re a financial advisor, but Mike already knows that, so your job is simply to remind him that you’re still there and care about him and his career.

3. Be a trusted source

Why do car salespeople have a bad reputation? It’s because they are known for being pushy with their sales pitch. You don’t have to be that person to be successful. In fact, don’t be that person on social media! Nobody wants to hear “call me for a quote”. Why should they call you for a quote versus the other thousands of insurance agents in the United States?

Show your contacts why they should call you by being a thought leader:

  • Be the resource:  Share valuable, relevant content with your audience.

  • Offer help: Look for connections’ questions  on LinkedIn and answer them. Follow up to make sure they got what they needed.

  • Practice critical thinking: Have you ever posted an article without reading the entire thing? That’s not a good habit. Read the article and, instead of posting a summary or the title of the article, share what you think about the article. Do you agree? Do you respectfully disagree? It’s okay to share your opinion as long as you’re not offending others and explain why you’ve to come to your conclusion. Your followers will appreciate your leadership and authenticity.

Tip: Next time you’re on LinkedIn, post an article along with your thoughts about it. By sharing this information, your connections will value your opinion and come to you for advice. Remember, it’s not about actually selling products via social media, it’s also about being the resource that people trust.

4. Maintain relationships with your customers


Remember rolodexes? If you wanted to call a contact, you used to flip through your rolodex and pick up the phone. Why not do this with LinkedIn?
If you’re looking for a way to retain customers or just keep in touch with your current connections, try my “Russian Rolodex” tip. Once a week, I visit my Connections page on LinkedIn (my virtual rolodex) and move my cursor down the list with my eyes closed. After a random amount of time, I click on a name and open my eyes to see the person I’m going to reconnect with today. I either give them a call to say hello or simply send them a message via LinkedIn.
If you choose someone you haven’t spoken to in a very long time, click on their profile and try to learn about recent changes in their life. Did they get a new job? Are they in the same city? When I follow up with them, I just comment that I was thinking about them, looked through their profile, and saw that they had just moved jobs. “How are you enjoying Firm Y now?” It’s a great way to randomly reconnect with people to retain those relationships and keep you top of mind.

Hearsay Social CEO speaking at Wells Fargo Tech Summit on April 3

After the exciting Hearsay Social Innovation Summit hosted at our headquarters last week, we’re happy to say the conversation on technology and business continues on.
Hearsay Social CEO and Founder Clara Shih has been invited to speak at the Wells Fargo Securities Research and Economics 3rd Annual Tech Transformation Summit, which provides a forum for leading technology companies and investors to discuss how new technologies like cloud computing and social media affect business.
In a session moderated by Jason Maynard, tech research analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, Clara will be discussing the future of social media and the role platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook play in the next wave of sales and marketing.
For those attending the Wells Fargo Summit, Clara’s session will be held at 2:50 p.m. on Thursday, April 4.

Heads of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Kiva.org, and Silicon Valley startups join Hearsay Social’s inaugural Innovation Summit on 2/27

See highlights from the Summit here.

Today we are excited to announce that on Wednesday, February 27 Hearsay Social will be hosting its inaugural Innovation Summit for financial industry leaders to discuss the future of financial services and relationship management in the social era.

Hailing from top banks (including Bank of America and Citi) and select Silicon Valley organizations (including LinkedIn, Kiva, and Hearsay Social), panelists and keynote speakers will convene at Hearsay Social’s San Francisco headquarters to discuss the impact of technology on traditional financial services organizations.
This afternoon event brings together experts across fields to explore the rapidly changing technology landscape available to financial institutions. With the growing availability of social sales productivity tools, these organizations cannot afford to be behind the curve; by participating in this event, they are committing to exploring the cutting edge of technology.
Speakers include:

  • Sallie Krawcheck, Former President of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Wealth Management and Former CEO of Citi Wealth Management
  • Jonathan Lister, VP Marketing Solutions, LinkedIn
  • Premal Shah, President, Kiva
  • Clara Shih, Founder and CEO, Hearsay Social

Following the Innovation Summit, Clara Shih will participate at the SIFMA Social Seminar in “A Conversation with Leaders of Social Media in Silicon Valley,” alongside Jennifer Grazel, head of category development – financial services, LinkedIn; John Ploumitsakos, director of online sales, Twitter; and Christine Trodella, global director, Facebook. The panel will be moderated by Steven M. Samuels, managing director, global advisor communications, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
For those who can’t make it to the Summit, a live stream of the event will be available at the top of this page. You can also follow the conversation at #HSSInnovation.
We look forward to exchanging ideas with innovators from around the globe, helping the world’s largest organizations identify opportunities to leverage new technologies and build relationships in the social era.

JFAM West: Financial services professionals build trust through social media


Trust is the most important factor to financial professionals when making their buying and partnering decisions, according to a recent survey.
With this conclusion, Daniel Rothman of the Financial Times set the stage for Friday morning at JFAM West, a forward-thinking event focused on how financial services marketing will transform in the coming months and years. Technology or not, trust always tops a financial professional’s wish list.
And yet, more and more professionals today rely on social media to establish that trust.
“Social media and the advent of mobile devices has fundamentally changed what people expect from businesses,” said Hearsay Social CEO Clara Shih. “We expect to be able to talk to our colleagues and friends before making significant decisions about what to buy and whom we choose as our financial representative or advisor.”
After her opening remarks, Clara sat on a panel with technology and marketing leaders from LinkedIn, BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Intuit to discuss how that fundamental shift is playing out.

For example, Eileen Loustau (Global Director, Social Media, iShares/Blackrock) shared that 89% of professionals said they are more likely to purchase a product based on their financial organization doing social media right. That’s an incredible statistic showing just how crucial the new channel has become.
Increasingly, panel participants agreed, the financial services industry must not just allow but actually expect financial representatives to share information online with their business partners. Hurdles to adoption, like compliance restrictions or the lack of tools, are slowly dropping away.
One technology breakthrough Matt Dunn (Director, Social Strategies, Franklin Templeton) and the other panelists especially showed interest in was “social signals,” messages and cues made on social networks that indicate life events, like the birth of a new baby, moving to a new home, or a job change. Such cues offer a tremendous opportunity for advisors to keep in touch with their clients and continue to offer financial guidance.
Explore our blog and website to learn more about compliant social sales and marketing for financial services.