Financial advisors earn referrals from a variety of different sources. But if a full third of your online referral traffic came from a single place, would you take advantage of that opportunity? Odds are, you wouldn’t want to neglect a potentially lucrative source of leads. But you might be doing just that, if you aren’t fully harnessing the power of social media!
But aren’t social media websites just convenient spots to chat with friends and share pictures of cats? Not at all! In fact, social media has become a leading source of referrals for businesses. As of December 2014, over 31 percent of all referral traffic was coming from social media. Compare that to just 22 percent over the same time period in 2013, and it’s easy to see that social media is becoming an increasingly powerful source of referrals.
Of course, social media is a vast field. Before you embark on a social media campaign, you have to decide which platform you want to use. One thing to remember is that while the above statistics sound promising for social media overall, stats from individual social media platforms will vary significantly. Consider this: Referral traffic from StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Youtube has stayed level or even decreased slightly over the past three years. Yet we see an overall increase in traffic from social media sites – Why? In one word: Facebook. In just one year – December 2013 to 2014 – Facebook’s share of overall referral traffic grew by nearly 60 percent.
Since traffic from Facebook currently makes up the bulk of social media referral traffic, and one third of your potential overall traffic, you don’t want to miss out on an important opportunity. When you put together your Facebook marketing strategy, keep the following tips in mind.
- Use images to grab more attention. Choose a size that is optimal for your timeline and your readers’ news feeds.
- Provide a short quote from your blog post when you share links, so that your readers know what to expect. Choose a section of your blog that will make your audience want to click in and read more.
- Share your posts at the optimal times. Use analytics tools to determine when your audience is most likely to be online and see your updates.
- Use your profile to place links to your website. For example, you should link to your website in the “About Me” section. Take advantage of the opportunity to put links in your photo and status update comments.
- Create Facebook ads. Organic post reach has dropped in the past few years, but one way to ensure your intended audience sees your posts is to utilize paid advertisements. Facebook ads are a bargain compared to search engine advertisements.
If you have already invested time and money into building a website for your practice, then the next step is to entice visitors to your site. Traditionally we have done that through search engine optimization (SEO) and paid advertisements. These are still valuable tools, of course, but the above figures demonstrate the fact that your marketing strategy shouldn’t overlook social media.
For more information on how social media can boost your referral traffic, give us a call. We would be happy to answer your questions about social media, Facebook ads, and your marketing strategy.