Financial planning groups and advisers needed to drastically improve their social media skills in order to truly reap the benefits and properly engage with clients, an executive in the IT field said yesterday.
Misguided judgments about social media platform Twitter had resulted in common errors as advisers still did not understand social media was an investment.
"To anyone specifically in consulting or planning, it's not about selling something, it's about providing advice," iknowIT chief executive James Vickery told InvestorDaily.
"If you look at Twitter as an investment and tweet something every day, it will ultimately pay off. You can't just start and expect to get 10 new clients after being on Twitter for a day."
In addition, advisers were not following social media etiquette, Vickery said.
"There are still those that go online and spam away with offers - if you appear to be advertising, people will be turned off," he said.
"Rather, think about building a common audience that relate to you to whom you can tweet."
Other mistakes included not following Twitter members in return, adding contacts on every social media platform rather than becoming proficient in one first, and worrying excessively over tweets being misconstrued as advice.
Advisers were in a unique position as social media enabled them to see what their audience was talking about and provided an opportunity to be a voice in a struggling economic climate, Vickery said.
"Being the voice in at least a small community of people is ideal, so advisers should focus on creating content that you know your audience is going to be interested in and also they will find you," he said.
Direct messages on Twitter were "considered a no-no", hence advisers needed to find ways of gaining permission to engage with their audience, he said.
Twitter followers could be converted into clients, but the level of interaction would need to increase by guiding them to more material, such as articles, a personal blog, a company website or educational video content, he added.
