In 2013, I was invited to run a session for a group of accountants and tax advisers on social media. I was warned that they were cynical and reluctant about social media so the first part of my session focused on persuading them that social media was not only a valuable tool to help them in their marketing, selling and client relationship management but also an essential one. And with the investment being mostly their time, it was especially of interest to smaller firms who did not enjoy large marketing budgets.
So why should a tax adviser use social media? Here are the main reasons:
- Research
– Social media enables you to find out what the market is talking about
– Learn what your competitors are saying and doing
– Gain insights into key clients, referrers, contacts and targets
– Obtain an inside track before meetings with clients and contacts
- Increase web traffic (SEO)
– Social media sites rank highly and will increase your position in search engines
– Blogging provides an easy way to update web site content regularly
- Raise your profile
– An easy way to reach a wide and new audience (viral value) – whilst a magazine might have a few thousand readership, there could be many more members of a LinkedIn discussion group who see your post
– An unobtrusive way to stay on the radar of your clients and referrers
– Enables you to build your reputation as an expert
– When others like, retweet or share your information you reach thousands of new contacts
- Showcase your expertise
– With existing clients in a non-intrusive way
– Encourage other partners to share your material with their clients and contacts
– Create a level the playing field with larger firms
– Niche approaches are highly successful and easy in social media
– Social media makes it easy for others to recommend you and share your information
- Keep marketing costs low
– Social media is another route to market
– It is mostly cash free (although time investment)
– Inbound marketing leads are cheaper to generate than outbound ones
– Social media can shortens the sales cycle
- Initiate dialogue with new clients/influencers
– Easy to see who is interested in your content and profiles
– A non-obtrusive and low commitment way to initiate contact and dialogue
- Remain on the radar of existing clients
– Non-intrusive way to stay “front of mind” of clients
– Easy to see what clients are talking about and a source of reasons to make contact
– Cost effective and fast way to update all clients/contacts with new information
– Repurpose your content to suit different groups of clients easily
– Recycle content (articles etc) for other audiences
There are numerous blogs on this site that will help you get to grips with social media – whether to improve your profile on Linkedin, prepare great blogs, ensure that your web site is properly integrated with social media platforms, start using Twitter, explore Google+ or to integrate social media into your existing business development campaigns. Make 2014 the year that you finally plunge in and start getting the benefits.