Twitter tips to increase brand awareness

According to Twitter, there are over 320 million active Twitter users around the globe. In this day and age, having a presence on this giant of a social media platform is crucial to the success of your business. Twitter provides a medium that enables Advisors to connect to their target audience and helps them to reach new prospects.

On average, around 6,000 tweets are Tweeted each second. That’s 500 million tweets per day. People may take notice to your tweets or they may scroll past them…it is all in how you craft your Twitter strategy.

Here are 4 easy ways to better engage your Twitter audience:

A picture is worth 1 million characters

90% of information that comes to the brain is visual. If you want people to stop scrolling and notice your content – use a visual.

Generally speaking, as an Advisor, you work with numbers. Using graphs is a great way to visually share this type of information with your audience. Statistics show that content with a visual component gets 94% more views than those without (source).

65% of senior marketing executives believe that visual assets (photos, videos and infographics) are core to how their brand story is communicated (source). Images evoke emotional responses to readers, and the use of the right picture can bring out strong emotions and reactions in your readers (happiness, compassion, disgust, or sadness).

It’s important to remember that the majority of readers will scan a page rather than read it word for word. In a world where people are constantly bombarded with content, one of the most successful ways to capture your audience’s attention, especially the scanners, is through the use of visual assets.

Captivate your audience and allow them to visualize your message through the use of visual assets (example: see tweet to the right).

Use #hashtags

Twitter is famous for its use of hashtags. Although, hashtags may not contribute towards your engagement rate to the extent that you may think. Yes, using hashtags will allow you, as a Financial Advisor, to reach your target audience. And yes, hashtags help to expand your reach on Twitter. That being said, when it comes to hashtags, less is more. According to a study done by LocoWise, adding too many hashtags to your posts can actually decrease your engagement rate as shown in the table below.

	0 #	1 #	2 #	3 #	4 #
% of tweets with the corresponding number of hashtags	55.8	24.45	15	3.13	1.62
Engagement rate	1.9	1.84	1.2	0.4	0.19

As a Financial Advisor, hashtags also allow you to see what is trending, what questions or challenges your audience is having, as well as new technology or information that is relevant to your field. Some popular hashtags in the Financial Services industry include:

#FinServ
#Advisors
#FinPlan

Tweet, tweet, tweet!

Set goals for your Twitter account that focus on how often you post per day or week. A great way to stay on track is to schedule your tweets using a social media management system such as Hootsuite. The more you tweet about topics relevant to the financial industry, the more of the right attention you will get – but be sure you are sharing valuable and unique content, and not just posting for the sake of posting.

Also, people like to see that you are engaged on Twitter. If you see an interesting article that you want to share with others – retweet it! This will help you build relationships with other users. Staying in the loop with current news and trends shows your audience that you are ahead of the curve.

Millennials are the next investors, and more importantly your future clients. This means that tailoring your marketing strategy to their habits should be a priority. An easy way to stay on top of Twitter is to set aside 15 minutes per day to schedule your tweets.

Join in with discussions

The beauty of Twitter is that you can interact with as many people as you’d like.

This is where the @ sign comes into play. This is one of the most important influencers of engagement on Twitter. This feature allows you to directly communicate with other users on Twitter by answering your @ replies and tagging others when you comment or share their content. Over time, this will allow you to build relationships with your audience, and more importantly with your influencers.

Industry influencers, on social media, are some of the most trusted sources of information. Do some research and find out who your influencers are. Connecting with these influencers will help to increase your reach, credibility and overall social media image.

Joining discussions will keep you in the loop of what your prospects and clients are saying and what questions they’re asking. For Advisors, joining in on discussions and sharing useful content can help you to become a thought leader in the industry. People will start coming to you for answers and insights because you have built trust with them.

Gaining insight on what your prospects and clients are interested in or what is challenging them is also a great source for new content ideas. Learning from your audience will enable you to post unique content that is aimed at solving and educating them on their greatest financial challenges.