When crafting Facebook posts for your business page, your number one objective should be to engage your audience. Period. Why is it important to engage your Facebook network? When your audience interacts with your posts, you increase your reach. When you increase your reach, you increase your brand exposure, which will help grow your audience and build your credibility as a thought-leader.
If advisors want their Facebook posts to reach the right people, they need to understand how the Facebook newsfeed works. The newsfeed is essentially the result of an algorithm; the posts of every friend you have and every page that you follow are scanned and collected by Facebook. These posts are then ranked, based on how relevant and worthwhile Facebook deems they are specifically to you. Only the top-ranked information shows up in your newsfeed. Therefore, the more you interact with a particular person or page by reacting (liking), commenting, or sharing, the more weight those pages will carry. As a result, they are more likely to show up in your newsfeed more frequently.
Savvy advisors will make sure they are regularly posting “interaction-worthy” content on Facebook. In order to get more interaction with your posts, you should not strictly post content that is finance-related. Have fun and get personal. After all, the culture of Facebook is social.
We run numerous Facebook pages for advisors, and here are a few examples of the types of posts we craft to elicit engagement:
A or B Questions: This is an easy-response question that asks your audience to choose between two options. Below is an example of a recent post we used for a client that received close to 100 comments!
Sentimental Questions: These questions pull at heart-strings and bring back memories. Here’s an example from one of our clients:
Fill In the Blank: These posts are difficult to ignore because when someone in your audience reads this type of post, they immediately think about how it applies to them. In a short one-word response, people are able to inject their input and show their personality.
Fun Trivia: These don’t have to be directly related to your services, as long as they make sense to your audience. These questions should be fun and simple to answer.
Personal Pictures/Videos: Let them get to know you personally, including your family and your hobbies. These posts mirror the very essence of Facebook and help humanize your brand. Share pictures of your vacation, your dog “Barkley’s” cool new trick, your daughter baking her first cake or what an amazing tennis player you are.
Motivational Quotes/Images: In a digital world of drama and chaos, be an uplifting leader. Your audience can read these posts quickly and they strike an emotional chord, causing the reader to “like” the post. Creating quote-cards to make them more visually appealing is also a good idea.
Articles/Helpful Information: This is the most common type of post we see on Facebook. Basically, a link that goes to an article on a specific topic. But remember, don’t just post links! It’s important to add commentary to your posts and at times pose a question around the topic of the article. Here’s a good example:
This is just the beginning. There are so many ways to creatively engage your audience through Facebook. Ask yourself the following question before your next post “Would I engage with this post?”
@StephenBoswell is President of The Oechsli Institute and author of Best Practices of Elite Advisors. @KevinANichols is the Chief Operating Officer for The Oechsli Institute and author of The Indispensable LinkedIn Sales Guide for Financial Advisors.
