Should LinkedIn Be Your Number One Social Media Platform?

If you think about it, LinkedIn should be your number one social media platform. It’s going to be the place where your ideal referral partner has set up their profile and your perfect client if they are a professional who is working.

Working with financial advisers, I know that you are a sharing community who like to connect, catch up at conferences and PD days and connect with each other on LinkedIn. If you are going to use LinkedIn as a lead generation platform, you might like to re-consider who you actively connect with. I’m not suggesting that you delete each other instead think about connecting with your broader community too – your clients and referral partners.

What I’ve seen within the financial advice community.

1. At a basic level, advisers are joining LinkedIn and nearly completing their profiles. An easy way to check if your profile is complete is to log in – LinkedIn is great at informing you of ways to complete your profile, just follow the prompts. At a minimum, to protect your online reputation, I would encourage you to do this ASAP.

2. At the mid-level, advisers are commenting on their colleague’s posts, showing their support and sharing their recent attendance at PD days and so forth.

3. At the top level, advisers are showing their thought leadership by posting informative articles and thought-provoking posts.

Which level are you at?

For some advisers, their engagement with LinkedIn is limited to the above, and they are comfortable with that. However, for others, they see it and appreciate that it can be an excellent platform to attract, influence and convert new opportunities whether that’s new clients or business partners.

What is the first thing a prospective client will do when they want to know more about you? Even if you have been referred, most people [and age is no barrier!] will type your name into Google.

Related: Discover the 3 Types of Visitors to Your Website

Did you know that your LinkedIn profile will show up very high in the search results (often in the top spot) and usually before your website?

Personal branding has become a hot topic, and at the end of the day, your personal brand is what shows up on Google and your social media sites.

I and many many others have written informative articles about what needs to be written into your LinkedIn profile to position you correctly and ways in which you can use the platform.