Write Tweets That Will Solicit a Response

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

by Shauna Trainor, The Covenant Group

Using social media for mar­ket­ing pur­poses can often feel like you have arrived late and alone to a crowded event: There is no lack of peo­ple to talk to, but it may be dif­fi­cult to cut in on con­ver­sa­tions that began with­out you. Twit­ter is a main demon­stra­tion of this sce­nario. It can be con­fus­ing and over­whelm­ing to know who to fol­low, how to get oth­ers to fol­low you and what to say to your audi­ence once you have one.

Hash­tags and targeted tweets

To start get­ting a response to the short tweets you post on Twit­ter, con­sider chim­ing in on dis­cus­sions that have already started. Vis­it­ing Twitter’s search page makes it eas­ier to find out what peo­ple are talk­ing about. The page allows you to look up gen­eral trend­ing top­ics or use the advanced search oper­a­tors to find tweets spe­cific to your inter­ests or those of your client base. Search­ing for “life insur­ance,” for exam­ple, gen­er­ates a list of con­ver­sa­tions that include that phrase. This can pro­vide insight into what peo­ple are say­ing about the topic and may present you with the oppor­tu­nity to share your knowledge.

If you notice that many peo­ple are dis­cussing a cer­tain topic but have not addressed an angle you find impor­tant, write a new tweet that includes the phrase — with­out spaces — pre­ceded by a hash­tag (#lifein­sur­ance) that users will be able to eas­ily find. Be sure oth­ers are using the hash­tag for sim­i­lar pur­poses or at least know to search for it, oth­er­wise your tweets could go unread. Given the vol­ume and fre­quency of tweets, you may need to con­vey the same mes­sage in sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways to reach more people’s newsfeeds.

Respond­ing to other people’s comments

Con­tinue mon­i­tor­ing a few key phrases and hash­tags, and fol­low the users who are the most knowl­edge­able and vocal on those par­tic­u­lar issues — they may choose to do the same with you. As you build up a fol­low­ing on Twit­ter, you may find that other peo­ple are talk­ing about your busi­ness or are direct­ing their com­ments to you by includ­ing your han­dle (@yourusername) in their post.

Twit­ter is also a use­ful tool for dri­ving traf­fic to your other inter­net assets, such as your com­pany web­site, blog or other social media plat­forms. For exam­ple, if you recently posted an edi­to­r­ial but are dis­ap­pointed with the low response, con­sider shar­ing the link with your Twit­ter fol­low­ers and ask­ing for their feed­back. Did you just upload a fas­ci­nat­ing pod­cast to your web­site? Include a short­ened URL in your next tweet. This sets the tone for a two-way con­ver­sa­tion and can help you bridge the gap between your var­i­ous online mar­ket­ing activities.

Shauna Trainor is The Covenant Group’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ager. She focuses on The Covenant Group’s own mar­ket­ing strat­egy and also helps entre­pre­neurs through finan­cial advi­sor train­ing to lever­age social media and other tech­nol­ogy to spread the word about their ser­vices and prac­tices and build relationships.

Fol­low The Covenant Group

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Audience, Conversations, Covenant Group, Demonstration, Find People, Insight, Insurance, Life Insurance, Many People, Marketing, Phrase, Phrases, Search Operators, Search Page, Several Different Ways, Shauna, Tweet, Tweets, Twitter
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off

Learn to Prioritize Your Clients

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: Client Relationships, Clientele, Covenant Group, Disservice, Earning Potential, Entrepreneurial Journey, Financial Advisors, Ideal, Losing The Battle, Many People, Mature, Norm Trainor, Outset, Profits, Relationship, Segment, Shed, Waste Of Time
Posted in Norm Trainor | Comments Off

3 Ways to Earn Trust (Bachrach)

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

How do you become a Trusted Advi­sor? You start by earn­ing people’s trust, which you can eas­ily do by fol­low­ing these three steps: Com­mu­ni­cate with con­vic­tion, ask bet­ter ques­tions, and tell the hard truth.

1. Com­mu­ni­cate with Conviction

Have you earned the right to expect peo­ple to fol­low your advice and respond to your author­ity? No one will give you that author­ity unless you first believe you deserve it. If you show up in the mar­ket­place assum­ing that you’re not going to be trusted and peo­ple aren’t going to respond to your author­ity or advice, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The result is a col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment where the client directs you instead of fol­low­ing your advice.

I often see clients or prospects who strongly believe that they know what they’re doing. Oth­ers think, “It’s my money, so I should be in charge.” There’s cer­tainly some truth in that, but unless they’ve ded­i­cated them­selves to becom­ing finan­cial experts, they should find some­body smarter than them­selves and defer to that person’s exper­tise. Unfor­tu­nately, many finan­cial advi­sors don’t con­vey the impres­sion that they really are more com­pe­tent or knowl­edge­able than their poten­tial clients and prospects. There­fore, peo­ple don’t defer to them.

To become a Trusted Advi­sor and have peo­ple defer their finan­cial deci­sions to you, your clients need to think, “I trust you and I believe you have my best inter­ests at heart. I also trust that you’re com­pe­tent enough and, between the two of us, you know bet­ter.” There’s noth­ing wrong with a client ques­tion­ing your author­ity, but at some point all clients want to find an advi­sor they can trust. Deep down inside, they want you to tell them what to do. If they can trust you, they’ll do it. If they can’t trust you, they’ll find some­one else. That’s why so many peo­ple have more than one advisor—they don’t com­pletely trust any of them. Com­mu­ni­cate with con­vic­tion, and you’ll earn your clients’ trust as well as all of their business.

2. Ask Bet­ter Questions

Have you ever noticed that most peo­ple would rather talk about them­selves than lis­ten to you talk about your­self? If you want to build a high-trust rela­tion­ship, shal­low chitchat or talk­ing about your cre­den­tials won’t do it. You need to talk about what’s mean­ing­ful, impor­tant, sig­nif­i­cant, and com­pelling to that per­son. One of the best things you can do to pre­pare for that kind of con­ver­sa­tion is to gather infor­ma­tion in advance. Any­time some­one refers a poten­tial new client to you, ask the refer­ring per­son ques­tions that will lead to mean­ing­ful, impor­tant, sig­nif­i­cant, and com­pelling infor­ma­tion. Find out as much as you can about your prospects: What are their val­ues, inter­ests, pas­sions, and goals? What do they do for fun? Who do they care about most? When clients or prospects see the con­nec­tion between the value you bring and what’s most impor­tant to them, they tend to respond pos­i­tively. In the process, you lay the foun­da­tion for a long-lasting, high-trust rela­tion­ship with the peo­ple you truly want as clients.

3. Tell the Hard Truth

If your clients don’t defer to your author­ity and exper­tise, there’s a good rea­son, and it’s not them. Chances are, it’s because you’re behav­ing like a sales­per­son. Instead of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with con­vic­tion and earn­ing your clients’ respect, you’re fol­low­ing the old “cus­tomer is always right” men­tal­ity. Even though your clients may have lit­tle or no finan­cial exper­tise, you defer to them rather than take the chance of upset­ting them and jeop­ar­diz­ing your insur­ance or mutual fund sale.

I spend a lot of time coach­ing my Trusted Advi­sors to tell the truth and be direct. At first, many argue, “I’m afraid of how clients will respond if I tell the truth.” I under­stand that. How­ever, if you want to be a Trusted Advi­sor, you have to tell the truth—even when the con­se­quences are less than desir­able. Think about it this way: If you tell peo­ple the truth and they respond poorly, do you really want them as clients? Most peo­ple appre­ci­ate and respond pos­i­tively to the truth; hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a cor­ner­stone for build­ing trust.

Copy­right © Bill Bachrach, Bachrach Associates

    Lat­est Advi­so­r­An­a­lyst Prac­tice Growth Sto­ries

Tags: 3 Ways, Advice, Collaborative Environment, Conviction, Financial Advisors, Financial Decisions, Financial Experts, Heart, Many People, Marketplace, Money, Prospects, Self Fulfilling Prophecy, Three Steps, Trusted Advisor, Truth
Posted in My Practice | Comments Off