Social Media Checklist For Financial Advisors: Daily, Weekly & Monthly To-Dos

The average person will spend over five years on social media over their lifetime, according to a study by Mediakix.

Since people spend so much time on social platforms everyday, it’s become a great place to make connections with potential clients and industry leaders. Perfecting your social media presence can take a lot of time and effort, but it’s an irreplaceable part of any advisor’s digital marketing strategy. To help you not miss a beat when managing your social media accounts, check out the daily, weekly, and monthly checklists below for your advisor business!

Daily To-Dos 

Unlike some digital marketing tactics, social media is something you need to be checking and engaging with every single day. The more active you are, the more humanized and trustworthy your firm will feel.

1. Check & Respond To Your Mentions

Ignoring customers on social media is similar to ignoring the phone ringing when they call your help centers. –  AdWeek

A “mention” is when someone tags your firm’s profile in their own post. For example, if someone enjoyed your latest blog post, they might share it as a link and tag your firm. This is great news and you’ll want to respond to them as quickly as possible! At the bare minimum, give the post a “like” or share and comment on it. The faster you respond, the more reliable and attentive your firm looks.

According to Sprout Social, only 1 in 6 engagements with brands on social media will get a reply. This means if you respond to each mention, you’ll already be way ahead of the game! 

Auctus Advisors retweets a post they were tagged in by Twenty Over Ten.

2. Pre-Schedule Your Posts For The Day

To save you from logging on every time you want to post, you can use social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite to schedule your posts at the beginning of the day. This helps you to spread out posts through out the day across all platforms by just logging in once. All you have to do is load them in and hit schedule! Hootsuite will take care of the rest.

I recommend posting at least 2-3 times per day on Twitter and at least once on Facebook and LinkedIn. Consistency is crucial in your social media strategy, so don’t let that number slip! And, pro tip: on social media, timing is everything. For the best times to post on these platforms, check out this article.

3. Curate Third-Party Content

No one likes a business that’s too sales pitchy. Instead of making your social media all about yourself, you should use it as a place to connect with industry leaders and promote third-party content that benefits your niche.

Take a few minutes to look through trusted sources, such as ThinkAdvisor and Forbes, to find articles that your clients might want to read. When you find interesting and valuable content, save the link somewhere to share throughout the week.

4. Follow New Followers Back

Following someone back can really make their day. If a person initiated the conversation by following you first, you should be sure to follow them back to start a relationship!

If you want to go above and beyond, you could even message them introducing yourself and thanking them for being part of your community. This shows you’re thoughtful, caring, and that their engagement didn’t go unnoticed.

5. Connect With At Least One New Person or Influencer

There are countless businesses and thought leaders in the financial industry on social media. By following relevant hashtags and scrolling through your feed, you’ll definitely find someone that can inspire future posts.

Aside from getting inspiration, you could initiate a relationship by messaging the leader. Tell them that you’re a fan of their work and that you’d love to work together in the future. They could be a great resource for a future guest blog or third-party content!

Carla Dearing of SUM 180 connects with Angela Dorsey by sharing her article on financial planning on LinkedIn.

6. Research Other Profiles

Checking in on other firms can help give you a competitive edge and inspire your own social media efforts. What are other firms doing on social media to engage potential clients? They might have killer blog post ideas, creative lead-generation campaigns, or cool graphics. You might just find some ideas you want to implement on your own firm’s profile!

Weekly To-Dos

1. Engage With Followers 

Instead of sitting and waiting for followers to engage with your content first, you can start the conversation, too! This could be a list of top users, influential people in your industry, or folks you’d love to get to know. Regardless of who they are, you should be sharing the love by liking, sharing, and commenting on their content.

You could incorporate this into your routine daily, but doing it once or twice a week is the bare minimum. Scroll through your feed and engage with anything that catches your eye. You’ll find all sorts of useful posts for your clients.

2. Attend Twitter Chats

A Twitter Chat is a public conversation around a certain hashtag. This is a great learning opportunity for your firm and can give you great insight to a particular audience. By tweeting out your own posts with the hashtag, you can participate in the conversation and use the chat to get exposure to a whole new group of people. That way, people following the Twitter chat can find your brand! 

You could even create your own Twitter chat by starting your own hashtag. This builds community behind your business by letting others give you their feedback and personally interact with your firm. For example, if your niche is women, you could create a #FeminismFriday chat to get the conversation rolling with your clients.

Twenty Over Ten ran a social media campaign and turned it into a Twitter Chat by using the hashtag, #ABCsofMarketing.

3. Write and Schedule Upcoming Posts

Even with a scheduling tool, posting on social media can be time-consuming. By setting aside time at the beginning of the week to write all of your posts at once, scheduling them will be even easier. Plan captions for your upcoming blog posts, company updates, and sales pushes so when you sit down to schedule them, they’ll be ready to go.

This is also the time to look back at the third-party content you’ve been collecting on a daily basis. When scheduling these articles, make sure to write a catchy caption and tag the third-party provider to show the content is from a trusted resource. This will notify the third-party provider they’ve been mentioned, which gives you a better chance of getting noticed.

4. Create Graphics For Upcoming Posts

According to Hubspot, Tweets with graphics get over 1.5x more retweets than tweets without them. And Facebook posts with images see 2.3x more engagement than those without images. There’s no denying that adding graphics and images to your posts will help your posts stand out against busy feeds, so there’s no excuse not to use them!

Creating your own graphics might sound impossible as a financial advisor, but you don’t have to be a graphic designer to make appealing visuals. There are a few free and easy-to-use tools online that can help you make a graphic for posts in seconds, like Canva. Canva comes with plenty of templates, fonts, and images to use. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can even make your own from scratch!

Blanchard Wealth Partners uses eye-catching graphics to accompany the blog posts they share on social media.

Monthly To-Dos

1. Check Analytics and Reassess Goals

Even if you consistently check off every box on this list, it’s possible your social strategy still isn’t clicking. Clearly, maintaining a strong social media presence takes time, so you’ll want to make sure that time is well-spent.

To make sure your efforts are working, conduct a social media marketing audit at the end of each month. Each social media platform has their own analytics tools and specific metrics. Facebook offers Facebook Insights, Twitter offers Twitter Analytics, and LinkedIn Page Administrator will show you engagements with individual posts.

All of these tools will differ a little, but you should be tracking likes, shares, comments, followers, and overall post reach/ impressions on each. A strong social media presence isn’t built overnight, but this can help steer you in the right direction.

Facebook analytics from the Twenty Over Ten Facebook page over 20 days showing engagement, reach, followers, and page views.

2. Plan Ahead For Next Month’s Content

As a financial advisor and business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Setting aside an hour or so at the beginning of each month to plan upcoming content on an editorial calendar can save you time and keep you organized.

Round up and write captions for some third-party articles, plan your blog content, and decide on any fun campaigns you could do for the month. Planning this ahead of time will ensure you’re staying consistent with your posts and will keep you less stressed! There are countless free editorial calendars available online, or you can download Twenty Over Ten's free one by clicking here.