Social Media Best Practices for Advisors and Investment Managers

By Damon Elder, president, Spotlight Marketing Communications

When you think of social media, what comes to mind? Do you think of chatting with friends? Young people dancing to the latest trends? Or do you think about expanding your brand and reaching a whole new audience of potential partners and investors?

LinkedIn turned 20 years old this year and currently has more than 930 million members across 200 countries and regions. Social media has come a long way since the early 2000’s and, today, can be an essential method for increasing visibility and driving conversions. That being said, many professionals in the alternative investments industry still have questions when it comes to why they should utilize social media and what exactly the best practices may be.

Here we’ll discuss the reasons to incorporate social media into your marketing strategy and how you can get started today.

Why Use Social Media?

Social media is an affordable tool to add to your marketing arsenal that offers several potential advantages:

Increase Visibility – LinkedIn is no longer just a recruitment platform for job seekers. According to research from Hootsuite, there are 36,000 newsletters from various business leaders on the platform and 40% of LinkedIn visitors engage organically with a page in a week. That’s a lot of potential views for your brand or company.

Reach New Audiences & Build New Relationships – Similarly, LinkedIn can help you reach new audiences. One LinkedIn influencer’s content was viewed over 75 million times in 2022. While you may not reach that level, a LinkedIn ad has the potential to reach 14.6% of the world’s population, allowing you to quickly, easily and affordably establish new relationships with people you may have otherwise never met.

Establish Yourself As An Industry Leader –With social media, you can instantly post your thoughts and research on your area of expertise or the industry as a whole. You can post anything from recent acquisitions, new team members or longer blog posts. You also have the ability to engage with other industry experts and identify emerging trends.

Build Trust & Humanize Your Brand – According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, 63% of people buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs and values. Additional research shows that financial readers trust executives who are active on social media more than those who aren’t by a ratio of 6 to 1. People want to work with, and invest in, brands they like and trust. Social media allows you interact directly with potential investors and partners on a human level. By putting a tone and a face to your brand, you become more than a cold company. You have the ability to become a trusted friend.

How To Build Your Social Media Strategy

Getting started on social media doesn’t have to be complex. By following a few best practices, you can easily begin to establish or improve your social media presence.

Know Your Audience – Before you get started, you must be aware of exactly who you are trying to connect with. Are you looking for other industry leaders? Potential investors? Possible employees? You can’t be everything to everyone, so try to be authentic to yourself and the audience that you are seeking. This will help to build trust and potentially increase engagement.

Keep Your Posts Relevant – Is there a topic or concern that is currently affecting your industry? Social media can be a good place to address this, building trust and establishing yourself as a brand that is up-to-date on trends. Soon, your audience may start to see you as a leader in your sector.

Make Your Posts Visually Appealing & Easily Digestible – Adding a graphic or even a short video is a great way to catch your audience’s eyes when they are scrolling. A graphic with icons or a short sentence is much easier to read than a block of text. You can –and should—include a call to action which may link to a longer piece, your website or another place where visitors can get more information.

Repurpose Existing Material – You probably already have some existing marketing pieces. An important stat from a brochure. An interesting take from a thought leadership piece. Some information on a new hire from a recent press release. These could all be repurposed as social media posts with links to the longer works.

Tag & Hashtag – Tagging people (using the @ symbol with their name) alerts those people to your post, while using hashtags (the # symbol with a common phrase) alerts people interested in those phrases. By using tags and hashtags, you help others to more easily see your posts and you may start a string of engagement.

Remember Compliance – As you know, the alternative investments space is heavily regulated and social media is no different than other marketing. Be sure to have a compliance process in place and archive everything in case you need it in the future.

Finally, remember it’s called social media for a reason. Social media is a two-way street and you can’t expect your presence to grow by simply posting content. You also need to engage with, reply, respond and share other brands’ content. Those brands will often then share your content and, additionally, this is a great way for you to stay top-of-mind without creating new content of your own.

Social media may seem daunting at first, but with a strategic plan in place, you may find yourself taking advantage of its many benefits sooner than you think.

Damon Elder is the president of Spotlight Marketing Communications, which has helped numerous alternative investment sponsors raise more than $30 billion in investor equity since its founding in 2011. He is also the publisher of The DI Wire.

The views and opinions expressed in the preceding article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The DI Wire.

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