Financial Professionals Increasingly Use Digital Tools to Boost Productivity

In today’s fast-paced, rapidly changing financial services industry, investment professionals have hectic schedules full of meetings, keeping up with emails, booking appointments, and working to maintain client relationships while simultaneously trying to grow their businesses. Clients also increasingly expect to be able to communicate instantly online, and delivering this type of client experience in a highly regulated industry isn’t easy.

A growing number of financial professionals are turning to social media and digital marketing support tools to manage their workload, and connect and engage with clients and prospects. These platforms also offer a productive way to capture the attention of clients who might not be proactively communicating.

Like RoboWholesaler, many of these innovative social media and marketing support platforms have been strategically designed for today’s busy professionals who are looking for ways to save time and enhance their productivity so they can continue to build strong relationships and grow their practices.

One of the most powerful tools available to financial professionals is LinkedIn. RoboWholesaler has provided this checklist to help you get started using LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Checklist

• Utilize a high-quality, professional photo. Don’t lose credibility by posting a photo that is too informal or was captured on a phone.
• Don’t utilize salesy headlines—you can save the pitch for your Summary section. Let people see what your professional title is right off the bat (e.g. “Financial Advisor at Jackson Wealth Management,” rather than “Helping people achieve their financial dreams”). People appreciate directness.
• Be sure to add your practice website address, business phone number and email address to the contact section of your LinkedIn profile. Your connections on LinkedIn will be able to see each of these three items. Non-Connections won’t be able to see any of this.
• Shine in the Summary section: This is where you feature a concise differentiating value proposition, as stated in the last section. This should reflect your personality, your values and what separates you from other financial advisors. Keep it concise, no more than about 4 or 5 sentences—you’ll lose people if it’s too long. Also, in order to help with search engine optimization of your LinkedIn profile, try to include keywords your ideal audience is most likely to type when searching for investment advice online.
• Shine in the Summary section: This is where you feature a concise differentiating value proposition, as stated in the last section. This should reflect your personality, your values and what separates you from other financial advisors. Keep it concise, no more than about 4 or 5 sentences—you’ll lose people if it’s too long. Also, in order to help with search engine optimization of your LinkedIn profile, try to include keywords your ideal audience is most likely to type when searching for investment advice online.
• You can add “rich media” to your LinkedIn profile. This means you can add an image of your website on your LinkedIn profile that links to your website (under your Summary or Experience). To do this, visit LinkedIn and click on Profile > Edit Profile. Click on the icon that looks like a square box with a plus sign in it and then insert your link to your website.
• Include videos in your profile. If you have a video that features you or your company, include it in your profile so people can get an even better perspective on who you are and what makes you different.
• Consider customizing your LinkedIn profile URL (e.g. www.linkedin.com/in/johnjones).
• In your Experience section, make sure you include logos (which serve as links) to all the companies you worked for, current and past. Keep this section to one or two sentences per past position. You want to tout your experience but keep the reader’s attention on your current position.
• Add relevant skills to the Skills section of your LinkedIn profile to highlight your areas of expertise. (NOTE: Most firms cannot restrict others from endorsing your skills on LinkedIn, but most do restrict financial advisors from endorsing skills of others on LinkedIn.)
• Please, please proofread for typos, spelling and grammar. It’s amazing how many people publish their LinkedIn profile with errors—this will give your Connections the impression that you’re unprofessional or careless.
• Add your work email address as your primary email address for LinkedIn, so your notifications are received at work while on your work computer.