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Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world, with an advertising audience of 353 million users on the platform. For professionals in the insurance and financial services industry, Twitter presents an opportunity to network and use the social network as a place for finding prospective clients. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind if you want to be successful at using Twitter for finding prospective customers.

Brian Haney, CLTC, CFS, CIS, CFBS, LACP, CAE, NAIFA's Young Advisor Team (YAT) Leader of the Year recently shared five keys to his success as a financial professional with InsuranceNewsNet's AdvisorNews. Haney is the Founder and Vice President of the Haney Company in Silver Spring, MD. He has been a loyal NAIFA member since 2013 and is very engaged and active in our association.

A LinkedIn profile is a critical tool in today's world if you want to grow your business and client base. It can add immense value to your professional and personal brand. Conversely, the absence of a social media profile means lost opportunities. 

Follow LinkedIn's Lead

The LinkedIn website will lead you through the process of building your profile. Have an updated resume handy as you begin the process. Take a look at profiles of others in your industry. Make sure to use a professional headshot; it can make or break your profile. While it may be tempting to use a decades younger picture−don't. Your picture should reflect your professional, approachable, trustworthy self. It's worth spending some money to be sure you have the right picture, and don't be afraid to smile.

Facebook is a huge source of potential clients and customers and professionals who overlook Facebook as a connection channel with prospects miss out big time. Here are three tips for prospecting using Facebook and getting positive results.

1. Create a Profile that Defines you

To find new clients, it's important to create a unique profile that showcases who you are and what you care about. How you present yourself on Facebook is a big factor in whether they visit, or even notice, your profile. 

If you run a company with fewer than 500 employees, you have a small business. According to the SBA, small businesses make up 99.7% of the businesses in the country, so you have good company.

But how do you remain a successful small business – one that doesn’t fail within the first 18 months? Here are 5 things you must know.

It's become the new norm to be directed to an official social media page when you visit most business websites. Why? There are 3.2 billion active internet users worldwide, roughly 45% of the world population. This figure is an honest answer to why businesses are now engaging prospective customers on their social media platforms.

With the expansion of the digital space, all spectrums of industry have become more interactive in their social media platforms to net potential clients. Recruiting within social media platforms varies from sector to sector. The focus here will be on the financial sector professionals and how the LinkedIn platform has been essential in helping them recruit potential clients.

If you are a financial advisor trying to grow your practice, Dean Thurman, Senior Partner of InvestWise Financial and Co-Founder of White Glove, has a few growth hacks for you.

While many advisors were down in revenue during 2020, Dean’s office showed a 5% increase.  So far in 2021, Dean’s office is showing 53% revenue growth.

Dean attributes much of his success to these 7 growth hacks that his office has put into place over the last few years.

Are you leaving money on the table?

If you aren’t nurturing and engaging with your leads and clients, the answer is yes. According to Invesp, “Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost.”

Lead generation is only the first step in a well-rounded, efficient marketing plan. To maximize your lead generating efforts, you need to interact with those leads and connect with your clients. If you don’t keep in touch with them, they’re likely to forget about you, and that leaves the door wide open for your competition to creep in. 

Consider just how much trust someone needs to have in their financial advisor to give them continuous access to, and nearly complete control of, their life’s savings, their retirement income, and their future security and dreams. That degree of trust ranks right up there with entrusting your life to a surgeon, your children’s wellbeing to a nanny, and your heart to your spouse.

Trust like that isn’t simply granted to a financial advisor because of a single phone call.

While the stock market tends to dominate news cycles surrounding any current large-scale event, too many average Americans are uneducated when it comes to investing. When many people see reports of record market highs and losses, massive government bailouts, and changing legislation regarding interest rates and taxes, they do not have the educational background or investing experience to translate these headlines into meaningful analyses and applications for their daily lives. Investing education is critical for all Americans, particularly in times of economic turmoil. Consider these benefits of investing education when making financial decisions with your clients.