Increasingly I’m asked, “is social media really worth the effort”?

For accountants and professional services firms, my thoughts are that it is a useful tool for raising profile and targeting specific clients. However, sometimes, the content of these social media posts can be bland and don’t really communicate the culture of the firm, the type of activities you do and the personalities involved.

I know a lot of you outsource your social media activity to third parties who will endeavour to work with you to write appropriate copy for your different social channels. In practice, this also involves them retweeting third party blogs which your firm may have an interest in or re-hashing topical articles in your name. Where they are short on content they will invariably add something which is generic (some may say dull), such as ‘Happy Friday from everyone at ABC & Co’ which is fine on the odd occasion, but tedious when it happens every week.

This is not necessarily the social media agencies fault. If they have agreed to take on the responsibility of promoting your firm through social media, they, more so than an in-house marketing person, will need to be spoon fed the information so they know what to write. If you don’t give them the ideas/content, they will struggle to keep coming up with original and relevant posts for you.

So, what should you be posting on your social media channels? There should be a mix of information along the lines of:

• Technical/factual posts – anything which keeps businesses/your target audience up to date with relevant news and information and which helps to demonstrate your expertise.
  • However, don’t just keep retweeting other people’s posts, that’s just being lazy. Ideally, write your own (or get the social media company to write it on your behalf). If you must retweet another article, at least try and add your own comment onto it, so that your readers can see what ­you actually think.
• News about the practice – such as awards you’ve won, office moves, new staff/partners joining the practice, new services being offered, announcements about new strategic alliances you’ve entered into, fundraising events you’ve held within the practice and so on.
• Link to the resources on your website – many of you buy in website content from third parties which have an array of tax calculators and resources that businesses and individuals would find useful – if they knew it existed! Use your social media to link directly to these resources, but focus on one at a time not links to the whole resources section.
• Events you’re attending – whether you’re organising a seminar, attending a local business event, putting on a lunch for introducers, hosting a corporate hospitality event etc., mention this on your social media ideally with photos of the event and tag other attendees in the posts to get them to share it with their connections too.
• Focus on the personalities – remember people buy from people. Whilst they ultimately come to you because they think you’re suitably qualified and experienced to help them, more often than not it will be a non-work related activity that will start the conversation. So include profiles of the partners and client facing staff which not only show how they can help clients but also highlights clubs and associations they’re involved with, business and social, what their hobbies and interests are etc.

So, is social media worth the effort?

Yes, I believe so. However, rather than going down a route of “we need to be posting something 3 – 4 times a day to make sure we are seen”, I would post 3 – 4 times a week, possibly less if you’re a small firm, but aim for quality, personalised content, rather than generic business waffle.

Quite often in business we forget that the ‘social’ part of social media is just that – to be sociable. It’s getting across this is who we are, this is what we stand for and this is how we can help you, but to do it in an appealing way which communicates more than just “We’re ABC & Co and we do accounts, tax and VAT”.