With over 650 million members and 43% of them in decision-making roles, LinkedIn offers a huge reservoir of networking opportunities for financial professionals. Brendan Barca, an independent LinkedIn consultant and career coach, joins host John Bryson to discuss best practices for using LinkedIn to build a business, including tips on how to optimize your online profile and how to deliver a solutions-oriented message that will appeal to prospective clients. This podcast is distributed by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors LLC, member FINRA, SIPC.
John Bryson:
Hello, and welcome to the Portfolio Intelligence podcast. I'm your host, John Bryson, head of investment consulting at John Hancock Investment Management. The goal of this podcast is to help investment professionals deliver better outcomes for their clients in their practice. Topics we'll address include advisor business-building ideas, capital market updates, the latest trends in portfolio construction, and investment insight from veteran portfolio managers across our global network.
John Bryson:
Today we're faced with a situation where we're all working from home a lot more often than we had expected, and what we want to do in the category of advisor business-building ideas is give you some ways to optimize working from home. We want to, in a sense, remove the distance from social distancing, so we're going to focus on some social media tactics to help you grow your business.
John Bryson:
Today I'm joined by Brendan Barca, who is a coach, speaker, and LinkedIn consultant. He specializes in helping financial advisors leverage LinkedIn to build their business. Brendan built his own business using LinkedIn and now teaches his LinkedIn five-step methodology through live workshops, webinars, and group coaching programs. He's worked with financial advisors at institutions such as Ameriprise, LPL, UBS, and Edward Jones. Brendan, thanks for joining us today.
Brendan Barca:
Thanks so much, John. Happy to be here.
John Bryson:
Great. Hey, listen, you focused on LinkedIn. I guess the first thing I'd ask you is, why should advisors focus on LinkedIn as one of their more important social media approaches?
Brendan Barca:
Sure, yeah, great question, and definitely one that I get asked a lot. So, I mean, the first thing is that you mentioned that right now we are transitioning into the digital age and that has been brought on even more so by the recent COVID-19 with everyone being restricted from social distancing. So when in-person prospecting and networking is not available, you know the best next place is going to be LinkedIn, which is the number one social media network for business networking.
Brendan Barca:
A few of the stats I'd like to read off to advisors around this topic around why financial advisors who prioritize LinkedIn are, first of all, there are now over 650 million members on the LinkedIn platform. That's up from 140 million back in 2011, and there's no signs that exponential growth is going to slow down. Secondly, the 43% of LinkedIn users are in decision-making roles, which are going to be your managers, your directors, your VPs, and your C-level folks, meaning that they have higher assets and therefore investible assets for you to leverage as an advisor.
Brendan Barca:
And then lastly is that 90 million members on LinkedIn are considered to be senior-level influencers who are using LinkedIn for networking and business ideas. Other social media platforms such as Facebook and such as Twitter are popular, but they really weren't built for social purposes, whereas LinkedIn is essentially the online version of attending a networking event. So it's a great place to be as an advisor, to grow partnerships, to land referral clients, and ultimately to grow your book of business.
John Bryson:
Wow. Did you say 650 million are now on LinkedIn?
Brendan Barca:
That's right. 650 and counting.
John Bryson:
That's stunning. Wow. Excellent. All right, so I'm probably a typical member of LinkedIn. I work in the industry. I went on; I signed up for what I considered LinkedIn as kind of like Facebook for adults back in the day; and I set up my account, but I kind of stopped after that, so if I'm an advisor that maybe has done the same thing, like I've hooked up on LinkedIn and signed up, but I haven't done much more, where should I start to really start taking advantage of the opportunity?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, great question. I think you're definitely not alone in that, in that many people set up their LinkedIn because it was more of a requirement of their job rather than trying to use it for sales and for building their own network.
Brendan Barca:
So, what I recommend most advisors to start is really at the beginning, which is their profile setup, which is actually step one of my five-step method, which I want to just kind of highlight here at the beginning. So step one on LinkedIn for every advisor should be to optimize their LinkedIn profile, which is essentially the online version of your business card. So you need to make sure you have a clean picture up, you have a clean description about what your firm does, and just make sure that it looks really polished.
Brendan Barca:
Then after step one, once you've gotten a brand set up correctly on LinkedIn, you want to start to use the technology to find prospects in your target niche by leveraging LinkedIn's advanced search functions that will help you to start to locate more prospects in your network. And then step three, you want to start connecting with those prospects by then adding those into your LinkedIn database.
Brendan Barca:
And then step four, after you start to connect with those people, you want to then engage on the platform by both listening actively to what your prospects are posting, but then also by creating your own content, of course, that's compliant within your firm, but that's going to be curated toward that target client base. And then the fifth step—this is probably for more advanced LinkedIn users, so I wouldn't rush out and do this right away, John—but essentially you then want to leverage private messaging as really another medium of email to then go out and to build value with prospects, build value with clients, and then look for opportunities to ask for offline conversations. You know, set up that phone call, set up that Zoom meeting, and that's where a lot of the magic of LinkedIn happens.
Brendan Barca:
But you all have to start at the profile set-up stage to make sure your online brand is strong.
John Bryson:
Wow, that's really thorough, so five key steps. I want to dig into them a little bit more. You started with simple stuff like the profile picture. A question: If I just do a selfie and post it up there, is that good enough or should I go more the professional route? And then in terms of describing what I do, I imagine a lot of advisors will want to kind of outline their experience, what degrees they have, a CFA, CFP, whatever it might be. Anything more to build on that to kind of make it more personal? Thoughts around that?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, great question. Funny you should ask about the selfie. While selfies may be appropriate for Facebook or Twitter or even Instagram, it's really not going to be appropriate for a LinkedIn, with LinkedIn being a professional network, so you need to make sure you have a professional headshot in place. In fact, a recent study showed that you get 14 times more views if your profile picture is professionally done, so you definitely want to make sure you're hiring someone, or someone at your company is taking a professional headshot of you, and that's what you want to upload to LinkedIn.
Brendan Barca:
And then in terms of the branding of what you do on LinkedIn, so you'll notice that everyone on LinkedIn has this little headline below their name and picture on their profile. And typically this may say something like, "Financial Advisor at Edward Jones," or, "Financial Advisor at LPL." And although that might be true, it's not doing anything to communicate to your end clients about how you can serve them.
Brendan Barca:
One simple way to tweak this and to optimize this part of the profile is to answer the questions, the problem you solve, and for who you solve it for. For example, one advisor that I saw recently had his profile read off that he's helping plan sponsors manage their fiduciary responsibilities and improve the retirement outcomes of their people, so he's very clear in who he serves and the problems that he solves for them. So as long as it is compliant within your broker-dealer, of course, you want to check with your home office, I do recommend curating your LinkedIn headline to communicate directly to your prospects and clients.
John Bryson:
That's super helpful and I'm sure it goes a long way separating one individual online from another, so you want to make sure you focus on that. Now, steps two, three, and four, recap them for me a little bit deeper, so I'm on board with what you said so far. What's the next thing I want to do?
Brendan Barca:
Sure. So after you've had your profile set up correctly, step two is then you want to be leveraging LinkedIn's advanced search function to find prospects in your target niche. It's going to be different for every advisor, whether you're in Boston or California. And if your niche, maybe it's doctors or physicians, or maybe it's CFOs and CEOs, but no matter what your niche is on LinkedIn, you'll be able to easily find those individuals, because everyone these days, as I mentioned, 650 million people are on LinkedIn. So if you dig into LinkedIn a little bit further, you can search for the CFOs in Boston, or the doctors in Los Angeles, and then come up with warm lists of people who are in your area, but also who have a mutual connection between yourself and other people. So that's step two is really finding prospects.
Brendan Barca:
And then once you've found the prospects, step three is then connecting with the prospects through LinkedIn. And how you do that is you want to be sending a connection message to ask them to be added to your network. But the key here is you never want to sell the person. Instead, you just want to connect first, wait for them to get back to you, add some value once they're in your network, and then over time, start looking for opportunities to transition to a sales conversation. But we never want to sell out of the gates; instead, we connect first, build value, and then wait for opportunities to sell down the line.
Brendan Barca:
And then lastly, step four, I think you asked about as well, is to engage. So once these prospects are now in your network, you have to then start listening actually to what they post. That means liking and commenting on their material to help build rapport with you and the prospect. And then also you want to create your own content that is either coming from your broker-dealer that's great marketing material, or, if it's allowed in your firm, your own original content, such as a video, a one-minute video, or a picture of you and maybe your family and your work-from-home environment. But that type of content can help to differentiate your brand from all the other advisors out there.
Brendan Barca:
So just to recap the steps two through four, it's find your ideal prospects in step two, connect with your prospects in step three, and engage with your prospects in step four.
John Bryson:
And it's interesting, this is probably in step two and it might be overlooked by many advisors, is first of all, I imagine you should start by linking in all your existing clients so you know where your warm leads can bring you to, and all your personal contacts and friends, because our personal networks are probably much bigger than we realize. I know when I looked at LinkedIn, I keep seeing names and faces popping up. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I should connect with them." So I imagine even a simple step like that could really expand the network and then lead to those warm connection points that you're talking about.
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, absolutely. And I did kind of gloss over that, but definitely at the beginning, if you're just setting up your LinkedIn profile, you want to make sure your brand looks great on LinkedIn. But then also any of your existing clients, any of your existing people in your network who already know and trust you, you want to add those people first, because they're then going to create you these different lanes and these different bridges to other opportunities. So really, the stronger your network on LinkedIn is, the more opportunities to connect with more prospects, so definitely start with your initial clients and then build out from there.
John Bryson:
And the other thing that you said that really popped for me was, "Share valuable content first to establish that relationship, and don't go and sell." And my personal experience is that's exactly how I've preferred to be treated. And I think that that's worth reemphasizing, so a couple of more examples on that maybe.
Brendan Barca:
Yeah. Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make on social selling, and really just selling in general, is that everyone thinks their goal is to get the client, to make the sale. But really, if we kind of change the conversation and aim to serve and aim to add value first, then eventually the sales come over time.
Brendan Barca:
Social selling is such a delicate area that you want to make sure that you are providing value before you try to ask someone for something else. So for example, on LinkedIn, if I were to connect with someone, or if an advisor were to connect with them on there, what I'd encourage them to do is start sending them articles over private messaging that are relevant to their own niche.
Brendan Barca:
Like, for example, during this time, during the coronavirus outbreak, a lot of CEOs and CFOs are probably going through a lot of stress and a lot of strain because of the changes with their companies, depending on the industry they're in. So one thing that I found recently was an article that McKinsey wrote up, a leadership article about how to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, and this article could be a great thing to send all your CEOs or CFO prospects as a potential value add. So I like to use LinkedIn and email in tandem where I'm sending value over LinkedIn to kind of build my credibility. And if I want to ask for anything or try to bridge to a sales conversation, oftentimes I'll actually do that over email and I'll kind of use the two as my one-two punch. So I think the value, though, has to come first before you try to ask for anything. The biggest mistake you could make is trying to rush to a sales conversation.
John Bryson:
Excellent. Thanks for emphasizing that. And then the fifth step, a little bit more detail on the fifth step.
Brendan Barca:
Yup. The fifth step is taking conversations offline, which consists of two main areas, the first of which, which I just mentioned, which is about using private messaging really as another medium, such as email. As we all know, email is highly saturated these days, and I'm sure everyone here just gets so many emails and so many that we like to ignore. Private messaging is really a new area to be able to reach out to people directly and to get their attention directly through the LinkedIn platform, so you want to start using it as a way to build that value with your prospects. And then once your prospects get back to you and start to show some appreciation for the type of value you're providing—it's once that happens that you need to be willing and able to transition to an offline conversation, maybe a phone call or a virtual meeting. So that's really a key point.
Brendan Barca:
I think one thing about messaging these days, we want to think about private messaging less like sending an email and more like sending a text message. Many people are checking LinkedIn on their phones, so we want to make sure our messages are short and concise. Now when it comes to taking things offline, it doesn't always have to be in the context of you trying to become their advisor. Maybe it's as simple as trying to set up a networking conversation, and then that provides you with the opportunity to get to know the person more and to provide your value as an advisor, perhaps land a new business partner or referral client or maybe even a client on the spot. So that's really step five, which is use private messaging to build value and take conversations offline.
John Bryson:
That's super helpful. I think patience is one of those things, but certainly will pay off over the long run. So, followup question, those five steps to me make a lot of sense in any environment. But now that we've shifted, working from home, and then will be for the foreseeable future, or transitioning back to some sort of normal, which will probably include more social media interaction, how should advisors treat the current situation in social media any differently right now?
Brendan Barca:
Yes, I think it's the conversation on LinkedIn has definitely changed immensely in the last month or so since the coronavirus outbreak and since the social distancing rules, and I've noticed that all of the content has changed. And I think the interaction on there has changed as well, as it's a much more difficult environment to do direct selling because you want to be cognizant of people's health and your family first before you try to ask for something from a stranger.
Brendan Barca:
So a few dos and don'ts that I like to highlight in terms of the LinkedIn social selling during coronavirus is—number one is, we do want to continue to connect, so it's still appropriate right now to build up your network and to add people into your community. But we do want to kind of soften that outreach, so when you're messaging someone for that LinkedIn invitation, maybe you just want to address the fact that you hope they're doing well, or you hope them and their family are doing well, before you try to ask them to come into your network. That really will add the human touch and show that you're thinking about them and their health first before you're trying to make the networking connection. So that's one thing that you want to do is continue to connect but soften your outreach.
Brendan Barca:
Another “do” is we do want to continue to post during the outbreak, but the conversation is different. So, instead of posting your five tips on retirement plans or how to invest in the stock market, maybe it's things that are more central around the current economic situation and also around the COVID-19 climate as well. For example, I saw an advisor put up a one-minute video last week that was just wishing his clients well during COVID-19. It was 45 seconds and it got him over 24 likes, 800 engagements, which means he got more marketing. He's getting much more play for his brand directly because it was personalized and because it was from his heart rather than trying to sell something.
Brendan Barca:
A few things you don't want to do on LinkedIn is you, first of all, don't want to hard sell. I mentioned that earlier, but I did have an advisor, actually a few weeks ago, try to hard sell me with this long paragraph about why I want to work with them or why I should want to work with them. And to me it's just not very tasteful now, or really anytime, on LinkedIn.
Brendan Barca:
And the last “don't” that you want to make sure to avoid is, don't run your automated posts right now. In the past you may have streamlined your posting on LinkedIn and have posts set up for a month or two in advance. But right now there's a lot of risk in that because the conversation on LinkedIn and in the news is changing so frequently that you want to make sure your posts are relevant for the current week. So I would just stop your automation at this point and just make sure you're posting things that are relevant given the current week that you're in. So those are some great dos and don'ts for LinkedIn.
John Bryson:
Excellent. So let's say I'm doing all this, and I've embraced the work-from-home mentality and embraced LinkedIn as a great way to leverage social media. How can an advisor effectively measure their LinkedIn activity and impact they're having?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, that's a great question. There's two main ways that I see advisors being able to measure effectively their results on LinkedIn. First, there's LinkedIn from a marketing standpoint, and then second of all, there's LinkedIn from a sales standpoint.
Brendan Barca:
From a marketing standpoint, when you're putting up content on LinkedIn, you want to judge your results by the amount of engagement you get. So if you're getting, say, 5 likes, or 10 or 15, then it's going to help to increase your views and increase the amount your brand reaches across the community. So if you're able to create more engaging content over time, you're going to want to see your growth in your posts and in terms of how many views you get. So if you're getting 500 versus a thousand, you want to see that improve. Also what you want to see is more people coming to visit your profile page. You'll notice that as you have more views, you'll get more traffic, which will be apparent on the LinkedIn dashboard, which I could show, perhaps, on a later call.
Brendan Barca:
But lastly, from a sales perspective, so that's just marketing on LinkedIn, but I think sales is really a key item of LinkedIn, and where I've seen the most success is converting LinkedIn private messaging conversations to phone calls or to virtual meetings. So, I want to start tracking how many meetings I'm landing through LinkedIn every week or every month, every quarter, to see if I can increase those numbers. If you're sending out 50 private messages per week, how many meetings does it help you land? And that's how you want to track your success is by converting your online conversations to those offline dialogues, because as soon as you transition from online to offline on LinkedIn, you're already way ahead of most of the people out there. So that's how I track it both from a marketing and sales standpoint.
John Bryson:
That makes a lot of sense. In terms of expanding your brand, it's the growth of the clicks, if you will, not the sheer number, but the growth that you're seeing, and then the growth in the meetings, that taking it offline has a direct impact on future sales opportunity. Excellent. All right, so last question for you, are there any secrets to success for advisors on LinkedIn that you want to share that we haven't covered?
Brendan Barca:
Yeah, great question. There's just two main things that I want to iterate for everyone and some of this might've been covered a bit earlier. But I just want to reemphasize two key points is first of all, I'm a big believer in creating original content on LinkedIn. It's going to depend based on everyone's broker-dealer. You want to make sure you are checking with your compliance arm to make sure that what you're posting is appropriate, but essentially advisors on LinkedIn that are having the most success are posting their own content. It's coming directly from their mouth on top of the broker-dealer content. So I mentioned that video earlier of the advisor wishing everyone well during coronavirus? That got him 24 likes, where his articles that he posts probably gets him one or two.
Brendan Barca:
So I just think it's so important to have your own voice out there. I really saw the biggest uptake in my own brand and my own success on LinkedIn once people started to get to know me better rather than my company, so that's the first thing.
Brendan Barca:
And then the second thing is we need to think of LinkedIn as an opportunity to add value. So we're not looking for that quick sale, we're not looking to connect and then ask for a phone call. Instead, this is a much more strategic play for your business where you want to connect with people at the beginning. Over time, build value by sending great content to them by creating great content over their newsfeed. And then through all of that, if you build up your credibility, and once you've gotten that, once they have an affinity for you and who you are, that's when you can ask them for the phone call, ask them for the meeting. But the value has to come first, which I think is really the biggest takeaway on LinkedIn and in terms of social selling.
John Bryson:
Makes a lot of sense. Offer the value first and the growth opportunity will follow.
John Bryson:
Well, we hope that this information is helping remove, as we said before, some of the distance from social distancing, and we hope that you'll consider LinkedIn as an opportunity to grow your business. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to John Hancock Portfolio Intelligence on iTunes or visit our website, jhinvestments.com, to read our viewpoints on macro trends, portfolio construction techniques, business-building ideas, and much, much more.
John Bryson:
And if you're interested in talking to Brendan specifically and directly, I'm sure he'd be welcome to having you link him in online, so go into LinkedIn, and Brendan, what's your profile on LinkedIn?
Brendan Barca:
It's going to be my name, so Brendan Barca—B-R-E-N-D-A-N B-A-R-C-A. So you'll be able to find me on there. I'm not the only Brendan Barca, but I'm probably the most prominent on LinkedIn, so you'll find me.
John Bryson:
Excellent. Hey, Brendan, thanks so much for sharing your insight. We appreciate having you on the show. And to our audience, thanks so much for listening. Have a great day.
Disclosure:
This podcast is being brought to you by John Hancock Investment Management Distributors LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speaker, are subject to change as market and other conditions warrant, and do not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any specific product or security. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy discussed will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any economic or market performance information is historical and is not indicative of future results, and no forecasts are guaranteed. Investing involves risks, including the potential loss of principal.
Before engaging in social media, please ensure that you have permission from your firm's compliance department and act in accordance with their policies and procedures. This material is for informational purposes only and is not meant as an endorsement for any particular social networking site. John Hancock Investment Management and Brendan Barca are not affiliated.