Firm Management
The Big Eight Social Media Apps for Accounting Firms
Social media is now a must for accounting firms, but which ones are worth it and why? Here are my favorite “big 8” apps and what to focus on for each one.
Apr. 13, 2016
Social media is now a must for accounting firms, but which ones are worth it and why? Here are my favorite “big 8” apps and what to focus on for each one.
More business deals originate from LinkedIn because it is probably one of the best sales tools out there. Use your professional headline to highlight who you serve and the results you provide instead of simply listing your corporate title. Use your summary to showcase an engaging bio that’s a mix of credibility builders and elevator speech. Soak it with keywords, and you’ve got a winning profile.
YouTube
YouTube is now second in importance to LinkedIn. We live in a world of visual entertainment and the businesses who embrace that will succeed faster with lower marketing costs and better clients. Don’t bother with the boring welcome video. Instead give us soundbite tips we can take to the bank. Give us a quick cash flow tip, a financial metric we should be measuring, or a tax benefit we didn’t know about. Anything to do with accounting thought leadership will work. A good video is less than two minutes. Add your videos to your bio page, do this for each employee, and you’ll never have to market again.
There’s a surprising amount of business going on in Instagram. Start a presence there by posting thought leadership quotes backed by a photo, event and award photos, and photos of you interacting with clients. IF you want to do business with startups, tech firms, and millennials, get on Instagram.
Twitter is great for event marketing, thought leadership, and sales notices. It’s beneficial to have a presence and it’s easy to find out who is following your competitors.
Google Places
It’s essential for search engine optimization that you claim your Google Places account. Everyone should have a gmail account and Google Plus and Google Places are tied to it (as is YouTube). When someone enters CPA firm and your city in the search engines, you’ll want your Google business profile to be listed in the first page results under to Google map.
Periscope
A relative newbie, Periscope automates live video streaming from a smartphone. Besides the mobile aspect, Periscope’s benefit is the interactivity of the audience. They can post messages that everyone viewing can see and they can “heart” the speaker. You can per-announce your Periscope sessions using other social media channels for maximum audience attendance. Broadcast a topic where you are asking the audience a lot of questions or have a guest speaker to interview where the audience interviews them at the same time.
A lot of business is also being done on Pinterest. Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out how to make accounting visual, and Pinterest is all about that. You can have pin boards for employee events, client celebrations, accounting jokes, software tips (think screen captures), tax season scenes, employee perks, a history of accounting, and the like.
There’s a huge underground to Facebook. I manage and belong to several private groups. I have one for my Accelerator clients, several with my professional speaker friends, a couple with my current and past coaches, and a few gems I have stumbled into that are full of small business owners. The reason to get on Facebook is to collaborate, but only within these secret private groups.
The Big Eight
Which of these eight social media apps are you on? Which ones have you gotten quality clients from? Add one new one about every six months, and you will be building a great social media presence.