Social media has become a go-to tool for businesses around the world who are looking to engage and communicate directly with their customers on a personal level. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have made it much easier for brands to show their personal side and build a strong relationship with their customers.
These platforms have also become one of the most powerful tools to help brands increase exposure, boost their reach, and drive traffic to their site. Social media platforms provide brands with the opportunity to reach a new audience and introduce their business to a group of potential new customers. As a result of this social media marketing has become an extremely popular solution for companies all over the world.
For the past four years, we have been working with Banking Circle, a global scale FinTech company, on all of their digital marketing activities, including social media. Banking Circle had no prior social media presence before we began managing their accounts in 2014, meaning all accounts have been started from scratch and built to the level they are today by Browser Media.
During this time Banking Circle’s Twitter following has grown to over 1,500 while their LinkedIn following has grown to over 2,700.
On top of this their reach and engagement on both platforms has seen a steady and constant increase.
FinTech, or financial technology, is currently one of the hottest industries around the globe with a whopping $111.8 billion (with a B!) invested in the industry in 2018. Working with Banking Circle to improve their social media presence has allowed us to learn more about this vibrant and exciting industry directly from the key influencers within the sector.
Below we’ve highlighted 3 of our top tips for B2B, and more specifically FinTech companies, who are looking to embark on the journey into social media based on our work with Banking Circle.
Engage with influencers
Highlighting and engaging with relevant influencers is vital for any business that is looking to carry out a successful social media strategy. Put simply, an influencer is someone who can grab the attention of others. They have an audience of followers who are interested in their thoughts, the content they are sharing, and what they have to say. Therefore, they are a key tool to help increase your reach and further your brand awareness to potential new customers.
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just posting on social media and hoping that it will be shared, you need to carry out research to help highlight the key influencers in your industry and spend time building a relationship with them. Spending time to research who the top influencers are in your niche is crucial as you need to ensure their followers are going to be interested in your brand and what you have to say.
With Banking Circle we have spent lots of time researching key influencers within the FinTech world and building a relationship with them. This can include anything from following them, engaging with their posts, sharing their content, or outreaching to them with content we think may be of interest to them. We’ve found using influencers to be a really useful way to help increase Banking Circle’s reach and engagement across various social channels and further increase brand awareness.
Keep up to date with relevant news
This may seem relatively straightforward but it’s crucial to ensure that you are staying on top of all of the latest news from within your industry. Whether it’s for content on your site, or to be shared on social media, your audience doesn’t want to be reading old or outdated information. This means you have to stay up to date with all breaking news, legal or regulatory changes, and any trending topics.
We found this to be a really useful strategy when planning Banking Circle’s social media strategy. While the idea behind using social media is to increase awareness of your brand and direct customers to your site we found varying the posts you share between your content and external content very beneficial. Typically we will post twice a daily, in the morning and the afternoon with one of these posts being internal content and the other being external. Not only does this show that you are staying up to date but it also allows you to comment on the latest news to further cement your, or your clients, positioning your brand as an industry leader.
Typically we will schedule all social media posts on a Friday to ensure that they are ready for the following week. By forward planning, we are able to ensure that we don’t miss posts and that all content is uploaded on time. However, leaving it as late as possible also allows us to be reactive to any breaking news or important stories.
#Hashtag research
Hashtags play a vital role in helping to increase the reach of your content, therefore, it’s highly beneficial to spend some time carrying out hashtag research. Hashtags have become so common in our everyday lives that in 2014 the word was added to the Scrabble Dictionary which defines a hashtag as ‘a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that categorises the accompanying text’. The concept behind hashtags is to help users find all conversations around a specific topic in one place by simply searching for or clicking a hashtag. By including hashtags in your tweets you are joining in on the global conversation and helping to increase the reach of your posts by making them easier to find.
Before we start posting on social media for any client we will take some time to carry out hashtag research to help identify relevant and popular hashtags from within that client’s industry. It’s important to spend this time to find not only hashtags that are relevant but also to make sure they are popular and being used by potential customers. You might find the perfect hashtag but when you take a deeper look realise that no one has posted with that hashtag for years. On the other hand, it’s also important to find a balance and not try to target the super broad hashtags as your posts will often get lost in a sea of updates from other users.
Using the above tips, along with a few others, we have seen great success across Banking Circle’s social media channels. Twitter and LinkedIn were the two main platforms that we utilised for Banking Circle and both platforms have seen a significant level of growth since they were created.
The statistics highlighted throughout this report further cement the importance of taking some time to research not only your client but the wider industry they are involved with and how they interact on social media. For example, in Banking Circle’s case we previously prioritised Twitter over LinkedIn, however, recently we have increased the frequency we post content on LinkedIn. The stats above show they LinkedIn might actually be the ‘better’ platform for them as it has seen the greatest growth in the past year.
Unfortunately, you cannot plan for everything when preparing to embark on a social media campaign. While planning will ensure you get off on the right foot there is a certain level of trial and error involved to find what works best for your brand and your followers. You can take guidance from what others are doing well but you need to find out what works best for you and base your social media activity off that – there is no one size fits all plan.
