What To Do If Your Social Media Stinks Like the Cleveland Browns

I focused on 30- to 50-year olds because I at the time was in my early 30s. I found that women older than 50 were often old enough to be my mother and the dynamic just did not work. A 40-year old woman looked at me as a cool younger sister-type, which was much more relatable. Also, I focused on working women. I had never had any success with homemakers because many of them were put off by my blunt and direct gung-ho attitude.

With this ultra-focused brand, I took to LinkedIn. To this day I am still a member of a group called Connect: Professional Women’s Network on LinkedIn. This engaged group has over 460,000 members. Members go there regularly to talk to other professional women. That’s also important. If you’re posting into groups where people don’t pay any attention, it’s a waste of time.

One day in this group a woman posted an article she read about a 60 Minutes documentary (or something similar – I don’t remember) that revealed how 401ks were full of fees that most people didn’t know about. Well, the reaction was outrage. Women were highly emotional and literally panicking in their responses to the article.

That’s when Super Sara went into the telephone booth, put on her cape and costume, and flew in to the rescue.

And oh boy, did I kill it. I responded to every single comment with insight. Then I initiated a connection request with each woman who posted a comment.

Some women started commenting back, and I responded to them and requested to connect with them.

But I didn’t stop there. I then wrote up a summary of the discussion in PDF format and sent it to all the women who accepted my connection request.

A few days later, one of the women wrote to me via LinkedIn and explained that she was a single mother in New York City who saw my performance in this group and wanted to meet. She became my client. At the time, I was writing a book about women’s finance and I gave her a copy. She then referred me to the head of the diversity initiative at her company so that I could speak at a female executives’ group meeting as the keynote.

And that’s more or less how it goes with social media. It’s not like advisors expect, where people email you out of the blue and say “I loved that DFA Funds whiteboard video you posted. I have $3,000,000. Let’s meet!”

Look at all the work I did to secure my position as the thought leader in that pocket. It must have taken 20 postings before people realized the value I could provide.

Social media is a dialogue – an interaction. There were many steps in that conversation where I was pounding and pounding value at people in the pocket before I got the lead.

The Pocket Theory

That is why I keep harping on the need for a niche focus –social media is full of little pockets like this. If you don’t have a focused area of knowledge then you won’t appear like I appeared to the women’s group. And it made everything line up – not only was I a female-focused advisor, I was in a professional women’s group and the discussion was about 401ks, which is something that 30- and 40-year olds (also my age focus) care about.

I have applied the Pocket Theory over and over again. The other day, I was in a LinkedIn group about impact entrepreneurship and I saw someone ask about green IRAs. I gladly forwarded that inquiry to one of my clients who is an impact-investment firm and they secured a meeting with this prospect. ESG investing – see? It’s another pocket.

Social media is a vast ocean. But within any ocean, there are little pockets or ecosystems where organisms interact as a community.

If you find yourself whining about how social media doesn’t work, it’s just that your arms are tired of the crawl stroke you’re doing. You’ll burn out and fail trying to swim across the ocean.

A far better use of energy is aiming for the little pocket and diving down deep. If it doesn’t work, come back up for air, rest and try another pocket.

Sara’s Upshot

Social media is for some an opportunity to grandstand and be on display. But most advisors don’t have a large enough following to be that visible. For them, use the pocket theory: Find the places where the people are that you want to be with, socialize and provide unbelievable value. Take the time to do this and you’ll see clients flow to you.

Sara Grillo, CFA, is a top financial writer with a focus on marketing and branding for investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers. Sara graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature and has an MBA from NYU Stern in Quantitative Finance.

Read more articles by Sara Grillo