How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Accounting Firm

Social media is a game changer. You can leverage social media to connect with your target audience of current and prospective accounting clients. Social media can be a key part of your accounting firm growth strategy.

However, simply setting up a profile on the major social media platforms isn’t enough to make for a successful accounting practice. If you want to successfully promote your accounting firm on social media, you’ll need to be intentional with how, when, and where you engage your audience on these social platforms.

In this post, we’ll explore how to use social media to promote your accounting firm.

Why Get Active on Social Media

You may be wondering why you should get on social media, to begin with. Isn’t social media simply a waste of time? Or can you actually use this platform to find prospective clients and genuinely build a community of loyal fans for your accounting firm?

Absolutely. Social media isn’t only for connecting with friends and family. Most social media users also connect with businesses. People use social media every day to find local businesses, read reviews, look up contact information, and much more. It makes sense for your accounting firm to get active on social media. Here are the benefits that you can gain by building a social media presence.

Forge a Human Connection

When you are on social media, you’re able to relax and connect with your audience on a more human level. Your website and other marketing material may be very buttoned up. But social media, by definition, is informal and less scripted. When you use it in the way that it was intended, social media allows you to create a know, like, and trust factor which is so critical for accounting services before even getting on a sales call.

Become a Thought Leader

Do you have a unique perspective that you’d like to share with others in your industry? One of the best and quickest ways to do that is with social media. Social media provides a platform that you can use to share your thoughts with others in your industry. Before you know it, you can become a respected thought leader in your Niche and in the accounting industry as a whole.  This is a great way to build your accounting firm’s reputation and brand.

Would you like to improve your accounting firm’s presence on social media? Check out these tips: Click To Tweet

Find Prospective Clients

Lead generation is a top reason to get active on social media. You can use a platform like LinkedIn or Facebook to increase your firm’s visibility and attract prospective clients to your accounting firm.

How to Choose the Right Social Media Platform

You may not know it, but there are dozens of social media platforms in existence. The good news is that you don’t have to be on them all in order to promote your accounting firm successfully. For most accounting firms, the best platforms to consider are the big three: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

However, which platform should you use? And should you be on all three or should you favor one over the others?

Before we answer those questions, let’s take a closer look at these three platforms.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is perhaps the most popular social platform for accounting firms. You can use many tools on LinkedIn for targeting your ideal accounting prospects, and this is especially true if you pick an accounting niche.

Linkedin is all about professional networking. Not only should you use this tool to find  professional accounting groups, but you should also join these groups and take an active role within them. Aim to make meaningful contributions to the discussions on these groups and get yourself out there as a thought leader.

In addition to getting active in groups, also consider posting short-form blogs on LinkedIn. In these blogs, provide insight into the accounting industry and highlight your unique perspective.   This is a great way to show that you are an expert.

Facebook

Facebook isn’t as buttoned up as LinkedIn. Facebook is all about connecting with and developing relationships with current and prospective accounting clients. You can use Facebook to answer quick questions and to build an ongoing relationship with your community.

You can also use paid ads on Facebook to actively promote your accounting firm. In recent years, Facebook has become a pay-to-play platform. Simply put, it’s harder for your content to show up organically on the Facebook timeline. Even if someone follows you and engages with your posts, they may not see your content on Facebook. However, Facebook marketing is unmatched in its ability to reach your target audience. You can set up an ad campaign with Facebook for as little as $5 a day. Then you can send promoted posts to targeted users based on their behavior, such as whether or not they visited your website before, or their likeness to  your current, best clients.

Twitter

Twitter is a spot for conversation. When you are active on Twitter, you are contributing to an ongoing conversation. Get involved in trending #hashtags and share your opinion on relevant news stories. Be sure to be authentic and don’t be afraid to go against the grain. Twitter is a place for sharing different opinions.

In addition to contributing to conversations, also promote special events that you may want others to see and take part in, such as an educational course you’re hosting.

Which One Should You Choose?

Who says you have to choose just one social platform? You can choose to participate on multiple social media platforms, including ones that we haven’t listed above.

A word of caution, however: Start with just one social media platform. Understand how it works, develop a community, and get comfortable posting on a very public platform on a regular basis. After you have mastered the art of posting on one social media platform, then expand to others.

Best Practices for Posting on Social Media

Now let’s discuss how to use social media correctly to promote your accounting firm.

Be Authentic and Relatable

No one wants to connect with a social media profile that’s a walking advertisement for a business. Social media is built on human-to-human connection. You must show your brand’s personality. It’s important to be personable instead of scripted. Think of how you’d relate to a client in a face-to-face meeting. You wouldn’t greet them with talking points, but you’d be a lot more relatable. That’s how you should show up on social media.

Create Content that Your Audience Will Care About

There’s so much social content on the web, and all of it is vying for your audience’s attention. If your content isn’t immediately engaging, your intended audience will scroll on by. Your goal must be to create content that speaks to your audience and makes them stop mid-scroll.

Fortunately, there are more content consumers than there are creators. By creating new and fresh content, you can easily stand out. Don’t simply repost others’ content, but also create your own work. This content may include deadline reminders, tax news that affects those in your niche, trend analysis, or providing insight into a financial news story.

Not sure what content to create? Think about it from your client’s perspective. They don’t care about accounting as a whole, but they do care about their business and how a tax rule can affect their bottom line. Focus on what immediately grabs them.

Remember that you’re the expert, and you can show your value by shedding light on how legislation can affect a business. Seek to simplify the complicated.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

Ten years ago, social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a book named Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Amongst a plethora of gems, it discussed how businesses should favor value over self-promotion. Instead of using social media as a platform to constantly promote yourself, you can use it as a platform to provide value that interests your target audience (jabs). Your audience will begin to regard you as a source of value. Once you finally hit them with the right hook (which is a sales pitch for your business), they’ll want to do business with you since you’ve demonstrated your value this whole time.

The bottom line? Spend the majority of your time on social media offering free and valuable content that hooks your audience. Then, spend maybe 25% of the time promoting your accounting service. As a result, you won’t come across as hopelessly spammy and you’ll actually win trust.

Create a Variety of Posts

When you’re on social media, don’t post the same type of content over and over again. Instead, mix it up. Post question and answer videos to educate your audience, inspirational quotes to give them something to think about, funny posts that are relatable to their situations, tips that they can act upon, and behind-the-scenes glimpses that show your team in action and provide  a human face to your brand. You can also share your thoughts and opinions on hot topics and current news. Here are a few other ideas on what to post about on your social media pages:

• Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
• Polls and surveys
• Quotables
• Case studies and testimonials
• Blog posts promotions
• Beginner-friendly guides
• Calculators

Produce Shareable Content

No matter what type of content you create, make it shareable. Social media is social after all. The goal is to create content that your followers will want to share with their circles. And don’t be shy to ask them to do so. Add calls to action at the end of your social media posts and ask your followers to share the posts with others.

Create Attractive Content

Don’t create boring, bland, or ugly-looking social media posts. Instead, use a tool like Canva to make attractive social media posts. Canva is a freemium tool that offers pre-made social media graphics. You can personalize and post these graphics directly on your social media pages.

Get Your Team Members Involved

Getting all of your team members involved in your social media will make it even more effective.  Ask them to comment on, like, and share your social media posts. Also, ask your team members to get in on the fun. Make social media posts that highlight everyone on your team. This will remind your team that they play a crucial role in your brand’s success, and it will give your social media followers a look at the people who make up your accounting firm.

Post Consistently

It’s crucial that you post frequently and, more importantly, consistently. Consistency is something that many businesses on social media don’t have. You may start off strong on social media but then slow down when tax season distracts you. However, if you want lasting success with social, you must post on a regular basis. This way, your fans will begin to anticipate your regular posts on social media and go looking for them.

Automate Your Content

So how do you post on social media consistently when you have other things to do? You do that through automating. Fortunately, a tool like Buffer allows you to set up posts in a queue and schedule them to publish at a later date/time. You can schedule those times for when your target audience is using the platform and most likely to interact with your posts.

Would you like to encourage your employees to share positive news about your firm with their social circles? Use Clearview Social which is a tool that makes it easy for your employees to share company content on social media.

Respond to Comments

Be sure to respond to any and every comment that is left on your social media pages. It’s a conversation and not a monologue. You want your audience to know that when they take the time to leave a comment that you will also take the time to respond thoughtfully. And this goes for both favorable and unfavorable comments. Others are looking, and you can win over the respect of your audience simply by showing up and responding.

Get Them Off the Platform

All social media is amazing for helping you get your accounting firm in front of your target audience. However, it is important to take the conversation off of social media.

On social media, you’re a renter. However, on your website and your email newsletter, you’re an owner.

You don’t want to keep the conversation solely on social media because you’re always at the mercy of that particular platform. They may choose to change the algorithm and not show your posts. However, if you have successfully taken your audience off of your social media platform and gotten them to sign up for your email newsletter, you can continue to reach out to them via email in a more direct way.

When you are delivering those jabs of value, be sure to tie one or two to a lead magnet, such as a resource guide that you’ll give to anyone who signs up for your email list. This way, you’ll get the prospect onto a channel that you own (such as your email list). You may still be able to connect with them on social media, but you’ll also be able to connect with them through your email list.

Final Thoughts

Social media is a great way to establish a solid presence online. You can use it to connect with your target audience and develop relationships that will eventually bloom into clients. When using social media to advertise your accounting business, always stay focused on delivering non-stop value and showing up as an authentic and trustworthy business.