I finally broke down and did it! I “Googled myself”. After all, how could I talk to clients about bringing in social media marketing experts and not walk the walk? More about my experience later on in the blog.
If you are a financial advisor competing with multiple other financial advisors for a HNW client, how can you gain a competitive advantage to win the business? If all other things are equal, a strong online presence will make all the difference. Do you know what is out there? Have you “Googled” yourself? Does your online brand (personal & professional) complement or conflict with the image you’ve worked so hard to craft? If the answer is conflict, then you need to be prepared to do some work to help elevate your online presence. Welcome to the world of first impressions!
In today’s world, client’s are going to do their due diligence on you. They have to! This means they are going to start by “Googling You”. Below is a great 5-minute video from Maribeth Kuzmeski talking about clients “Googling” financial advisors and giving you some actionable ideas on ways to help build your online presence. Maribeth is a true expert on helping advisors build their brands and marketing to the type of clients that they want to work with.
So what did I find when I “Googled” Myself?
Unlike the example in the video when the advisor “Googles” himself and finds that a person with the same name is a murderer, my experience was extremely uneventful. There is actually not a lot out there. Now this has it’s own set of challenges that I am currently working on.
Here are 3 Must Dos to start the process of knowing what your clients will find when they “Google” you.
1) Set yourself up with a Brandyourself account
So after finding nothing bad online about myself, I went out to the website Brandyouself. I got this website from Sam Richter who is an amazing online expert at teaching advisors and wholesalers new ways to build and cultivate relationships.
This site allows you to create an account for free and it also allows you to get a free search score. What I found was that 7 of the top 10 articles that came up were on other gentlemen with the same name. This obviously gave me a low search score. For me to improve my score I need to focus on getting more involved online and I plan to do this and to take this test again in 90 days.
2) Manage & work your LinkedIn profile
For most of us this is where our clients and prospects will get their first impressions of us. I wrote a blog last week titled the 5 Essential Tips to Creating a Professional LinkedIn Profile That Gets You Noticed – Part 1. Next week I will be writing part II. These are very easy steps that I worked with Laura Virili on. When it comes to LinkedIn and financial professionals she just gets it!
3) Set up Google Alerts or Alertmix and the first person to set it up on is yourself (also set it up on your company)
When anything appears about you on the internet you will receive an email with a link to the article. This allows you to stay in front of your online brand and you won’t get blindsided. I will be doing a future blog on these Alerts as part of an overall COI strategy on staying in front of your top clients and prospects in ways that are most meaningful to them.
Be sure to check out all our amazing social media speaker partners at Ro Morrison & Associates Social Media speakers. If you are looking for new ways to grow your business through client acquisition or to build stronger deeper relationships with current clients we have the answers for you.