Clients Prefer Lifestyle Content from Financial Advisors on Social Media, Says New Hearsay Study

San Francisco, April 26, 2018 --

2018 Social Media Content Study - Financial Services Industry

Hearsay Systems, provider of the Hearsay Advisor Cloud for the financial services industry, today released a new benchmark report that analyzes the popularity and effectiveness of different types of content in corporate-driven advisor social media programs.

The 2018 Social Media Content Study looked at social media data from 77,000 financial advisors and insurance agents at 15 enterprise financial services firms, found that their followers engage with lifestyle-oriented content the most. These posts had an average engagement rate of 48 percent, versus 42 percent for corporate posts (branded posts intended to sell or educate consumers about the firm’s products and services) and 27 percent for industry-related posts (non-branded content intended to educate consumers about more general financial matters).

On the other hand, the firms’ corporate marketing teams – which are responsible for supplying approved, compliant content for their advisory field to share on social media – populate their advisor content libraries with corporate content the most: 45 percent of suggested posts were corporate posts, followed by 32 percent industry posts and 23 percent lifestyle posts.

A summary of Hearsay’s key findings:

• Corporate content is suggested the most by corporate marketing teams (45 percent), but receives relatively low publishing rates in the field (26 percent). While corporate teams create a great deal of branded content for their advisors to promote their companies, our data shows advisors often choose not to post it to social channels.
• Lifestyle content is suggested the least by corporate marketing teams (23 percent), but has the highest engagement rates from advisors’ followers (48 percent). As a result, this limits advisors’ ability to present their personal authentic self, which their followers like to see.
• Advisors seek out and publish industry-related content the most (41 percent). This suggests that advisors want to be viewed as financial experts who are up-to-date on the latest industry news and seasonal trends, and look to social media to broadcast this to the world.
• Corporate marketing teams need to use data to improve their content mix, and employ more efficient advisor-client engagement workflows. Corporate marketing teams must be more data-driven in their strategy, and offer the right mix of content types that match what advisors and their followers are actually interested in. They also need to provide advisors an easier way to select and publish content to their networks.

“Consistent advisor-client touch points are a critical driver of customer satisfaction and business growth in the financial services industry,” said Abhay Rajaram, vice president of customer success at Hearsay. “Hearsay’s research highlights the enormous opportunity for corporate-driven social media programs to go beyond basic publishing, and embrace a data-driven approach that better aligns their content efforts with what is actually resonating in the field. By unlocking the right content balance, advisors can successfully leverage social media and digital channels to build, nurture and retain business.”

Wealth Management vs. Life Insurance vs. P&C Insurance

Hearsay’s analysis also compared the differences in social media content popularity and effectiveness among three lines of business within financial services: wealth management, life insurance and property and casualty (P&C) insurance. Key findings include:

• Wealth advisors prefer sharing lifestyle posts, and their followers engage the most with this type of content. This suggests that having a well-rounded, authentic and highly personal face to the business is important to wealth advisors.
• Life insurance agents are the most active in sharing industry content, even though their followers engage with non-industry content the most. This suggests that being perceived as an expert and educational resource is important to life insurance agents.
• P&C insurance agents are the most active on social media overall and their followers are the most engaged, particularly with corporate content. This suggests that consumers in this more commoditized space turn to social media to learn about specific products and services.

Hearsay Adds New Content Optimization Feature for Social Media

Hearsay today also announced the general release of its new Hearsay Content offering for users of its Advisor Social platform. Leveraging the company’s eight years of financial services data insights, Hearsay Content curates the most engaging industry (e.g., economy and investing) and non-industry (e.g., technology, travel) content from trusted sources such as Forbes, Wired and The Economist, and enables corporate marketing teams to easily and quickly suggest those posts to their advisors.

Advisors can also subscribe to have new posts about specific industry and lifestyle themes, such as tech trends and healthy living, automatically published to their social networks. This helps them automate top-of-the-funnel awareness with quality content, so that they can spend more time on personalized, one-to-one follow-ups with individual clients and prospects.

More Information

Download the full 2018 Social Media Content Study at https://hearsaysystems.com/2018-social-media-content-study/.

Methodology: Hearsay aggregated data from 15 leading U.S. financial services firms and their cumulative 77,000 advisors and agents who used Hearsay’s Advisor Social platform between May and December 2017. In all, more than 11,000 pieces of corporate-suggested social media posts and more than 3.4 million advisor-published posts across three lines of business (wealth management, life insurance and P&C insurance) were analyzed.

About Hearsay:
Hearsay Systems offers the Hearsay Advisor Cloud for financial services, empowering advisors to efficiently and compliantly use social media, websites, text and email to engage with customers, build stronger relationships and grow their business. Its prescriptive technology processes and prioritizes data from across digital channels and data systems, providing actionable suggestions for advisors on how they should engage with customers next. Built for the enterprise, Hearsay connects these advisor-client interactions and data to corporate CRM systems and digital marketing programs, and provides efficient compliance supervision and review workflows – all on a secure, enterprise-ready platform.

Hearsay is used by more than 150,000 advisors and agents at the world’s largest financial services and insurance firms. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Connect on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Hearsay blog.

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• 2018 Social Media Content Study - Financial Services Industry

Connie Sung Moyle
[email protected]
415-692-6222