SOCIAL MEDIA AND TAXES: The Two Constants in Life

We are upon the season that we all love (Yes, spring is coming, but that’s not what this blog is about-sorry.)  It’s tax season!  Pardon me; I couldn’t help the sarcastic tone. 

If you’re a financial advisor trying to help clients out with their taxes, social media is a very effective means of getting your messages / tips to people.  Through the wonders of social media, you can:   

- provide tips on tax planning

- provide tips on how to save for taxes

-provide tips on filling out tax forms

- make suggestions on how to receive the highest return possible

- inform clients of changes to tax laws and policies

- And so much more!!

Social media technology allows you to reach a wide audience to easily spread your messages.  Use Facebook and Twitter to post useful information and have conversations with people. Post links to websites or articles that you think might be useful.  Use your blog to impart more in-depth information – as a how-to forum or an explanation of something that requires more space than Twitter or Facebook allow.  And, don’t forget to link your blog / Facebook page / Twitter account.

According to an ExactTarget blog post by Kyle Sollenberger, “…tax preparation service TurboTax® …used CoTweet to streamline their approach to Twitter presence and enhance customer service with a response time of just four minutes. With CoTweet, TurboTax was able to generate measurable business results, including:

·         48% effectiveness in helping complete tax returns

·         46% follower rate of Twitter users specifically seeking tax help

·         71% likelihood of customers to recommend TurboTax

(CoTweet is an application used to help business teams manage one or more Twitter accounts.)

Social media are powerful and necessary in today’s market.  In a customer-facing business such as finance or insurance, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make strides towards company strength and development without the use of these tools.  To learn more, we’d love to see you at one of our Social Networking for Business workshops, where we’ll show you how to make the most of social media to drive your business!  Just click on the following link for a schedule of workshops in your area: 

http://www.escomputertraining.com/courses/details/industry/2/course/20

How to Get in the Game With Social Media

More and more independent brokers, agents, planners and advisors are adopting Social Media as a means of growing their businesses.  Are you?  Do you know what they know?  If you answered ‘no’ to either of these questions, it’s high time you get in the game and find out just what social media can do for your business! I know you’re pressed for time – time is and will always be the most scarce and precious resource of any business – but, trust me, if you are willing to make an investment of some of your precious time, the pay off will be well worth it! And, guess what else?  Time is virtually the only thing you will have to invest – social media are, for the most part, free of monetary charge.  Now, how’s that for incentive?    

Joe- Average-Consumer -Based -Business -Owner is neither unintelligent, nor unaware of the need to constantly improve customer communication channels and methods.  Most CRM Social Media Experts preach and skim the surface of the problem with no real solution offered.  The message is the same: “you need to communicate”, “you need to improve access”, “you need to review”, “you need to mine” and “you need to post”….  Lots of 'you need to's; very few plans as to exactly how!

At ES Computer Training we work with you and assist you in developing the right plan for you and your business.  And, recognizing that you don’t have time to do everything, we can help you:

1.  Become aware of what’s out there.  We do a great job of addressing this first step in our one-day workshops.  We will help you to truly understand the fundamentals of social networking and the most effective ways to use it.

2.  Identify where your customers are in terms of social media and how they’re using them. 

3.  Discover what you have to offer your customers.  How will they benefit?  If you can     speak to your customers and give them something of value, you have it made.

4.  Provide daily, accessible and very real channels online for your customers to find and speak directly with you. Nothing is more powerful than direct communication.

5.   Acquire the resources to conduct experiments and determine which channels to adopt and how effective they will be.

6.  Discover how your competitors are using this channel and how this will affect your business.

7.  Come up with a viable and effective business strategy.

Going through these steps, we can give you the benefit of our experience with other clients and help you determine the manpower commitment and resources required for any campaign.  We have worked with agents, brokers, advisors and planners, who have invested the time and created their entire businesses through the use of social media.

The PLAN, the resources and of course, the associated time commitment will be laid out for you.  This will allow you to assign much of the effort to support staff, while giving personal attention to the most important parts of your Social Networking Campaign.

For a schedule of workshops in your area, please visit: 

http://www.escomputertraining.com/courses/details/industry/2/course/20