There’s a reason that Donald Trump is always on Twitter – social media is an effective way to connect to a very large audience. It works.
But which are the right social media channels for forex brokerages? More on the issue from Yael Warman of Leverate.
Yael Warman, Leverate
With a lexicon of its own, the world of social media can be difficult to navigate if you want to promote your forex brokerage. Far more than selecting an ultimatum between alternatives, your options can vary widely.
Do you tweet about industry trends on Twitter?
Should you grow your fan base on Facebook, promote a banner on Instagram, a meme on Pinterest or upload a blog on LinkedIn?
Clearly this is nothing short of overwhelming, but considering the unique character of the forex industry, our experience has led us to certain conclusions of how best to promote your brokerage within the world, or rather universe, of social media.
B2B or B2C
To begin with, you need to identify whether you are pitching your marketing efforts as business-to-business (B2B) or as business-to-consumer (B2C), as this will greatly determine the appropriate avenue. According to the Social Media Examiner, 99% of marketing professionals advise that they use social media to promote their businesses, from which all of them are forced to distinguish and prioritize their efforts into one of these two categories. The language, tone and even objectives of your marketing efforts will be entirely different, depending on which track you decide to pursue.
Facebook and its Fans
There are fans of Facebook and then there are your Facebook fans. Regardless of whether you are a fan of Facebook or not, I would certainly recommend Facebook as a platform to develop your B2C marketing campaigns. In a survey of B2C respondents around 67% prefer Facebook over any other social media channel. This is particularly striking when you compare this figure to the 11% who preferred blogging and the 10% who felt that Twitter was best for B2C marketing.
There are a couple of reasons why Facebook is so popular as a B2C marketing platform. As a business you have the means to create a page, rather than a personal profile. There are numerous benefits of having a business page over a personal profile, such as it being very easy to personalize and having more ways to personalize it to your company’s colors and logo than a profile page. Fans can post comments and share posts, and in doing so, display the company name, rather than an individual’s name. As a holder of a business page, you can review the analytics of your page’s performance, identify patterns that achieve higher engagement and identify the demographics and interests of your audience.
Another strong benefit to Facebook as a B2C forum is that it gives you much more effective means to interact and engage with your followers. Creating a Facebook community in which users can participate and feel a sense of belonging to a community of like-minded individuals, can help you stir a sense of camaraderie with your followers.
Linking in to LinkedIn
Take a detour into the world of B2B marketing and the game plan changes considerably as the social media channel of choice is LinkedIn. A study titled “B2B content Marketing 2015” found that 94% of B2B focused businesses use LinkedIn, with many of those marketers believing this platform to be the most effective in promoting their campaigns.
There are a number of reasons that contribute to this trend, the primary reason being the more targeted audience. LinkedIn leads the social media world in terms of its ability to pull together the ideal audience for your business. The back bone behind LinkedIn is that people extend their professional network by connecting with other people who are in relevant businesses or positions. As you build your LinkedIn page, you will pursue followers who could have a professional interest in your brokerage. This means that when you want to promote a campaign, LinkedIn becomes the ideal platform in which to engage the right prospects.
Another value to LinkedIn are its Sponsored Updates. Within LinkedIn, this feature makes your sponsored campaigns far more targeted and specific to your network, rather than normal advertisements that go out to a wide unselected mass. With more targeted campaigns, the probability of you realizing your marketing efforts and ROI obviously becomes much better. And on the notion of it being a cost effective tool, LinkedIn comes ahead of other social media channels. Unlike Twitter, where you are charged for every interaction that happens as a result of a sponsored tweet, on LinkedIn there is no additional charge if followers interact with your post, be it by liking, commenting or sharing.
Considering that Forex does tend to hold strong appeal to the investment aspirations of other businesses, be they affiliates or investors, LinkedIn may well be the best option. However that is not always the case, as many brokers still pitch their service to private individuals. The secret lies in identifying the character of your brokerage service and experimenting to see what resonates best amongst your prospective clients.