LinkedIn is an effective social media platform for asset managers to better communicate and engage with clients and prospects. But if you are just scrolling down your news feed, you are missing out.

When used strategically, LinkedIn can help you (and your team) build relationships, strengthen your brand and reputation, and increase your visibility and credibility. It can also help you attract leads.

A LinkedIn strategy is crucial to optimizing the digital tools at your disposal and maximizing your return on investment of time and money.

To get the most out of your company’s LinkedIn strategy, it should be a team effort and commitment, led from the top of the organization. Not everybody may be on board in the beginning. You may hear objections such as, “I don’t have enough time” or “You can’t get this past compliance.”

Yes, this may be a cultural shift and you may lack resources. But that’s alright. You can help your organization better use LinkedIn as part of your sales and marketing strategy – and take baby steps.

Here are 12 action items your firm can take right now or expand to over time – regardless of your level of experience with LinkedIn, to take advantage of this most impactful social platform for investment managers.

1. Get Employee Buy-in

Building a LinkedIn presence is a team effort. It’s a time commitment. Encourage key client-facing employees – wholesalers, portfolio managers, key operations people, and others – to be on board. The idea is to leverage your employee’s audiences. They can share company content with their followers and ask their followers to follow your company. But employee buy-in begins at the top. An example of how not to be on LinkedIn: the founder and CEO of a $60 billion global asset management firm had only 11 followers. He ignored all connection requests, including those from his employees and customers. He followed no one. His assistant looked at his account maybe every two weeks. The result? No client engagement, no new prospects in the pipeline, and bad employee morale. 

2. Create or Enhance Your Company Profile

Anytime you talk to a prospect, expect that they will research you online, and often look first at your LinkedIn profile. The company profile is the gateway through which others will likely evaluate you. It should be created – or enhanced if you have one – with your ideal client in mind, emphasizing your value proposition. Your profile, company description, tagline, logo, images, and contact information should include the right keywords to make it more likely you’ll impress. In addition, Google your firm. It’s likely your LinkedIn corporate profile comes up near the top of page 1. You want your company profile to look the part of the serious financial services firm that you are.

3. Have Employees Strengthen Their Individual Profiles

You may also ask your key employees to build or upgrade their own LinkedIn profiles. Thorough personal profiles should include resume checklist items – work history, education, skills, licenses and certifications, and a professional head shot. But individual profiles should also include accomplishments, and where appropriate, published articles, endorsements, recommendations, and speaking opportunities.

4. Add Connections and Create a Network

Ask your employees to start proactively connecting with clients, prospects, and people with influence. For example, portfolio managers could connect with the people they may work with every day, such as researchers, traders, analysts, clients, and prospects. Once employees start receiving connection requests, it’s essential to respond quickly and include a message thanking their new connections for the opportunity to network.

5. Share Posted Content

LinkedIn is all about engagement, which is how you cultivate relationships and grow revenue. Sharing other contributors’ content is critical. At the employee level, sharing is when they forward a company communication to a relevant connection and add a personal commentary. Employees can share communications from other influential firms, or author long-form or short-form material, as explained below. Sharing is a high form of engagement which can result in deeper relationships and others sharing your posts. Similarly, tagging allows you to target specific people you want to receive a specific post. 

6. Create an Editorial Calendar

A key to building visibility and brand awareness is regularly producing strategic, consistent, and insightful content. Most firms presumably are already doing this with their overall content strategy. But do they have a long-range plan – or do they push out random articles to satisfy a monthly checklist? Creating a calendar for several months out helps your firm focus on what’s important for clients. 

7. Write and Post Short-Form Content

One of the primary goals of a LinkedIn strategy is to drive people to your website, where you can capture more data about your followers. You can do this by posting brief “snackable” content with links to podcasts, webinars, market commentaries, white papers, infographics, surveys, or other ideas on your website. Posts that include videos and graphics tend to outperform all other types of posts, and many investors are interested in getting “free” reports or white papers – at least those that may help them solve a pain point and/or answer timely questions.

8. Post Long-Form Thought-Leadership Articles 

LinkedIn is also an appropriate forum for showcasing your more detailed opinions and/or unique perspective. Articles should have a hefty dose of contra-thought and ideas from your perspective that spark discussion. Thought leaders are viewed as authorities in their field who grow followings for their unique insights. If you have long-form articles (typically 1,000 words or more) on the company website, they should be leveraged by placing on LinkedIn.

9. Know Your Followers and Influencers 

The LinkedIn analytics built into your company page provides reporting on which visitors are engaging with you the most and what they’re viewing when they visit. You can see which type of posts create the most engagement, whether due to a topic theme, an infographic, or a link to an article or video. With that understanding, you can zero in on the types of posts that spur engagement. Then write more and dig deeper into those topics that resonate.

10. Create Your Own LinkedIn Group

You can also use LinkedIn to target influencers by establishing your own LinkedIn group and inviting people to join. In doing so, you can create your own circle of influence. Shameless plug: visit the group that Sondhelm Partners started: Mutual Fund Marketers.

11. Participate in Other Groups 

Firms can also join and participate in relevant LinkedIn groups. These groups can be based on your current work or personal interests and include past employers, alumni, quilting, sports, and so on. Group participation may help turn online connections into personal relationships, and ultimately into clients.

12. Integrate with Your Digital Marketing Strategy 

As great a marketing tool as it is, LinkedIn is just one cog in the wheel of a complete digital marketing plan. An attractive website is the hub of the strategy to where you want to drive traffic from LinkedIn and other social media. Once there, your content, if compelling, may keep them coming back. Offers to download white papers and reports, register for webinars, or sign up for podcasts enable you to capture their email addresses so you can cultivate them through your pipeline.

From there, a marketing automation program will help you segment your prospects so you can tailor your content and interactions to their interests. Many automation programs will provide you a lead score with which you can rank their engagement level so that, when it peaks, your sales team can reach out with a personal email and/or a phone call.

A complete social marketing strategy is crucial to optimizing all the digital tools at your disposal and maximizing your return on investment.

Dan Sondhelm is CEO of Sondhelm Partners, a firm that helps asset managers, mutual funds, ETFs, wealth managers and fintech companies grow through marketing, public relations and sales programs. Click to read Dan’s latest Insight articles and to schedule a complimentary consultation.