Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference
At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.

Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference

At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.

Compliance regulations are the bedrock of the financial services market, and for good reason: They are the gateways to gaining customers’ trust. In today’s increasingly digital market, however, compliance comes with unique challenges. How can an institution position its brand honestly online?
How can it effectively engage with customers while still maintaining strict compliance standards? As financial institutions continue to adopt digital marketing strategies in a complex and shifting environment, they are beginning to run into even more compliance challenges.
Take J.P. Morgan Securities’ recent settlement over record-keeping violations, for example. U.S. regulators fined the company $200 million for failing to archive communications as employees conducted business over WhatsApp and other personal devices. The result was a significant penalty by the SEC and a reminder to digital marketers throughout the industry that compliance matters. As financial institutions dive deeper into social media marketing and become active on new platforms, teams need to be vigilant and nimble.
Two trends are essential to watch. First, the digital rules of the road are changing: Government agencies are modernizing their financial marketing oversight. Though it took six decades, the SEC gave its marketing regulations for financial advisors a much-needed overhaul in 2021. The updated SEC playbook dictates how advisors can advertise, and these new rules are under enforcement as of Nov. 4. In addition, the updated rules signal that regulators are evolving to meet the demands of the current digital landscape.
Disciplinary action is also on the rise. Existing rules are being enforced at a record pace as regulators “lace up their gloves.” For example, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority issued 60 percent more fines in 2021 than in 2020, despite fewer overall cases. FINRA’s increase in “supersized” penalties serves as a reminder that regulators won’t tolerate marketing and communications noncompliance.
Every financial institution is on a unique marketing path. Still, smart marketers are expanding their channel sets, increasing social media volumes, and growing the number of associates engaged in social selling. If your institution has not already, it is time to take a fresh look at compliance in the digital age.

To stay ahead of the regulatory curve, it is essential to create collaboration among relevant departments, adopt supportive technology, and bring your teams along with updated training. Here’s how to do it:
1. Open the lines of communication between marketing and compliance teams.
Digital channel expansion shows no signs of slowing down. Marketing and compliance teams must work together if they want to adopt new channels and marketing tools at the same rate. Though financial institutions cannot control the evolution of the digital landscape, both marketing and compliance can and should control how institutions navigate it.
Marketing and compliance teams should work together to find compliant approaches to new digital communications. There’s a lot to juggle in this process, including adapting to meet customer needs and expectations, keeping an eye on regulations and researching channels. Early and frequent communication is key.
One way to improve that communication is by offering ongoing compliance education to the team. The right technology can help compliance send that feedback to marketing as the teams compliantly adopt new modes of customer communication.
2. Adopt tech tools to help manage the change.
Marketing teams need the right tools to manage effective digital marketing strategies. Social selling, which leverages associates to build relationships on social media, is a perfect example. The strategy is a great way to build organic reach, but financial institutions need to closely monitor associate activity to ensure posts are on-brand and compliant. In other words, financial institutions must ensure that posts are vetted to protect the institution against risk—no matter who posts or where posts appear.
How can banks be certain that associates only post compliant marketing materials to their social media networks? Manual review is one way to monitor content, but it is inefficient and unscalable. Not to mention, it creates bottlenecks and delays in the review process. Smart software solutions can streamline content approvals and provide compliance protection at scale.
In an ideal state of omnichannel marketing, a financial institution is posting to brand pages, targeting paid social advertising, empowering producers to social sell, responding to direct messages, and employing many other tactics. To be scalable—and avoid drawing attention from regulators— institutions need to consider how all these tactics are reviewed, approved and archived.
3. Train associates to understand the part they play.
Education remains a powerful solution to preventing problems. One of the best ways financial marketers can set themselves up for success is by sharing that knowledge with their peers and co-workers.
Every associate needs to understand their unique role in digital marketing compliance. It’s a good practice to empower everyone through education on compliance-related topics, such as how to respond to direct messages, get approval for outgoing content and ensure all communications is archived.
No matter the author or channel, noncompliant marketing materials should not see the light of day. It was true for Facebook posts five years ago and it’s equally relevant for TikTok videos today. The digital landscape will continue to change, but this industry truth will remain steadfast. By opening up communication, adding the right tech to your tool belt and empowering associates, you can continue engaging with your customers online without compliance getting in the way.
*This article was originally published in ABA Bank Marketing Journal.
The past year highlighted the growing importance of digital customer experiences in the financial services industry as COVID-19 continued to accelerate the pace of digitization. Unable to connect in person, consumers turned to digital tools. One survey conducted between late March and early May 2020 reported that between 46% and 51% of adults in the United States increased social media use since the start of the pandemic. Facebook also reported in late March 2020 that total messaging had increased more than 50% in just a month.
While many organizations are welcoming clients back into the branch for in-person service and conversations, it will still be wise for financial institutions not to lose focus on the digital initiatives to put in place during the pandemic.
According to a recent McKinsey & Co. study, consumer trends toward more digital experiences aren’t likely to revert — so neither should your marketing and communications strategies. In fact, up to 20% of bank customers expect their use of digital channels will actually increase after the crisis. The point is, while the pandemic may subside, the digital transformation in financial services is no temporary adjustment. Quite the opposite: These trends in consumer behavior are defining the future of retail banking.
The future success of financial institutions will rely on reimagining digital strategies to focus on experiences rather than products alone. And remember, not all technology can be easily customized or implemented to meet federal requirements. Compliance is always a concern. Accommodating the increased emphasis on digital channels may also require some reorganization within marketing departments, which will take time to achieve.
Personalization and human connection will be key in the post-pandemic digital world
Relationships have always been a core aspect of success for banks. At first, this idea might seem at odds with digitization, as tech can seem largely impersonal. In the shift from product- to experience-based digital communication tactics, focus on personalization to make interactions feel genuinely helpful and relevant to each prospect.
Consumers today demand more personalization — nearly 80% of consumers in one survey agreed that they were more loyal to brands that used more personalization tactics. In fact, 81% of consumers even said they would be willing to share their basic personal data for more personalized experiences in return.
Personal digital experiences encompass the customer journey overall and include specific “routes” for specific target audiences. The journey starts when you get a customer’s attention on social media. This can happen via organic social posting, but because platforms have changed their algorithms to reduce brand visibility, paid advertising on social is often the more surefire way to land a post. When you can strategically distribute messages to the right people at the right time, you create a strong jumping-off point for a personalized journey that will lead your target audience to exactly what they need from you. It’s clear why optimizing your strategy with personalization can increase spend efficiency up to 30% and revenue up to 15%.
It’s also important to remember that prospects want to hear from and engage with real people, not brand names. Posting on your brand channels is important, but it’s just the baseline social strategy. Stepping it up a notch to expand reach and grow engagement requires having your employees share branded content on their own channels. In an age when 69% of consumers make efforts to avoid advertisements, you must foster true connections by putting friendly human faces behind your brand. A humanized approach can help build trust in your employees and the brand at large.
Balancing the personal touch with compliant messaging
Of course, encouraging employees to post branded messaging creates more opportunities for compliance missteps. Regulatory bodies monitor social media just as they do other electronic communications, and one rogue employee post could land the brand in hot water. What’s more, a promissory post that doesn’t deliver could do more than get the brand in regulatory trouble — it could erode trust with clients and prospects. Fortunately, the tools exist to help financial institution leaders safeguard branded messaging even when it’s being shared by many different employees. Software can help build an automated approval workflow, so no employee post goes live without the proper review and sign-off from financial institution marketing and compliance teams. Leaders can also create digital libraries of preapproved content, so employees have easy access to compliant posts to share.
Designing digital experiences for conversion
Think of building consumers’ digital experiences as leading them down a funnel. The top of that funnel is all about awareness. This is where you pique their interest with helpful and engaging social posts. Next, lead them to the middle of the funnel, which is all about consideration. This is where you show them more about what makes your brand in particular the best one to solve their problems.
A link to a landing page from an interest-piquing social post is a great way to take prospects from the top of the funnel to the middle (your website, where you can demonstrate your specific value.) Tailored landing pages for specific campaigns — for example, first-time homebuyers — put valuable, relevant information right in the hands of already interested prospects.
For example, a loan officer can bring prospects into the funnel by targeting a paid ad on social media to land with people looking to secure their first mortgages. That ad should include a link to a landing page on your website for more information. The landing page should include gated resources on the subject, and viewers can put their name and email into a form to receive the download.
When they submit their information, prospects move to the bottom of the funnel, where the sales team can continue to nurture them as leads to guide their decision-making. From landing page forms, sales teams get well-primed leads right in their hands for further conversation. They can craft engaging email drip campaigns or conduct sales calls to keep your brand top of mind for leads as they consider their options. Ultimately, the goal of building digital experiences is to lead prospects closer and closer to the bank’s ultimate sales goal: conversion.

Landing page best practices
When designing landing pages, a few best practices can increase the likelihood of visitors exchanging their information for your content. First, you want to make sure the content on the landing page is highly relevant and valuable to the reader. That means a broad, one-size-fits-all page won’t do. Create multiple landing pages to align with specific target audiences and goals.
Then, remember to keep posts as simple and direct as possible to ensure the specific value offering is clear. You want readers to see as soon as possible why they need the content behind your paywall. Filling a page with too many design elements, multiple offers, images, or other clutter can distract landing page visitors from that focus.
In today’s new digital environment, conversion is the No. 1 metric to track. Likes, comments, and retweets might be nice to have, but savvy financial institution leaders must understand precisely how social media and other personalized steps in the customer journey can help them convert prospects into clients. Even when in-person means of making connections are back on the table, customers will still want tailored digital experiences. As long as you continue putting the human element front and center, digital tools will remain valuable ways to build relationships well into the future.
This article was originally published on International Banker.
In order for bank social media marketing strategies to thrive, marketers and compliance teams must collaborate to create and distribute compliant and engaging content. But compliance and marketing teams are often working toward different goals: Marketers aim to promote, and compliance officers aim to protect.
Social distancing and widespread remote work have made this challenge even more pressing as collaboration is decentralized. Building consensus can be difficult in a virtual environment. What’s more, banks have had to update their strategies for reaching and engaging prospects and customers throughout the pandemic. Without face-to-face interaction, social media marketing has become a key method for banks to reach their audiences.
Having to contend with social media regulations, compliance teams are faced with an increased volume of work and unfamiliar tactics and strategies. Banks that just began social media marketing in the past year, for example, have had to establish new review and approval processes that look much different from traditional media approvals of the past.
Though they have different goals, marketers and compliance teams need each other. Marketers need to avoid regulatory hot water in their social media and other electronic messaging. Compliance teams, along with the rest of the institution, need engaging and effective marketing strategies to remain competitive and continue securing revenue.
It’s up to bank leaders to facilitate greater collaboration between compliance and marketing teams to ensure this success, but it doesn’t have to be an arduous process—even in a virtual environment. With the right tools and approach, any bank can create a compliant and effective social media marketing strategy. Start with the following steps:
Establish automated approval workflows
In the age of remote work, everyone is fielding more internal electronic communications. One study shows that employees sent more than 5 percent more emails in a day just eight weeks into the pandemic..
Attachments and never-ending email chains are recipes for missed information, confusion and error. Fortunately, software exists to automate approval workflows and ensure that the right people—from marketing supervisors to compliance leaders and more—receive every bank social media post and engagement for review, comment and approval. No piece of content goes live without the proper sign-off.
Build compliant content libraries
Social selling, in which employees post branded content to their own profiles, is a popular and lucrative social media strategy. However, it does present more room for social media regulation and compliance missteps as one unapproved employee post or comment could land the institution in regulatory trouble. To avoid such a mistake, marketers can keep employee content compliant and on-brand by building libraries of content that has already been approved by the compliance team.
This way, employees can simply go into the library and choose a pre-approved post to share. What’s more, marketing teams can save compliance officers’ time and energy in reviewing these posts by setting up software with filters to automatically tag potentially problematic keywords. For example, they could add the word “guarantee” as a filter to notify compliance any time this keyword shows up in a post to help catch any promissory language.
Automatically archive all content and engagement
In the digital age of today, most banks should have already moved on from using physical paperwork to record social media posts and engagement in case of an audit. Even still, manually entering all of your bank’s social media posts and correspondence into spreadsheets can be a cumbersome task.
The right software can automate that process and compile every single piece of social media engagement into an easily accessible and searchable archive. Be prepared if FINRA ever comes knocking at your door for a compliance audit, and save your teams time and potential cross-department hurdles in the process with technology that can do it for them.
It’s imperative that your marketing and compliance teams stay connected. The specific roles and responsibilities of these two departments are different, but ultimately they should be working together toward a goal of reaching prospects and customers with helpful, engaging and compliant content. Neither department can realize that goal without help from the other.
This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.

In speaking with friends, co-workers and bankers, I have come across many reasons why more of us are not effectively using social media: not enough time, concerns about compliance and lack of knowledge top the list.
In banking, we are the relationship builders, the trusted sources and the personal interaction—whether in-person or via social, video, chat or other mediums. So how do we bridge the gap between in-person and digital interactions? How do we display our personality digitally while balancing compliance concerns? How do we personalize digital outreach and engagement through curated content and social media channels in order to educate customers and engage new prospects?
Banks’ retail customers and business clients expect personalized experiences. Using social media in a compliant way for bankers to engage with customers and differentiate themselves from the competition. According to Denim Social, ABA’s endorsed social media management platform, building a personalized and human digital experience is key, and the best place to start doing it is on social media. Informative and educational content is a fantastic entry point into a digital journey, as it starts by engaging prospects and building trust.

People trust people, and banks that have individual employees actively using social media on behalf of the bank’s brand are seeing results. Even when sharing the same content, on average employees see a click-through rate twice as high as their company’s own social channels see, according to LinkedIn. Two-thirds of consumers surveyed by the Harris Poll say they are likely to purchase an item or service they see on their social feeds.
Here’s a simple process to make social selling work in a bank context:
- Marketing teams easily curate and share educational, compliant content in a pre-approved digital library.
- Then employees access the approved content and share through their own, personal digital channels.
- Approval workflows and compliance checks along the way ensure the posts meet both the bank’s compliance and branding requirements.
Employee posts are a complement to, not a substitute for, paid social media, which enables marketers to create and target paid ads specific to demographics, geography and more. Imagine creating educational content for a demographic of first-time homebuyers. Your loan officer shares savings tips, homeownership information and educational content on their social channels, establishing expertise and developing relationships along the way. Paid ads ensure the right homebuyers see the content.
According to IBM, when a lead is generated through social selling or employee advocacy, that lead is seven times more likely to close compared to other lead gen tactics. Through this digital relationship, your loan officer has engaged in social selling and is reaching new markets—all without leaving the comfort of their home, their office or (these days) their home office.
This article was originally published by ABA Bank Marketing.
Lisa Gold Schier is an SVP at ABA, where she leads the ABA Endorsed Solutions team and business innovation.
The insurance sales environment has been rocked by COVID-19. What was once an industry built on face-to-face relationships is now going through rapid digital transformation. In the absence of in-person meetings, social media is the best place for agents to build trust with current and prospective clients.
Trust is the No. 1 thing insurance companies sell, after all, and a recent Edelman report shows that consumers rank brand employees as more trustworthy than brand CEOs or spokespeople. When insurance agents get in front of customers on social media, they can sell trust more effectively than brands alone.
And customers are looking for authentic connections: One study shows that life insurance customers who connected with their insurers gave Net Promoter Scores 25 points higher than those who did not. With face-to-face meetings off the table, social media is the primary stand-in for forging those deep, connected relationships that build trust and drive referrals.

As more agents recognize this and flock online to bring in business and build their individual professional brands, insurance marketers are tasked with scaling oversight to ensure compliance and consistent brand messaging. Considering that marketers at large companies could be looking at social strategies of thousands of agents dispersed across markets nationwide, it’s easy to see how managing the creation and publishing of owned and paid content can be incredibly time-consuming and complex.
Despite these challenges, insurance marketers must manage social media well. So how can marketing departments handle the influx of responsibilities? Start by understanding the most common mistakes and how to avoid them:
1. Letting agents fly solo.
Agents are busy, especially at a time when insurance needs are changing constantly. What’s more, many agents are likely jumping into social media as a professional tool for the first time: More than three-quarters of property-casualty agents are over age 50. They likely have less experience on social than their digital-native counterparts and require more guidance from marketing teams. It’s the marketing team’s responsibility to encourage agents to get and stay active on social media by making this task as easy as possible for them.
The right social media management software will allow marketers to create content libraries filled with preapproved posts. Agents can simply log in, choose which preapproved post they’d like to share, and either post it right away or schedule it to be posted later. This makes it easy for agents to access and post valuable content for their readers, and marketers will know that agents’ posts aren’t risking compliance or brand reputation.
2. Kicking it old-school.
Posting content and managing engagement on each individual social media platform is simply not scalable for marketers or agents today. For your team to be successful on social media, you must modernize your tools. Multichannel publishing platforms can help you effectively and efficiently create, approve, and publish content — and then manage engagement for many accounts on various platforms at once. Marketers can create approval workflows, schedule out social posts, and manage comments and other engagements, all from one central location.
What’s more, social media management software can help ease the regulatory pressure that comes along with electronic communications. In order to prove compliance in the event of an audit, you must keep record of every branded post and engagement. If you have thousands of agents using social media on behalf of the brand, however, it’s simply impossible to keep track of it all manually. It’s time to retire the binders and invest in software that can automatically log all of your posts and replies — saving you time and keeping your team audit-ready.
3. Being intimidated by paid social advertising.
When brands first began using social media as a marketing tool, all it took to make a post go viral was high-quality content. While great content is certainly a necessary place to start today, platforms have since updated their algorithms to make branded content less visible overall. Despite all the work that agents and marketers put into organic social media strategies, the reach could be insignificant without the help of paid advertising.
Paid social media advertising is a low-cost, high-return investment that will ensure branded posts land with exactly the right audiences at the right time. One of our clients, a Fortune 200 insurance company, used paid social to create one campaign that delivered click-through rates 59% higher than the financial and insurance industry average for social media and mobile advertising. And the cost-per-click was 24% less than similar campaigns.
Yes, it’s true that managing paid campaigns can be a headache for marketers, especially if they’re dealing with multiple campaigns at the brand, agency, and agent levels. But social media management software can step in to help ease the burden, and the results are worth the investment.
It’s understandable that agents and marketers alike might feel they’ve been tossed into the deep end as insurance saw a 180-degree shift in sales strategies almost overnight. The good news, however, is that the right tools can help you get a handle on the new demands of today to build an even stronger sales strategy for tomorrow.
The pandemic has been a catalyst for quick shifts in the financial services industry, and many of those changes have created more challenges when it comes to compliance. For one, a large portion of financial services workers have transitioned to working remotely, and this isn’t likely to change: Research from PwC shows that even after the pandemic, nearly 70 percent of financial services companies say the majority of their workforces will work from home at least once a week moving forward. For banks, accommodating this new work environment has meant updating digital tools and processes.
Remote work tools are not the only aspect of digital transformation that banks are taking on. In fact, the virtual shift was already well underway before COVID-19 as consumers sought more digital touchpoints. The pandemic just sped up the process.
Such fast–paced digital transformation has meant increased risk for missteps and errors that can trigger compliance concerns. As bank marketers look for more ways to make virtual connections, they should keep the following in mind when it comes to navigating increased compliance risks:
1. Employees are both your greatest asset and your greatest risk.
When loan officers, financial advisors, and other bank associates cannot meet with clients and prospects in person, social media can be an excellent tool for relationship-building. Employees can also significantly expand a brand’s reach on social. There are regulations to keep in mind around electronic communication, however. FINRA’s rules, for instance, prohibit misleading or promissory statements and claims as well as communication that predicts or projects performance.
When the world went digital, banks without proper approval processes already nailed down likely felt the crunch as employees began interacting more online. When employees and marketers can’t simply stop by a compliance officer’s desk to ask about social updates or blog post ideas, adjusting approval processes is a must. Banks need an approval framework to ensure that every brand-related social media post from every employee meets brand messaging and regulatory guidelines. The right social media management tools can automate that approval process so that employees can send posts or engagements to the right person with just a click of a button.
2. A hot mortgage market doesn’t make safety any less important.
The mortgage market is hotter than ever before as rates reach historic lows. Loan officers are busy helping more clients secure mortgages, and the savvy ones are also using social media to get in front of prospects and capture more business. As business increases, however, so should a bank’s attention on compliance.
Marketers can keep a close eye on electronic communication using software with keyword filtering capabilities. For example, marketers could flag the word “guarantee” so any social post with that word creates an alert, so no promissory posts go live. Automatic archiving is another excellent software capability when it comes to compliance. When each post and engagement is automatically saved and stored, it’s easy to prove compliance if auditors ever come knocking.
3. If your marketing department’s growth is limited, optimize your processes.
Digital transformation may be accelerating quickly in the financial services sphere, but that does not mean marketing or compliance teams are expanding alongside it. Many financial institutions currently lack the resources to expand staff as they navigate revenue-related challenges of the pandemic.
The roles of marketers and compliance teams, however, are indeed increasing in scope and importance as banks must continue connecting virtually with consumers to guide them through new, digital ways of doing business. The good news is that banks can expand their capabilities without expanding staff or making huge capital expenditures on sophisticated digital tools. Social media is a low-cost, high-ROI option, and there are affordable social media management tools that enable marketers to keep electronic communication within regulatory bounds at scale.
For institutions that aren’t planning to grow their budgets anytime soon, optimizing marketing and compliance processes is key to connecting digitally with customers while maintaining compliance. Tools that automatically bring red flags to marketers’ attention and make it easy for employees to post approved content will help marketers guide banks safely through this digital transformation and the next.
This article was originally published on ABA Bank Marketing.

Connect & Convert on Social
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference
At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.

Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.
Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference
At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.


Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.
Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference
At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.


Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.
Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference
At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.


Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
Shelter Insurance® sought to launch a social selling program that would not only create posting efficiency, but also make it easy for agents to establish subject matter expertise via high quality social media content. They also saw an opportunity to empower digitally savvy agents to cultivate leads online to drive business results in a compliant social selling program.
Before launching the program, it was essential that agents understood the pillars of social selling. Together with the Denim Social team, Shelter Insurance® developed a best-in-class program communication, onboarding and training process for agents.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference

At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.

Being responsible for your team’s social selling strategy can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a plan or support. We see it firsthand at Denim Social – without a meaningful strategy, users may not be eager (or downright resistant) to jump on a new platform. So, how are others getting their teams onboard? We learn a lot from our Denim Social customers to learn how they’re making it happen. Overall, we have observed four keys to adoption success.
Activate a hybrid distribution approach.
We find that teams that utilize a hybrid approach to posting have the most empowered associates. What does it look like in practice? This usually includes the marketing team posting brand content on behalf of associates, and associates scheduling out pre-approved industry content from a content library, plus sprinkling in their own personal content. And rest assured, that personal content still goes through approval workflows.
Build a robust content library.
If you’re going to ask associates to post content, you’ve got to make it easy and compliant. Our platform offers content libraries filled with pre-approved posts. We see that when associates have lots of content to choose from, they post more frequently.
It's a win-win for all: Compliance teams can be confident that they are managing any content that's being posted, marketing teams can provide support more readily and get more messaging across, and users can quickly build up a content calendar with engaging, customizable posts.
Communicate the value of social media consistently.
Your teams need to be able to answer the age old question, “what’s in it for me?” Your teams are busy and that means you need to help them see why spending their valuable time on social media is worth it.
In a time when meeting customers where they are means being on social media, it's essential that intermediaries look to their networks to take advantage of existing connections and forming new ones. Social media is a highly visible and time-efficient way to strengthen important relationships. It's all about doing more with less!
Train and Train Again
Baking social media and Denim Social training into the onboarding process is a great way to introduce new and motivated associates to a fresh way to drive their business. It is also important to keep social media top of mind for ALL associates. An ongoing training program outlining compliance/social policy, the value of social media and Denim Social is a must, whether it be monthly or quarterly. Marketing is not often top of mind for salespeople, so it is important to continuously educate them on how to get involved and optimize their strategies.
Many of our Denim Social customers set up trainings that include: monthly new hire social media and compliance training courses, Denim Social overviews, a monthly Denim Social refresher training, a Quarterly Strategy training, and ongoing 1:1 assistance for users. It's all about keeping social media top of mind and having easy access to resources.
For many, these training programs are a well oiled machine, and keeps their social program growing by educating and informing users consistently.
If you’re struggling with adoption, these strategies can help. And of course, persistence pays off.
Social media is only as valuable as its users and that makes adoption key. If you’re struggling to motivate your team to hop on the social media bandwagon the right tools and support can make all the difference. If you want to learn more about how the Denim Social platform works, schedule a demo with us today.

Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
“Everyone wants a quick response, they want to be communicated with in the way they want it…speed and availability demands have created challenges that they have to be able to be everything to the customer in the way that they want it.” - Bryan Clarke, SVP
With Denim Social, Dart Bank launched a formal social selling program for over 50 loan officers in just a few months. Dart Bank started by posting on behalf of their loan officers. Through regular training and education combined with access to compliant content libraries, loan officers have gained the confidence to start posting to their own pages. It was important for Dart Bank to build a strong foundation and enable their team to make social media more personalized.
See how they helped strengthen customer relationships in this Case Study.
Where Are the Biggest Opportunities to Use Social Media in Financial Services?
Denim Social's Guide To Social Selling For Financial Services shows that most financial professionals — 83% of those surveyed — have a social media presence. It’s a great place to start, but having a profile is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what benefits financial institutions can enjoy from social media. Smart financial marketers and their teams should be optimizing their social selling efforts on every network to get the most out of what social media has to offer.
Customers are active in many other places online, so why not meet them there? After all, 79% of people look to social media for financial advice. By meeting customers where they are on the main 4 networks, financial institutions can stay top of mind and grow real, authentic connections. Let’s dive into what Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have to offer and how financial services marketers can best use each platform.
1. Instagram
As far as major social media platforms in financial services go, Instagram tops the list. While many financial professionals might not at first think of the photographic and visual network as prime business territory, its popularity makes it an excellent place to strengthen real relationships.
Instagram is one of the best ways to get in front of younger audiences, which is a worthwhile goal, considering that many Millennial customers will likely be on the search for new financial services providers as Baby Boomers pass their wealth on to the next generations. What's more, 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business account and 80% use the platform to discover new products.
Even better, getting started on Instagram is a breeze. Instagram ads also allow hyperlinks, so you can lead readers right from their feeds to your website with specific calls to action to learn more. Lead them to a personalized and well-designed landing page on your site, for instance, and you'll be drawing each follower who clicks through one big step closer to conversion.
2. LinkedIn
The majority of financial services providers already use LinkedIn, and there are many ways to make it perhaps the most successful social selling platform out of all the networks. Employees at institutions of all sizes and financial industries can use this professional network to cultivate thought leadership and educate their customers.
For financial services marketers, a brand profile is a necessary starting point. Getting the most out of the platform, however, requires activating your employees in a social selling strategy. They can share relevant content, such as videos and published articles from trusted media outlets, as well as engage with customers and prospects one-on-one via direct messaging to establish themselves as experts and build trusting relationships. People want to engage with other people, not with general brand pages. It’s no wonder that employees on social media can garner 10x the engagement of brand pages alone.
3. Twitter
Like LinkedIn, Twitter is also a great place for agents, loan officers, and advisors to share their expertise. Understandably, financial services marketers might be intimidated by the fast-paced nature of the platform and fear they don’t have enough resources to keep up. However, with the proper social media management tools, maintaining compliant engagement on Twitter is totally possible — and worth it.
One of the greatest benefits of social media marketing for financial services is the ability to provide more value to customers. Twitter makes this incredibly easy to do. Marketers can follow all relevant news media outlets and keep an eye out for any articles that might benefit their clients or prospects. For example, an explainer piece on recent changes in tax legislation may be helpful come tax season. Retweeting such helpful resources educates followers on financial topics and builds trust in the brand and its employees.
There’s no single best social media platform for marketing. Each one has a unique opportunity to reach and engage current and future customers. If you’re already on social media, it’s time to level up your social media marketing strategy by diving into Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in more depth. No matter the size of your financial institution, extending your social media strategy to encompass these platforms can help grow your audience, build trust, and maintain solid customer relationships.

Whether you love or loathe social media's infiltration into every element of our personal and professional lives, there's no denying that this powerful medium is never going away. Social networks are growing bigger and stronger by the day. Forward-thinking achievers in every industry understand this and have responded by leaning all the way into social selling.
For the unaware, social selling is using social media to sell a product or service by showcasing authenticity, strengthening relationships with clients and prospects, and building thought leadership. In social selling, advisors use their own social pages to promote content about their brand and services, but with a personal spin.
Everyone from dog groomers to financial advisors are utilizing multiple social networks to build a following and bolster their personal brands, and those who fully embrace social media's ubiquity outperform their competitors and win more business. It's as simple as that.
The key, though, is finding a way to stand out from the competition online. There's a big difference between "doing social media" and doing it well.
The difficulty with differentiation
As we all know, the internet is more than likely the first place individuals go to get advice these days — financial, familial, and absolutely everything in between. So when people go online to search for guidance on money matters, they won't find you if you aren't there, actively promoting your expertise and services.
There's no stronger business case for social media (and social selling) than that: It's where your potential customers are. Meet them there and give them what they need. If you don't, someone else will.
To set yourself apart as a financial advisor, you need to be able to sell yourself — not just your firm. Sure, many financial advisors are intermediated and you likely don't have free rein to post everything you might want to on social channels, but that shouldn't be a deal-breaker. There's still plenty to say without risking any backlash or drawing the ire of regulators.
Put your fears aside
Though some in the financial industry might feel wary or daunted by interacting directly with clients or prospects, online exchanges matter in today’s market. Brands that use a more generic social-media strategy can end up sounding too promotional, focused more on boosting the brand to a broad audience instead of forging real connections. Rather than creating original content that speaks to their particular audience, financial institutions treat these social channels as glorified billboards instead of networking opportunities for each individual advisor.
That’s too bad because there’s real power behind social selling today. When comparing the social media potential of brands vs. individuals, one study found that employees have 10 times the reach and double the engagement of the brands they speak for. The best sellers in large companies, meanwhile, were the ones who regularly used technology to foster connections with new prospects or existing clients. Building genuine relationships pays off for both advisors and brands.
So, how does someone improve their social-selling efforts? How can financial advisors use the power of their individuality to differentiate themselves from their peers? Here are five tips to help you better accomplish social selling on your personal pages:
1. Ask an expert
Even if you’re on board with tapping into the potential of authentic relationship-building through social selling, you still need the right tools and training for the job. After all, your area of expertise is in the valuable services you provide to your clients, not online marketing.
An excellent move for advisors is to seek advice from your firms’s marketing or branding team. Not only can they help you develop an effective social-selling strategy, but they can also provide you with the resources and tools you need to more effectively and efficiently create, plan, and schedule your posts. Compliance experts can also educate you on the rules that govern social media in the financial services industry. Ideally, your firm provides continuous training and tools to ensure you stay on the right side of regulations.
2. Be real
The type of posts that most people see on their social-media feeds are at least partially determined by an algorithm. These algorithms are generally designed to serve up content that users are most likely to engage with in one way or another. This can be a huge advantage, but it also means that you can’t expect to stay on people’s minds if you deliver bland, uninteresting content that isn't relevant to your audience.
That doesn’t mean you should go posting clickbait or try to shock people (there’s definitely such a thing as bad engagement). Instead, the best way to get and keep people’s attention is to be your real self. Post about what matters to you and do it in your own voice, not just copying/pasting brand posts. Post about local happenings that people in your area might care about. Speak to the challenges you hear clients ask about most. In social selling, authenticity is the fastest way to start building deeper and more lasting relationships.
3. Consistency is key
How much engagement your posts garner will often depend on when and how often you post. Not only does each channel (like Facebook or LinkedIn) tend to have different times when engagement is at its peak, but your specific audience may also have their own preferences. A little research here can go a long way.
Build a sustainable cadence and stay the course. Consistency is crucial. If you post more than once a day, make sure that each has a few hours to shine on its own. And if a post is getting a particularly high response rate, wait a while before potentially drowning it out with something new. Remember: Algorithms are looking for engagement, not frequency.
4. Mix it up
Another way to ensure better engagement (and a better response from the algorithm!) is to mix up the type of content you share. Your online presence should be a healthy medley of brand, industry, and personal and community content.
You will need to figure out what the right balance for your own audience is. Think about what they care about, the questions they ask when you work together, or specific local concerns. The bottom line in every case is to make sure you’re maintaining a variety of relevant content in your social selling strategy.
5. Give and take
Approach social media as a conversation, not a bullhorn. Social selling is about more than just getting engagement — it’s also about engaging with your audience in return. This give and take is how relationships are made and strengthened, whether they be prospects or clients you know and love.
Don’t just be reactive by responding only to comments or likes on your posts. Take time to respond to others’ posts as well, whether they’re customers or other thought leaders in the industry. This doesn’t always have to be through comments, either; a simple like can let people know you’re paying attention to what they have to say.
Social selling is a powerful tool that can help financial advisors bring in new prospects and keep old clients coming back for more advice through the power of relationship and trust building. However, in order to rise above the noise, you can’t lean on your — or your firm’s — reputation. Instead, you need to establish an authentic presence for yourself that showcases exactly what makes you the right person for the job.
Learn more by downloading our Social Selling Guidebook for Financial Institutions.

When my father worked in insurance decades ago, he’d sit down with people at their kitchen tables and listen. He’d share. He’d build the relationship. And he’d sell.
Fast forward to the digital age, and authenticity still has just as much relevance, if not more. The only difference? Social media platforms replaced the kitchen table. Instead of coming to people’s front doors, agents are coming in through Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. These exchanges are no less real to potential clients — and no less critical to the relationship-building model that succeeds time and again in the insurance industry.
Most intermediaries and their carriers know the importance of social media by now, while others might need more guidance around strategy and how to implement it at the agent level. Even new agents from digitally native generations can find the “hows” of fully leveraging social media confusing and intimidating.
Whether an agent is new to social or has been running personal accounts for years, it’s essential to use social media as more than a digital billboard. Instead, agents must use social media as a vehicle to take their relationship-building and thought leadership into the digital world. And most importantly, they must be authentic when doing it.
The advantages of being authentic in social
You establish an invaluable foundation of trust when you are human on social media. It’s no secret that trust remains essential in insurance; people who don’t trust a brand, an agent, or a product will go elsewhere. Competition is fierce, and today’s consumers don’t care about brand loyalty; they care about whether or not you can meet their needs. Trust is the glue that keeps a client or prospect from saying goodbye.
Many opportunities open up when agents use social media to get closer to your clients. For instance, a lead might mention a significant life moment on their social channel, like the birth of a child. If savvy agents follow and listen to the lead, they can drive meaningful connections with a friendly response, continually building the relationship. It’s not about closing a sale on a social post; it’s creating conditions that may eventually lead to an opportunity to present new insurance options that make sense for their new bundle of joy.
When interactions like this are genuine and timely, they can lead to more business and even stronger ties between agents and clients.
A final benefit of deepening relationships on social media is that you humanize your brand. Every agent should focus on showcasing their authentic personality, whether underneath a carrier banner or not. Agents whose followers see them as “the local expert” or “a trusted friend” set themselves up to become go-to resources that prospects will consult when they have insurance-related concerns. Authenticity builds relationships, which will help you connect with more of your customer base.
Get started with social selling
Social selling is essentially what it sounds like: Using social media to build credibility, thought leadership and trust, which help to sell a product or service. This savvy marketing strategy enables intermediaries — such as agents and brokers — to bring more value to the customer journey.
Individual content posted to social media is said to have 10 times the reach and drive double the engagement compared to content shared by brands. Consumers want to work with trusted individuals when making big decisions related to finances and insurance. As an agent, you need to be empowered to use social media in your sales mix; otherwise, you’re leaving opportunities on the table.
So, how do you seize these opportunities? Start here…
No. 1: See yourself as an influencer.
In 2023, everyone’s heard of social-media influencers. These ambassadors use their personal talents and creativity to build loyal followings and offer sway and endorsement to brands. To get in the right mindset, you should try to see yourself as a micro-influencer for your community. This perspective can help you grow your following and prioritize your engagement strategy (think commenting, replying and liking posts).
Consumers are turning their backs on traditional advertising. They’re not turning their backs on influencers, however, especially when they’re local. In fact, micro-influencers have been found to have even higher follower engagement than their macro counterparts. Fewer followers mean more time to interact with each one, leading to stronger relationships. Some even see them as the voice of reason and truth. Agents who adopt practices that get creative, showcase their personalities, offer value and aim to solve followers’ problems will quickly find a loyal, influencer-like audience.
No. 2: Get personal.
Plenty of agents live and work in the neighborhoods they serve. This allows you to craft locally specific posts that are relevant to prospects and clients but not overtly promotional or self-serving. It’s OK to talk about statistics, sales or promotions occasionally, but you will find more success in the community by sharing content relevant to where you work and live.
This could mean anything from giving a quick shout-out to a favorite small-business coffee shop to discussing how a product helped a client. (Always following all regulations, of course.) Putting a regional flavor and human face on social media content reinforces that you’re an actual person, not just an automated bot posting pseudo-advertisements at pre-arranged intervals.
No. 3: Aim to educate.
As an insurance agent, you are selling a promise to consumers. A promise that many people can find confusing. Many consumers are also unaware of the life milestones that should trigger a new insurance decision.
Using social media to demystify insurance and educate on these milestones not only highlights your expertise but puts this valuable information in the path of the consumer, who is likely starting their buying journey with self-guided research online.
Social media can have the same intimate, relationship-boosting effect on agents and consumers as the kitchen table once did. Luckily, the secret to making social selling work isn’t all that different: Focus on authentic, genuine relationships, and you’ll find your following.
Want to understand how it works in real time? See how Shelter Insurance® found success with social selling in this case study.

This article was originally published in PropertyCasualty360.
Digital transformation means that social media has become an integral part of everyday life. It has changed the way we communicate and connect with others, and it has also transformed the way financial professionals operate. Loan officers, insurance agents, and financial advisors will find that social media networks like LinkedIn have immense potential in terms of building connections, establishing thought leadership in the industry, and supporting their business.
LinkedIn has quickly become a need for financial professionals: in fact, 9 out of 10 financial advisors are currently using LinkedIn for their business, and other industries can show similar numbers, too. To leverage the full potential of LinkedIn, intermediaries should create a strong social media content and post strategy. Here’s how to get started:
Define Your Target Audience
Before creating any content or posting anything on LinkedIn, it is essential to define the right target audience. By knowing this audience, it’s easier and more effective to craft content that resonates with them, and to also tailor any message to their needs and preferences. For the financial services industry, understanding clients and prospective clients is crucial to growing connections on social media.
Develop a Content Strategy
Once the target audience is identified, the next step is to develop a content strategy that aligns with business objectives. The content strategy should focus on creating value for the audience and positioning oneself as an expert in the financial industry, be it insurance, mortgage, banking, or wealth. It’s always helpful to create a mix of content, including articles, blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts, depending on current events and what the target audience would prefer.
Some themes to consider using in the content strategy are:
- Industry news and trends
- Tips and advice for financial planning and investments
- Case studies and success stories
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Thought leadership pieces on industry-specific topics
Optimize The LinkedIn Profile
A LinkedIn profile is the first thing that potential connections will see. Therefore, it is essential to optimize the profile to make a good impression and establish credibility. Some tips for making a LinkedIn profile stand out are:
- Use a professional headshot
- Write a compelling headline that reflects expertise
- Craft a well-written summary that highlights skills and experience
- Add relevant keywords to the profile to make it easier for people to find in search results
- Include media such as videos, infographics, and presentations to showcase work
Engage With Connections
LinkedIn is a social media platform, and like any other social network, engagement is key. Engaging with connections demonstrates real interest in building important relationships and sharing valuable insights. Some meaningful ways to engage with connections might include:
- React to and comment on posts
- Share posts with existing network
- Send personalized messages to build rapport and establish connections
- Participate in LinkedIn groups relevant to industry
Measure and Refine Your Strategy
Finally, it is crucial to measure any LinkedIn strategy's effectiveness and refine it over time. Using social media analytics is a smart way to track an audience's engagement with posted content, such as views, likes, shares, and comments. Based on this data, it’s simple to refine an existing strategy, identify what works and what doesn't, and adjust the tactics accordingly.
In conclusion, creating a social media content and post strategy for LinkedIn can help financial professionals build connections, establish thought leadership, and support their business. By defining the right target audience, developing a content strategy, optimizing the profile, engaging with connections, and measuring and refining the approach, anyone can leverage the full potential of LinkedIn and make social media a priority.
Ready to start building your social selling game plan? Check out this Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.

Connect & Convert on Social
Three Big Trends to Watch from the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference

At Denim Social, Compliance is our foundation and something we’re thinking about all day every day (and okay, maybe some times the middle of the night). With the return of in-person conferences, we were beyond excited to go to the Super Bowl of compliance and regulation – the 2022 FINRA Annual Conference. A gathering of the industry’s compliance leaders and regulators, the conference was an opportunity to dig into the latest hot topics.
I saw three big trends every financial marketer should be looking out for:
Enforcement Is Up. Regulatory bodies are growing headcounts to clear tax backlogs and the expanding oversight teams too. In several presentations and discussions at the conference, we heard about the regulators’ desire to recapture violation revenue. A higher degree of oversight and more staffing resources means that financial institutions need to be prepared for enforcement. Time to expand the Panic Room. In practical terms, institutions should be investing in tech that will programmatically enforce compliance.
Headcount Is Down. Like so many other industries right now, headcount is a challenge for wealth advisory firms. While they may be losing advisors to retirement or attrition, firms still need to bring in assets under management. An increased focus on competition for client and asset attraction, many firms may be reallocating resources away from planning and protection, creating risk.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a Must. Events of the past few years and an increasingly diverse client base, have shined a light on the industry’s need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion. While DEI was once a nice-to-have, it is now essential for the industry. FINRA will support efforts to recruit more diverse professionals to the industry and increase financial literacy among the populations financial institutions serve.
After attending thought-provoking sessions and speaking with countless professionals at the conference, I see opportunities for financial institutions. Yes, there may be more risk and uncertainty in the atmosphere, but never before has there been such great access to technology to protect brands.
Feeling concerned about you compliance protection? Learn how Denim Social can help.

In a time where it's important than ever to maintain and build existing customer relationships, financial professionals like loan officers, insurance agents, and financial advisors should look to LinkedIn as a primary means of communication and an essential part of everyday communication.
Today, meeting customers where they are means being active on social media. Aptly named "the professional network", LinkedIn is prime territory for boosting thought leadership, crafting an online presence, and creating authentic, lasting relationships that will stand the test of time (and economic ups and downs).
Whether you're just getting started on social media for financial professionals, or you're a seasoned LinkedIn veteran looking to make the most of the network, it's time for financial institutions to take LinkedIn seriously in 2024.
LinkedIn Can Help Build Trust & Credibility
It seems simple to say, but trust hinges on authentic relationships. Today’s customers want to work with real people who connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s so important to be yourself when using social networks like LinkedIn. Put some of your personality into their social posts, talk about things that are important to you, or ask your networks questions. (If this keeps you up at night from a risk perspective, know that approval tools like Denim Social can help ensure compliance.)
When people interact with you through LinkedIn, they’ll see how much reliable value you provide to their lives and will be more likely to trust your brand with their livelihoods. Authenticity is even more crucial when it comes to attracting prospects at the top of the funnel who haven’t gotten the chance to meet (and befriend) you yet.
While the current economic climate poses many potential challenges, remember that gaining and keeping customers’ trust is the key to acquiring and retaining clients (even in tough times). Lean on social media networks like LinkedIn to tell the your brand’s story, build thought leadership online, and gain more followers who convert into new clients. Let them get to know your institution and you, and they’ll want to work (and stay) with you for years to come.
LinkedIn Is A Winning Choice
It's hard to hear, but if you aren't on LinkedIn already, you're already behind. In fact, 9 out of 10 financial advisors are using LinkedIn for their business, and other industries see similar usage numbers. The same way that email and text messaging have become routine modes of communication, so will social media like LinkedIn.
You can bet that your audience will be there, too. Over 16% of LinkedIn users log on every single day, and this number continues to grow as the networks becomes more and more popular among the groups that financial professionals target most frequently, like young professionals and business leaders.
Being active and sustaining a regular presence can have some serious payoffs. For example, pages that post weekly instead of just monthly have almost 6 times as many followers.
The future is bright for those that use LinkedIn to their advantage. It's clear that there's no slowing down its momentum as a primary social network!
LinkedIn Can Help You Educate
Are there certain points you are always trying to get across with your customers, or questions you are routinely asked? Look no further than LinkedIn. Use this powerful network to create and share posts that will position you as one of the top expert in your field and in your community.
There are currently over 27 million people that look to LinkedIn as an educational tool. When someone comes looking for an answer to their question, you want to be the go-to source of truth for them.
With LinkedIn, you can share graphics, videos, documents, photos, and more. It's easy to diversify your content to make your profile a wealth of knowledge for your customers and prospects. If you are looking for more ideas on how to make the most of LinkedIn, check out Denim's Social's Best Practices For LinkedIn.
In sum, LinkedIn is basically your new business card. Use it well! Don't let your opportunities on LinkedIn pass you by. Start prepping now to get your strategy in order so you find success on LinkedIn in 2024. Interested in other social networks, too? Try downloading our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions. Happy posting!

Being responsible for your team’s social selling strategy can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a plan or support. We see it firsthand at Denim Social – without a meaningful strategy, users may not be eager (or downright resistant) to jump on a new platform. So, how are others getting their teams onboard? We learn a lot from our Denim Social customers to learn how they’re making it happen. Overall, we have observed four keys to adoption success.
Activate a hybrid distribution approach.
We find that teams that utilize a hybrid approach to posting have the most empowered associates. What does it look like in practice? This usually includes the marketing team posting brand content on behalf of associates, and associates scheduling out pre-approved industry content from a content library, plus sprinkling in their own personal content. And rest assured, that personal content still goes through approval workflows.
Build a robust content library.
If you’re going to ask associates to post content, you’ve got to make it easy and compliant. Our platform offers content libraries filled with pre-approved posts. We see that when associates have lots of content to choose from, they post more frequently.
It's a win-win for all: Compliance teams can be confident that they are managing any content that's being posted, marketing teams can provide support more readily and get more messaging across, and users can quickly build up a content calendar with engaging, customizable posts.
Communicate the value of social media consistently.
Your teams need to be able to answer the age old question, “what’s in it for me?” Your teams are busy and that means you need to help them see why spending their valuable time on social media is worth it.
In a time when meeting customers where they are means being on social media, it's essential that intermediaries look to their networks to take advantage of existing connections and forming new ones. Social media is a highly visible and time-efficient way to strengthen important relationships. It's all about doing more with less!
Train and Train Again
Baking social media and Denim Social training into the onboarding process is a great way to introduce new and motivated associates to a fresh way to drive their business. It is also important to keep social media top of mind for ALL associates. An ongoing training program outlining compliance/social policy, the value of social media and Denim Social is a must, whether it be monthly or quarterly. Marketing is not often top of mind for salespeople, so it is important to continuously educate them on how to get involved and optimize their strategies.
Many of our Denim Social customers set up trainings that include: monthly new hire social media and compliance training courses, Denim Social overviews, a monthly Denim Social refresher training, a Quarterly Strategy training, and ongoing 1:1 assistance for users. It's all about keeping social media top of mind and having easy access to resources.
For many, these training programs are a well oiled machine, and keeps their social program growing by educating and informing users consistently.
If you’re struggling with adoption, these strategies can help. And of course, persistence pays off.
Social media is only as valuable as its users and that makes adoption key. If you’re struggling to motivate your team to hop on the social media bandwagon the right tools and support can make all the difference. If you want to learn more about how the Denim Social platform works, schedule a demo with us today.

Like many community banks, Dart Bank wanted to keep customer relationships a top priority. This meant being more available to customers and meeting them where they are. In modern terms, that means on social media.
When Dart Bank learned about how Denim Social supports social selling for loan officers, they knew it was the perfect fit to keep their team engaged at every step of the journey. They wanted to empower their loan officers to create and grow authentic relationships online, never missing an opportunity to connect.
“Everyone wants a quick response, they want to be communicated with in the way they want it…speed and availability demands have created challenges that they have to be able to be everything to the customer in the way that they want it.” - Bryan Clarke, SVP
With Denim Social, Dart Bank launched a formal social selling program for over 50 loan officers in just a few months. Dart Bank started by posting on behalf of their loan officers. Through regular training and education combined with access to compliant content libraries, loan officers have gained the confidence to start posting to their own pages. It was important for Dart Bank to build a strong foundation and enable their team to make social media more personalized.
See how they helped strengthen customer relationships in this Case Study.
Where Are the Biggest Opportunities to Use Social Media in Financial Services?
Denim Social's Guide To Social Selling For Financial Services shows that most financial professionals — 83% of those surveyed — have a social media presence. It’s a great place to start, but having a profile is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what benefits financial institutions can enjoy from social media. Smart financial marketers and their teams should be optimizing their social selling efforts on every network to get the most out of what social media has to offer.
Customers are active in many other places online, so why not meet them there? After all, 79% of people look to social media for financial advice. By meeting customers where they are on the main 4 networks, financial institutions can stay top of mind and grow real, authentic connections. Let’s dive into what Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have to offer and how financial services marketers can best use each platform.
1. Instagram
As far as major social media platforms in financial services go, Instagram tops the list. While many financial professionals might not at first think of the photographic and visual network as prime business territory, its popularity makes it an excellent place to strengthen real relationships.
Instagram is one of the best ways to get in front of younger audiences, which is a worthwhile goal, considering that many Millennial customers will likely be on the search for new financial services providers as Baby Boomers pass their wealth on to the next generations. What's more, 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business account and 80% use the platform to discover new products.
Even better, getting started on Instagram is a breeze. Instagram ads also allow hyperlinks, so you can lead readers right from their feeds to your website with specific calls to action to learn more. Lead them to a personalized and well-designed landing page on your site, for instance, and you'll be drawing each follower who clicks through one big step closer to conversion.
2. LinkedIn
The majority of financial services providers already use LinkedIn, and there are many ways to make it perhaps the most successful social selling platform out of all the networks. Employees at institutions of all sizes and financial industries can use this professional network to cultivate thought leadership and educate their customers.
For financial services marketers, a brand profile is a necessary starting point. Getting the most out of the platform, however, requires activating your employees in a social selling strategy. They can share relevant content, such as videos and published articles from trusted media outlets, as well as engage with customers and prospects one-on-one via direct messaging to establish themselves as experts and build trusting relationships. People want to engage with other people, not with general brand pages. It’s no wonder that employees on social media can garner 10x the engagement of brand pages alone.
3. Twitter
Like LinkedIn, Twitter is also a great place for agents, loan officers, and advisors to share their expertise. Understandably, financial services marketers might be intimidated by the fast-paced nature of the platform and fear they don’t have enough resources to keep up. However, with the proper social media management tools, maintaining compliant engagement on Twitter is totally possible — and worth it.
One of the greatest benefits of social media marketing for financial services is the ability to provide more value to customers. Twitter makes this incredibly easy to do. Marketers can follow all relevant news media outlets and keep an eye out for any articles that might benefit their clients or prospects. For example, an explainer piece on recent changes in tax legislation may be helpful come tax season. Retweeting such helpful resources educates followers on financial topics and builds trust in the brand and its employees.
There’s no single best social media platform for marketing. Each one has a unique opportunity to reach and engage current and future customers. If you’re already on social media, it’s time to level up your social media marketing strategy by diving into Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in more depth. No matter the size of your financial institution, extending your social media strategy to encompass these platforms can help grow your audience, build trust, and maintain solid customer relationships.

ST. LOUIS, August 30, 2023 – Capacity, an AI-powered support automation platform, today announced the acquisitions of Denim Social and LumenVox. Capacity’s support automation platform empowers teams to do their best work and deliver valuable customer experiences across channels. With the addition of Denim Social and LumenVox’s products, the platform is charting a course to provide solutions that define the future of work and omnichannel customer engagement for its 1,900+ customers across numerous industries.
Capacity’s acquisitions of Denim Social and LumenVox are fueling its transformation from a self-service, single channel tool to an omnichannel support and engagement automation platform. Whether providing customer and employee support, assisting agents or reaching out to customers, the Capacity platform now offers a complete solution across web, voice, SMS, email and social media.
“Customers need support everywhere. Our expanded platform will free up team members to do their best work while also building more meaningful relationships with their customers,” said David Karandish, CEO, Capacity. “Denim Social’s platform will empower brands to more effectively communicate with customers on their social channel of choice and LumenVox’s tools are key in our expansion into voice automation.”
Denim Social, based in St. Louis, is a software provider that elevates the way professionals in the banking, insurance, mortgage and wealth management industries connect and sell on social media. With Denim Social integrated into the platform, Capacity users will be able to launch proactive social media campaigns to reach customers and deepen relationships.
“Social media is a must-have tool for today’s modern seller. Combining Capacity’s AI-powered automations with Denim Social’s campaign tools will enable users across industries to more effectively stay engaged on social media and focus their time on delivering authentic interactions,” said Doug Wilber, CEO, Denim Social. Wilber has assumed the role of Chief Strategy Officer at Capacity, following the acquisition.
LumenVox is a leading global speech and voice technology provider based out of San Diego. LumenVox works with customers to build secure self-service and customer-agent interactions. Its tools will enable Capacity users to transform customer engagement with AI-driven speech recognition and voice authentication technology.
“The right voice technology can save teams countless support hours. Marrying LumenVox’s technology with the Capacity platform ensures voice is a seamless part of the omnichannel experience,” said Nigel Quinnin, CEO, LumenVox. Quinnin will lead Capacity’s voice initiatives.
The acquisitions of Denim Social and LumenVox significantly expand the capabilities and scale of the Capacity platform. Today, Capacity estimates that every month its platform will:
- Analyze 3,000,000,000 calls
- Send 10,000,000 SMS messages
- Deliver 500,000 social posts
- Execute 386,000 workflows and automations
- Deflect 140,000 tickets and emails
“With these two great additions to the Capacity platform, we’re proudly offering customers an all-in-one solution for support and customer experience,” said Karandish.
Capacity’s acquisitions of Denim Social and LumenVox closely follows a deal with Textel, an enterprise SMS provider, earlier this year. Capacity will maintain its headquarters in St. Louis. With the acquisitions, its headcount is now more than 100 employees. The terms of the transactions are confidential.
For more information on how Capacity helps teams do their best work, please visit capacity.com/omnichannel.
About Capacity
Founded in 2017, Capacity is a support automation platform that uses AI to promote self-service, providing immediate Tier 0 and Tier 1 support for customers and internal teams. Capacity answers over 90% of FAQs and escalates more pressing, nuanced issues to the right person. Capacity works across web, voice, SMS, email and social media to help teams do their best work. For more information, visit Capacity.com.
About Denim Social
Denim Social is a Software As A Service (SaaS) provider that powers social selling programs. The Denim Social platform helps brands empower their producers to compliantly communicate, share, and sell on their social channels of choice. Denim Social partners with forward-thinking marketing teams in regulated industries including banking, mortgage, insurance and wealth management. The social selling platform is used by corporate level admins and local producers to amplify brand messaging and power sales on social media. For more information, visit DenimSocial.com.
About LumenVox
LumenVox is an industry-leading provider of speech-enabling software, bringing the power of voice to customers worldwide and facilitating billions of customer interactions. The LumenVox software portfolio consists of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) with transcription, Call Progress Analysis (CPA), Voice Biometrics, and Text-to-Speech (TTS). Designed to be highly flexible, accurate, and scalable, LumenVox helps some of the world’s largest cloud-first companies reimagine customer engagement by delivering exceptional voice experiences. LumenVox also provides self-service tools that enable customers to easily tune, adjust, and create language models. For more information, visit LumenVox.com.
*This article was originally published in PRNewswire.
Whether you love or loathe social media's infiltration into every element of our personal and professional lives, there's no denying that this powerful medium is never going away. Social networks are growing bigger and stronger by the day. Forward-thinking achievers in every industry understand this and have responded by leaning all the way into social selling.
For the unaware, social selling is using social media to sell a product or service by showcasing authenticity, strengthening relationships with clients and prospects, and building thought leadership. In social selling, advisors use their own social pages to promote content about their brand and services, but with a personal spin.
Everyone from dog groomers to financial advisors are utilizing multiple social networks to build a following and bolster their personal brands, and those who fully embrace social media's ubiquity outperform their competitors and win more business. It's as simple as that.
The key, though, is finding a way to stand out from the competition online. There's a big difference between "doing social media" and doing it well.
The difficulty with differentiation
As we all know, the internet is more than likely the first place individuals go to get advice these days — financial, familial, and absolutely everything in between. So when people go online to search for guidance on money matters, they won't find you if you aren't there, actively promoting your expertise and services.
There's no stronger business case for social media (and social selling) than that: It's where your potential customers are. Meet them there and give them what they need. If you don't, someone else will.
To set yourself apart as a financial advisor, you need to be able to sell yourself — not just your firm. Sure, many financial advisors are intermediated and you likely don't have free rein to post everything you might want to on social channels, but that shouldn't be a deal-breaker. There's still plenty to say without risking any backlash or drawing the ire of regulators.
Put your fears aside
Though some in the financial industry might feel wary or daunted by interacting directly with clients or prospects, online exchanges matter in today’s market. Brands that use a more generic social-media strategy can end up sounding too promotional, focused more on boosting the brand to a broad audience instead of forging real connections. Rather than creating original content that speaks to their particular audience, financial institutions treat these social channels as glorified billboards instead of networking opportunities for each individual advisor.
That’s too bad because there’s real power behind social selling today. When comparing the social media potential of brands vs. individuals, one study found that employees have 10 times the reach and double the engagement of the brands they speak for. The best sellers in large companies, meanwhile, were the ones who regularly used technology to foster connections with new prospects or existing clients. Building genuine relationships pays off for both advisors and brands.
So, how does someone improve their social-selling efforts? How can financial advisors use the power of their individuality to differentiate themselves from their peers? Here are five tips to help you better accomplish social selling on your personal pages:
1. Ask an expert
Even if you’re on board with tapping into the potential of authentic relationship-building through social selling, you still need the right tools and training for the job. After all, your area of expertise is in the valuable services you provide to your clients, not online marketing.
An excellent move for advisors is to seek advice from your firms’s marketing or branding team. Not only can they help you develop an effective social-selling strategy, but they can also provide you with the resources and tools you need to more effectively and efficiently create, plan, and schedule your posts. Compliance experts can also educate you on the rules that govern social media in the financial services industry. Ideally, your firm provides continuous training and tools to ensure you stay on the right side of regulations.
2. Be real
The type of posts that most people see on their social-media feeds are at least partially determined by an algorithm. These algorithms are generally designed to serve up content that users are most likely to engage with in one way or another. This can be a huge advantage, but it also means that you can’t expect to stay on people’s minds if you deliver bland, uninteresting content that isn't relevant to your audience.
That doesn’t mean you should go posting clickbait or try to shock people (there’s definitely such a thing as bad engagement). Instead, the best way to get and keep people’s attention is to be your real self. Post about what matters to you and do it in your own voice, not just copying/pasting brand posts. Post about local happenings that people in your area might care about. Speak to the challenges you hear clients ask about most. In social selling, authenticity is the fastest way to start building deeper and more lasting relationships.
3. Consistency is key
How much engagement your posts garner will often depend on when and how often you post. Not only does each channel (like Facebook or LinkedIn) tend to have different times when engagement is at its peak, but your specific audience may also have their own preferences. A little research here can go a long way.
Build a sustainable cadence and stay the course. Consistency is crucial. If you post more than once a day, make sure that each has a few hours to shine on its own. And if a post is getting a particularly high response rate, wait a while before potentially drowning it out with something new. Remember: Algorithms are looking for engagement, not frequency.
4. Mix it up
Another way to ensure better engagement (and a better response from the algorithm!) is to mix up the type of content you share. Your online presence should be a healthy medley of brand, industry, and personal and community content.
You will need to figure out what the right balance for your own audience is. Think about what they care about, the questions they ask when you work together, or specific local concerns. The bottom line in every case is to make sure you’re maintaining a variety of relevant content in your social selling strategy.
5. Give and take
Approach social media as a conversation, not a bullhorn. Social selling is about more than just getting engagement — it’s also about engaging with your audience in return. This give and take is how relationships are made and strengthened, whether they be prospects or clients you know and love.
Don’t just be reactive by responding only to comments or likes on your posts. Take time to respond to others’ posts as well, whether they’re customers or other thought leaders in the industry. This doesn’t always have to be through comments, either; a simple like can let people know you’re paying attention to what they have to say.
Social selling is a powerful tool that can help financial advisors bring in new prospects and keep old clients coming back for more advice through the power of relationship and trust building. However, in order to rise above the noise, you can’t lean on your — or your firm’s — reputation. Instead, you need to establish an authentic presence for yourself that showcases exactly what makes you the right person for the job.
Learn more by downloading our Social Selling Guidebook for Financial Institutions.

Connect & Convert on Social