Social media is not just a place to share recipes, browse vacation snaps of people you haven’t seen in years, and complain about politics and reality TV.
If utilized properly, it’s a powerful marketing tool that could drive traffic to your firm while increasing engagement and getting more people talking about your brand.
Whether you’re a CPA doing it alone or the owner of a small, medium, or large firm, these social media tips will give your business a boost.
Which Social Media Networks are Best for Accounting Firms?
You have several different social media sites to choose from. There’s nothing stopping you from joining all of them—they’re free, after all. But you don’t want to spread yourself too thin.
If you have 5 hours a week to devote to social media marketing and join every free platform, you could end up spending just half an hour on each platform.
That’s not enough to get results.
For accountants, the best platforms include:
LinkedIn is the biggest professional network in the world. It welcomes company owners, executives, professionals, and job seekers.
Not only is LinkedIn a great place to advertise your skills, qualifications, and experience, but as it’s populated primarily by business owners and professional service providers, there are a lot of potential customers there.
You can also use it to find CPAs, assistants, and freelancers to help you expand your firm.
Facebook/Instagram
Facebook is the world’s biggest social network, with all kinds of users. Accountants and firms can create business pages and use them to advertise their business, run targeted ads, and connect with professionals who may need their services.
Instagram is part of the same network, and if you’re advertising through Facebook, you will be given the option to run ads on Instagram. It’s not as easy to get your services across to relevant users, as it’s based entirely on pictures/videos and has a predominantly young audience, but it’s a good outlet for building a personal brand.
X
Formerly Twitter, X is much less professional than LinkedIn, but there are still a lot of professionals and business owners here.
It has a reputation for being somewhat toxic, and that reputation is fully deserved. But you don’t need to engage with anyone like that and can simply use the platforms to advertise your services, connect with fellow professionals, and grow your brand.
YouTube/TikTok
Both YouTube and TikTok can be great platforms for professionals if you’re willing to work.
They are video streaming platforms, so you can’t simply create an account, post a few blogs, and then wait for the inquiries to roll in.
If you can post videos showcasing some helpful accounting tips or giving viewers insights into the life of an accountant, you can build a following. Get it right, and the results will be much greater than anything you can do through X and even LinkedIn. It’s very hard to do it right and generate that kind of traffic, though.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Accountants
It has been estimated that as many as 60% of the world’s population uses social media. You can’t target all of those users all of the time, but it means that most of your customers are using these sites and could be consuming whatever content you put out.
Once you get the formula right, you can reach a large chunk of these individuals and reap benefits such as:
- Increased lead generation
- Improved client engagement
- Better understanding of target demographics
- Growing a network of clients, collaborators, and potential employees
- Establish your firm or yourself as an authority in your field
- Show customers who mainly use social media that you are still active.
Social Media Marketing Tips for Accountants
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when marketing through social media is to sell 100% of the time. They treat sites like Facebook as noticeboards or shop windows that they can constantly fill with advertisements for their services.
But there are thousands of other accountants out there and they’re all offering a similar service. The average users doesn’t care what you do or what you sell.
You need to give them a reason to follow you, after which you must keep them engaged.
Entertain and inform, and when you have their undivided attention and respect, you can think about selling to them.
Post informative content 90-95% of the time and sell to them the rest of the time.
Some other social media marketing tips to consider include:
Post Various Types of Content
Submit short posts, links to long-form articles, embedded videos, and images—vary your content to keep users engaged and find something that sticks.
Tell a Story
Your posts need to be engaging, but they should also connect to you as the creator. You want viewers to remember you when they finish reading a post or watching a video. The more they connect with you, the more they will remember you.
Use Hashtags
Most social media platforms use hashtags to establish relevancy. Include them in your posts, but don’t overuse them. Spend some time exploring similar content to find popular hashtags and add these to your own posts where appropriate.
Make Your Posts Fun and Interesting
Accountancy can be a pretty dry subject, even to fellow accountants. You’re trying to win business from professionals and business owners who don’t have the time or will to do their own accounting, which means they likely won’t be attracted to posts talking about regulations and other such topics.
Find an angle that grabs the attention of your clients while also remaining relevant to accountancy, professionals, and small businesses.
Stay Consistent
A post every now and then when you feel like it isn’t sufficient. You need consistency, whether that means posting once a day, once every other day, or even once a week.
Find a rhythm, create a schedule, and stick to it.
Engage with Your Audience
It’s not good enough to simply post something and then forget about it. You need to engage with your users in the comments.
Not only can you connect with potential customers, but it will also drive engagement, as commenting is one of the things considered by algorithms that determine search positions on YouTube/TikTok while also ensuring more people see the post on networks like Facebook.
Conclusion: Incorporating Social Media Marketing
Whether you focus on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, YouTube, or all of them, social networks can’t be ignored. They are excellent ways to promote your brand, with some CPAs and agencies relying almost exclusively on these channels to attract new customers and retarget old ones.
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