Social Media

You will never make a sale on social media

The most profitable way for accountants and tax professionals to use social media.

It’s tempting to use social media as a platform to sell your services. But that’s actually a very big mistake that many accountants and tax firms make in their marketing. Think about it…

You know that friend of yours (or client) who just started a new business and asked you to like his Facebook page? You followed the page for his new dental practice in order to be polite and supportive, but now your feed is full of what-if scenarios and warnings about the catastrophic consequences of irregular dental check-ups.

You’d really like to unfollow the page, but haven’t yet out of loyalty to your friend…
Guess what – the same is happening to your own friends, prospects and followers when you only use social media to promote your services. Except the majority of those folks are not likely to be loyal and kind in their response.

Unfollow.

An effective social media strategy for accountants and tax firms goes beyond “pitch, pitch, pitch.” Again, you can go after the lowest hanging fruit on there and be that carnival barker on Facebook and LinkedIn … but that only works for a certain personality, and for only a limited amount of time.

The best way for tax pros and accountants to “win” with social media is to get users OFF of social media … and into your doors.

As a tax or accounting professional, you are NOT in “e-commerce” and you don’t sell widgets. You’re a service professional (who happens to deal with extremely sensitive and personal information), and that changes how you market your services online.

Unlike many sellers online, YOU don’t have:

1) An online store
2) Physical products
3) “One size fits all” solutions

Now, this is not to say that you can’t integrate these kinds of items into your firm (we’ve seen it done, and done well), but that’s a subject for another day.

You won’t win many new clients online until there is a certain measure of trust established first.

And you have to be REALLY good to cross that particular bridge in ONE social media post.

Which is why you need much more than a mere “good social media presence” to win business online. Use your online spaces for building a steady list of prospects with whom you communicate *regularly*, and who will turn to YOU … when they’re ready.

ONE of the ways you do that is by providing a steady stream of valuable content on social media. There are a myriad of engaging topics an accountant or tax pro should speak to for their social media followers. Here’s a short list to start incorporating into your content portfolio (this is just a start – the fodder is almost limitless):

Related financial topics, like personal budgeting and insurance
Entrepreneurial hacks (especially financially informed ones)
Time and productivity management
Holidays and major events (please, however, no cliches)
Recommendations for other local businesses
Headlines that everyone’s talking about
Lesser known headlines everyone SHOULD be talking about
Tips for a richer and more joyful family life
Human stories worth sharing
Humor – everyone loves to laugh

We do all of this here at TaxProMarketer – on social media, in blog posts, and via email. That’s because as we share stories from our team, you get an authentic feel for who we really are. Yes, we run a very real and serious business here, helping tax and accounting professionals grow their firms – but you also get the sense of the “real TaxProMarketer”.
It’s one of the major reasons we have had the growth we’ve had since 2007 – relationships matter, and they CAN be built online.

That’s why the cornerstone of marketing efforts for accountants and tax practices should include content that works to nurture and build client relationships – on social media, in email marketing, on your website, in your blog posts (we call it an online marketing machine for a good reason). When you do it right, it leads to referral explosions, long-term relationships with clients, and a practice that can withstand the tremors of ANY economy.

It’s much more than Facebook. It’s a system to build relationships.