We are living in a time of immense change. Your expertise as financial services and insurance professionals was already needed. But right now we are entering a period of accelerated global change. People need you more now than ever before. The good thing is that social media helps us with acquiring clients.

First, we are going to look at how customers are shifting, because if we are going to serve people, we have to understand how they are changing. When we talk about these shifts with customers, their needs and behaviors have changed over the last two years. Many of your businesses actually grew during the period of COVID-19 because people had these realizations that they needed to take care of things that we all know they should have taken care of a long time ago. What we also have to know is that the way our customers want us to connect with them shifts as well. And the great thing about social media is it allows us to connect with them in the ways that they prefer, not just the ways we prefer.

We are no longer the people we were in February 2019, a year before we even knew what COVID-19 was. But that is not necessarily a bad thing because what it’s allowed us to do is shift and adapt and really understand how important our networks are and how much we need experts in our lives to help guide us now. What does that mean for you? It means opportunity.

The smallest shift or change means the difference between something being safe and something being dangerous. We are only here because our ancestors understood that. Our brains are still operating like our ancestors’ brains, where when we see something new, oftentimes we find ourselves rejecting it immediately. Clients are overwhelmed and attached to devices more than ever before, so we need to communicate with them through their internal and their external brains. We think with our devices as well.

Let’s look at some of the trends you should be aware of. Social media work is changing globally, specifically working hours, which means that even businesspeople and professionals and entrepreneurs are scrolling social media at different times of the day. Be aware of that if you have a posting strategy.

Next, social commerce is expanding. What that means is the next generation of your clients are getting used to making purchasing decisions through social media. Think about what that might mean for you. In addition, consumers are being trained to participate in something called Drops via social media. Companies like Nike are saying, “Hey, we have a special edition shoe we’ve never told you about. Go buy it now.” This is shifting buyers’ behaviors so that they are purchasing products almost without even thinking first.

And social networks will continue to expand. We saw the social network Clubhouse come up in popularity during the pandemic. Social networks are where people go to listen to experts. So be aware that that might be a good place to farm for new clientele.

Now that we’ve talked about some of these trends, think about which one you find interesting. It doesn’t mean that you act on it now, but it might shift the way that you do business in the future. Being aware of trends doesn’t mean you immediately do something. It means you keep your eye on something to see when it makes sense for your business, when you are most likely to get a return.

So let’s go to some tactics. First, we are going to focus on LinkedIn. That is the most central social network. When it comes to business networking, I want you to tweak your posting strategy on there at least once a month. Post easy-to-digest original content. Make sure that it’s compliant with your local laws and regulations. Get out there as an expert. The more comments there are on a LinkedIn post, the more people it will be shown to. You can apply this to another social network that’s more popular in your region. The thing is to be strategic and find out where your existing clients are and then use that network.

Next, use or create YouTube explainer videos, giving good quality content. YouTube is the second largest search engine. People are looking to build relationships. No one wants to buy from salespeople. Everyone wants to buy from experts whom they feel they have a relationship with whether they actually interact with them online or not.

I guarantee you, there are people who are watching what you or your organization posts online, just waiting to interact. My financial advisor and I met at a networking event. She sent me a Facebook connection request, and I was connected to her for two years. When my husband and I made a decision to hire a financial advisor, we chose her because of her consistent posts. I felt like I knew her.

So understand if you go there, you are not going to immediately get conversions. It’s like most of us don’t normally go on one date and then marry someone. It takes time to build a relationship.

Now, when you create those YouTube explainer videos, I want you to do it once a month and ask questions in the video, ask people to post their responses, ask them to post what’s worked for them. That’s going to get you more views. But what’s also fascinating about social media, especially when we go back to LinkedIn and some of the other ones, is when people are commenting on your posts, see what some of their own connections commented on that post. These are your potential referrals. These are the best warm leads you could ever have — people who are already connected to the people who know what you are capable of and how you’ve helped them in their business.

The last tactic I want to leave you with is to spend 30 minutes exploring once a week if possible, if not every two weeks. Sometimes it’s just listening to podcasts or getting information as you are doing another task or if you are in a commute, but I want you to explore what’s out there. I want you to visit things like Clubhouse, an audio social network, or even a space in the metaverse like Decentraland. The next generation of clients might be there, and they are building relationships. They are living an alternate life.

So again, I’m not saying you should get on it. It may not make sense for you to develop part of your marketing strategy with these social media apps until a year or two from now. But the whole point is to get you ahead of the curve and ask yourself how you might be able to use this network or resource to grow your business.

The power tip I have for you: QR codes. Prior to COVID, I wasn’t a huge fan because you didn’t have large commercial adoption of them. Now there are apps that allow you to create a QR code. So as soon as you meet someone, they can scan your phone and add your contact information in their phone immediately. You want them to capture your information. You can also do this with LinkedIn to immediately connect with people. Once we own that contact information, that’s when we are golden.

I ask that you just take one thing from our time together and move forward with it. I am rooting for you. And I know that you can use these things because your success is not just yours. I know that you are bringing up hundreds, if not thousands, of people with you through your clients. And so your success is the world’s success.