Attracting The Gen X/Gen Y Crowd Through Social Media

LinkedIn. Facebook. Twitter. Though keeping up with the latest social media and social networking trends can feel like a never-ending game of catch up, financial advisors and other financial professionals who understand how their clients use these channels--and how they can be incorporated into a broader PR strategy--stand to be richly rewarded with new clients, specifically the tech-savvy Gen X/Gen Y consumer base.

According to a recent TD Ameritrade survey, 27% of Gen X-ers and 33% of Gen Y-ers go online for broad news about the economy and world markets. Comparatively speaking, just 21% of baby boomers act this way, as do a paltry 14% of people born before 1930. Simply put, advisors who fail to plug into the social network matrix are missing out on building a future client base.

With baby boom clients fast approaching retirement, the 105 million-member strong Gen X/Gen Y demographic is poised to emerge as an advisor’s largest potential new business source. Yet many advisors aren’t using a social media strategy to deliver their message to this group.

The difference between social networking and social media is an important distinction to understand. Distilled to its core, social networking is the act of engaging across various sites, utilizing a one-by-one interactive approach. Contrarily, social media is part of a broader PR strategy that uses the popularity of these sites to broadcast distinct messages, much like how PR professionals traditionally utilized print publications and TV shows to broadcast mass messages to clients.

But reaching an online audience is not without its challenges. [More...]

Read more of Jennifer Connelly's PR Blog in Financial Advisor Magazine.

Tags: Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, Facebook, Technology, LinkedIn, Gen x, Gen Y