Accounting Firms on Facebook: Five Ways to Take Your Page from Drab to Fab
Posted: May 31, 2011 Filed under: Accountants and Social Media, Accounting, Accounting Firm Marketing Strategies, Accounting Firms, Accounting Professionals, Facebook, Marketing for Accountants, Social Media | Tags: Accountants and Social Media, facebook, Social Media, social media for accounting firms, social media strategies for accountants Leave a comment »
So, your accounting firm created a Facebook page.
Great! Now what?
Ideally, your first reaction to that shouldn’t be “Wait, there’s more?” But if it is, fear not. Today’s post is going to give you five actionable items that will make your firm profile less of a page and more of a totally fun place to hang out.
We’re also going to show you some examples of accounting firms who have fantastic Facebook pages, which will give you some ideas you might be able to incorporate into your own page quickly and easily.
1.) Share (if it’s useful and relevant.)
Your accounting firm’s Facebook page is a great forum for sharing information with clients and potential clients. If you’re not sure what kind of information you should post in a status update, here are some examples:
- Your firm opens a new office location across town.
- A new tax law that may affect your clients goes into effect.
- Your firm wins an award at a national conference.
- You’re hosting a webinar and inviting clients to attend.
- Your firm is going to be attending a trade show next month.
- You have a new digital brochure to pass along to clients.
- You snapped a few candid shots of employees during the workday.
- You found an interesting article about the accounting profession.
- Your firm raised a bunch of money for a local charity at a fundraising event.
2.) Integrate
Does your firm use Twitter? If so, you can link your Twitter account with Facebook so that whenever you update your Twitter feed your Tweet automatically shows up on the company’s Facebook page. How about a blog? If your firm maintains a blog it’s a great idea to share a link to the post in your status update or use a Facebook application like Networked Blogs to automatically feed your firm’s blog into the Facebook page.
If your firm is super social media savvy, you may even integrate its Flickr feed, YouTube channel or Tumblr. The point is – bring your information together and display it collectively to give it better visibility and make it easier for clients to access it.
3.) Interact
Give clients a reason to come to your Facebook page and interact with them. If someone posts a comment or question, respond to them. If it’s a hot topic, you can create a discussion thread and ask your Facebook friends to participate. Create a client survey through one of Facebook’s survey applications and distribute it via your Facebook page. Create a “Contact Us” page or invite clients to write a review of your firm. Let Facebook friends sign up for company newsletters.
If you engage your Facebook friends by allowing them to complete certain tasks, they will be more likely to come to your firm’s Facebook page to interact with you. And, as we’ve mentioned before, interaction builds relationships and trust, which are essential to growing your accounting firm’s business.
4.) Humanize
Give your firm’s Facebook page a human touch. The easiest way to do this is to show pictures of real people who are working hard to make clients’ lives easier. Create a team page with contact information of key employees. Post pictures of your employees participating in local charity events, attending a trade show, having fun at a company outing, or working with a client.
Your photo page on Facebook will communicate volumes to clients; you want it to show your firm is made up of people who enjoy their jobs and care about their clients.
5.) Observe
Have you looked at other accounting firms’ Facebook profiles? You can learn a lot about what to do (and what not to do) just by checking out other pages. You may come across a Facebook application you’ve never heard of or just pick up some ideas on what to include in your status updates. There are many accounting firms on Facebook doing an excellent job maintaining their firm pages.
Here are a few of the best accounting firm pages I’ve found on Facebook. Pay close attention to the pages they’ve created, the content of their updates, their photo pages and the applications they are using to interact with clients.
Making Sense of Social Media for Accounting Professionals, Part II
Posted: April 14, 2011 Filed under: Accountants and Social Media, Accounting Firms, Accounting Professionals, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter | Tags: Accountants and Social Media, facebook, Social Media, twitter Leave a comment »
In last week’s post we discussed some of the basic differences between Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Next let’s tackle the question: “How can I make this work for me?” But first, I’d like to share some statistics with you.
(Everyone loves statistics, too, right?)
Last January, Wendy Roltgen from suite101.com reported that, according to Twitter’s Yellow Pages, Twellow, there were more than 2,800 accounting-related Twitter accounts. Today that number is 41,411, a 1,379 percent increase in just over one year. Accounting professionals and accounting firms are Tweeting.
Google’s blog search shows more than 600,000 results for accounting-related blogs and there are more than 500 Facebook pages dedicated to accounting businesses and groups. Accountants and accounting firms are blogging and Facebooking.
In fact, each of the Big 4 accounting firms have a blog (or multiple blogs), Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. And, not only are accounting firms and professionals using these forms of social media, they are making it work for them.
A few examples:
- For the 13th year in a row, Plante and Moran, the 12th largest accounting firm in the United States, was named one of the “Top 100 Firms to Work For” by FORTUNE Magazine. To celebrate the award, the firm issued a charity challenge via Facebook, using the social network to send out a survey asking which one of the 15 charitable organizations the firm supports should be awarded $1,300. The response was so overwhelming they ended up with four winners instead of just one.
- Andrew Rose, director of marketing and business development at accounting firm Naden/Lean has a fantastic Twitter success story. After setting up his Twitter account he searched his firm’s name to see what people were saying and found a Tweet mentioning how great his firm’s advice was. He followed that person and thanked him for recognizing them publicly. The person’s Tweet, which linked to one of Naden/Lean’s industry blogs, got the firm ranked in the top 20 in Google’s organic search results.
- CPA Dan Morris from VeraSage Institute made front page of the Marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal after sharing information about alternatives to hourly fees for accountants via Facebook and Twitter. He credits the success of the placement of the story to spreading the word via social networking.
The opportunities for success with social media are as limitless as your creativity and willingness to learn about it. The better you understand it, the more effectively you will be able to use it. Some accounting professionals get so caught up in thinking about ways they can make these tools work for them that they forget that the first step is knowledge and getting your hands a little dirty.
Don’t just set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account. Anyone can do that. Establish the page, add information, some personal touches and useful content. Share a link, post picture or video, find people to follow, interact with your fans. Comment on other people’s blog posts, re-tweet something relevant to your followers, engage people in conversation. Engagement leads to trust, and trust leads (eventually) to more customers and increased sales.
Social media isn’t as scary as you think. It just takes time, effort and a little bit of perseverance.
