High-profile marketing maven Sheri Fitts kicked off a Sunday afternoon workshop titled Lights, Camera, LIVE! A Beginner’s Guide to LinkedIn LIVE at the 2022 NAPA 401(k) Summit in Tampa, Fla.
A speaker, consultant, and creator with Sheri Fitts & Co., Fitts has long advocated for advisors to use social media to grow their business. It’s a message (crusade) she continued in her session, recerating her studio in the breakout room and going “live” in a real-time demonstration at the end.
Claiming the LinkedIn LIVE platform “isn’t as complex and complicated as one may think, the benefits for advisor and their brand are significant.” She quoted LinkedIn stats that show that live videos get seven times more reactions and 24 times more comments than static videos.
This session presented a beginner’s look at the opportunity, best practices for getting started, a tools and technology overview, and ideas on where to begin with a content strategy.
“Let’s just say I acknowledge that I’m about two to five years ahead of financial services,” Fitts said in a pre-session interview when discussing the effort it takes to engage advisors on the social media and technology topic. “That always happens. I always am.”
Noting the ability Facebook has to create communities of people via live streaming and the massive followers gained from doing the same, she recalled a question from Summit host Nevin Adams, Chief Content Officer at the American Retirement Association.
“He once asked me why don’t just do it on Zoom—isn’t that the same thing?” Fitts said. “It isn’t. It’s the difference between being part of an audience in a schoolroom versus part of an audience in perhaps an outdoor concert. There’s just this different kind of energy available to the live streaming world.”
She ticked off several ways live streaming can help, from “upping” the advisor’s virtual skills to creating a platform from which to speak to creating community inside that platform.
Claiming the current LinkedIn live streaming landscape is intermittent, spotty, and nonexistent in financial services, it offers a huge opportunity to be an early entrant.
“Imagine having your own television channel, radio show, and podcast,” she added. “That’s where LinkedIn is going with content. There will be compliance hoops to jump through, as there always are, which means the bar is very low, and the advantage to being first is huge if you ask me.”
Dwell time
LinkedIn wants to increase user “dwell time,” Fitts explained, meaning more eyes content.
“Most people think that when they post something on LinkedIn, their whole network receives it, but that isn’t true,” Fitts concluded. “Only a portion of their network receives it, and then the algorithms go to work and say, “Prove it to me that we should release this to more people. The thing about native videos and LinkedIn LIVE is that they increase the dwell time on your post, which then helps you garner more opportunities for more people to see your content.
“There’s a variety of different benefits of going live. Some of it serves the broader marketing effort, and then some of it is to serve your visibility on LinkedIn.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
