If you’re not careful, social media can be a waste of time. However, if used consistently, social media can change your accounting business!
This week’s guest on The Abundant Accountant Podcast, Aleksey Kaplan, is here to share how he changed his accounting firm with social media, and two best social media platforms for accountants.
First, Let’s Talk Consistency
Before we get into the two best social media platforms for accountants, let’s take a moment to talk about consistency. We are good at being consistent in our business; we know how to do that. It’s easy to remember April 15th, October 15th, compliance issues and what we need to do in our jobs.
It’s that extra stuff that we have to do, like sales and marketing, that gets difficult. However, it’s important to remember that consistency yields results.
You also don’t have to start big – just a little bit, day by day, and you’ll see big results!
Building an abundant firm takes time, but if you’re willing to be consistent like Aleksey, you’ll see big results.
Find the Best Social Media Platform to Reach Your Clients
One of the keys to using social media for your accounting firm is going to the places where your clients will be. When Aleksey started his business, he knew exactly who he wanted to reach. However, he had zero clients. He also didn’t have a lot of money. He had to be strategic.
When Aleksey searched for similar tax professionals near him, he found a lot of them on Google.
What he didn’t find was anyone on Yelp.
So he created an account and began using Yelp to help people find him when they were searching for someone of his expertise!
By offering value, he was able to assist people with their basic needs and then upsell them on his company’s services.
And even though a Yelp business account is free, Aleksey knew that he wanted to leverage it more. That’s when he calculated his potential ad spend and figured out an amount: $6000 for the year. Break that amount down, and the number feels small: only $500 a month.
However, Aleksey took a different approach.
“It will only take me one and a half new clients a month to make this up in his ROI,” he said. He knew he could do that!
And he did. Through consistency and stellar service, Aleksey tripled his ad investment in the first year.
The next year, he budgeted $7000 in ad spend – and brought in $70,000 worth of new business.
Through Yelp, Aleksey has been able to authentically connect with clients. Social media has created an experience for his clients they can’t get anywhere else. He can’t edit reviews or make anything up. It’s all social proof that he is there to serve, and that he will serve his clients well and effectively.
If you’re interested in using Yelp for your accounting firm, here are some quick tips!
- A Yelp Business account is free – go make one!
- Create a robust profile. People want to know about you. This is a place where your personality can shine!
- Take time – every day, if you can – to answer questions. People ask for help on Yelp all the time. If you are able to answer their question and provide value, you are often able to convert them to a sale.
- Be consistent and available! When people message your business, you should respond as soon as possible. If you don’t respond within a reasonable time, someone else will close the sale and get the new client.
- You can copy and paste reviews from Yelp onto your website, LinkedIn, and your Facebook business page. You can also ask happy clients to add their reviews on Google.
Use Social Media to Attract Clients and Establish Rapport
Not only is Aleksey a Yelp pro, but he is also a LinkedIn innovator. When it comes to LinkedIn, you have to have a completely different strategy.
While he saw dramatic results with Yelp immediately, it took almost a year to see any results with LinkedIn. However, on LinkedIn, Aleksey was able to be more strategic in targeting clients that he wanted to work with.
He would spend time messaging other professionals, creating connections, and spending time creating valuable content to share on the platform. Some of the content that he created and shared was basic. It was relatively simple information that is “out there.”
However, people would stop to read it. They’d share it. Then others would read it. And, THEY’D share it. Then people would connect with Aleksey, and follow more of his content.
Aleksey found that he had a reputation, and then, found that converting connections to clients was deceptively simple.
For a long time, they had been consuming the content he created. When the time came to close the sale, they already believed in Aleksey. They knew him, liked him, and trusted him.
Because of his ability to network effectively and serve a broad network, Aleksey was able to find his ideal high-paying clients on LinkedIn.
If you’re interested in using LinkedIn for your accounting firm, here are some quick tips!
- Connect with your target clients – you can intentionally target the types of people that you want to work with and market specifically to them.
- Provide content of value to your audience. Post articles and create articles to help them find the information that they are looking for.
- Don’t be afraid to share basic information! Many of these are “low-hanging fruit” opportunities which will lead you to even more clients that you can serve.
- You do not have to constantly be on social media to be effective – use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite to schedule out your content in advance so that it will automatically post at the time YOU want it to post.
- Use hashtags related to terms that your target client will search for and understand. For example, you could use #taxtips.
- Edit your newsletters and turn them into articles on LinkedIn to provide valuable, sharable content.
- Don’t forget: consistent content builds credibility, so BE CONSISTENT!
Aleksey has been on his own in business for three years, and one thing that he knows is that he can choose to adapt and learn, or he can stick with doing things the “old-fashioned way.”
By choosing to embrace social media and innovate in his business, Aleksey has found his ideal clients to fill his accounting practice and is living a life of abundance.
In Conclusion
If you’re not using social media for your business, I’d like to invite you to create a free Yelp business account, and a free LinkedIn account. Without a doubt, these are two best social media platforms for accountants, so start small and take baby steps.
You don’t have to jump in and spend an hour on social media every day like Aleksey. Maybe you only want to spend an hour every Friday – that’s ok! Whatever you choose, just be consistent.
Once you master that consistency, then it’s time to step it up. Add another day of the week. Add another hour. Work up to a place where you are consistently engaging and interacting with others, and finding ideal clients. They are out there for you to find!
So tell me in the comments: which social media platform is your favorite? Which do you struggle with more in your business?
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