Why did the accountant break up with the calculator? They felt they were just not adding up to much together! But here’s something that adds up perfectly: leveraging local social media tactics for your accounting firm.
It’s no joke that today’s digital-first customer journey is more localized than ever, making a solid community online presence not just beneficial but essential for accountants, CPAs, estate planners, and financial planners alike.
These local social media tactics for accountants will show you where successful finance industry companies are investing their time and money to generate the ROI they need to see to justify their marketing spend.
It’s Simple Math: Why Localize Your Social Media
You live in a world of decimals and digits. Like a savant, you see the picture they paint when others see just a bunch of random numbers. The numbers matter in social media, too! More is better. More followers. More Engagement.
But the quality of that quantity matters more. Are those clicks turning into actual appointments or helping you retain your existing clients? Are they generating enough leads and then revenues to justify the time and/or money you’re spending?
If you’re not reaching people who are likely new or existing clients, then whether you have 100 or 10,000 followers, it all adds up to 0.
Local social media tactics for accountants aren’t just about being seen by most people or going viral. It’s about connecting with the people likely to become your clients (locals). And it’s about building trust within your community that becomes a magnet for a growing, thriving firm.
Here’s how these calculations add up:
- Over 50% of ‘near me’ searches result in a physical location visit within 24 hours
- 61% of consumers say they search for something local every day.
- 88% of people trust online reviews as much as personal referrals from a friend.
- 41% of small businesses say social media is a vital revenue driver for their company
- 76% have bought something they saw on social media
Social media is a critical piece of your local online presence.
Selecting the Ideal Social Media Platforms
Not all platforms are created equal, especially regarding local engagement. And it can vary by region, audience, industry, and how you relate to the community.
Whether it’s Facebook’s community groups, Instagram’s visual appeal, or TikTok’s focus on punchy short videos, choosing the right platform is pivotal. It’s vital that you select one or more platforms where you can go all in and learn how to use it as the natives do.
Facebook has an extensive reach among middle- to older millennials, Gen X, and boomers. But if you need to reach younger millennials or Gen Z, Instagram or TikTok are much more likely to help you achieve your goals.
Identify which platforms resonate most with your target market. For accountants who target business owners, LinkedIn’s professional network is a goldmine for industry-specific engagement.
Optimizing Social Media Profiles for Local Search
Your social media bio is your digital front desk. It greets people, builds trust, communicates your value proposition, and invites them in to make an appointment.
Make it locally appealing with these strategies:
- Craft a Locally-Focused Bio: Integrate local keywords and phrases to enhance local search visibility. Your bio can include landmarks, local festivals, primary roads, beloved local hot spots, and more.
- Leverage Location-Based Features: Use platform-specific location features to put your practice on the local map. Geo-tag photos and posts to communicate your proximity to those.
- Mention Your Location in Ads: Whether you use visuals or words, get a local’s attention by communicating localness.
Infusing Your Content Strategy with Local Flair
Let’s get hyperlocal, now. Here’s how to ensure your content resonates locally:
- Show You’re Active in the Community: Post about recent local events, non-profits, popular businesses, the neighborhood elementary school (if you have kids there), or even a visit to the local hiking trail.
- Tell local stories: With permission, tell the stories of local businesses or individuals who’ve benefited from your services in the form of case studies. This is especially effective if your audience tends to by local business owners. Or better yet,…
- Encourage clients to tell their own stories by creating user-generated content, commenting on your posts, recording a video testimonial, tagging a picture of themselves at your office, or writing you an outstanding review.
Showcase how your firm is making waves in the community.
Engaging Your Local Community on Social Media
Sponsor a local team. Take part in a food drive with your employees or set up a booth at a local business festival. Then share pics, videos, and posts about these experiences. Encourage others to do the same.
Build promotions around an upcoming local event or specifically mention the local high school’s upcoming graduation.
These are just some ways to demonstrate your involvement in the community and strengthen local vibes. These types of community tactics are not new, but they’ve evolved. Modern social media allows you to reach 10 times as many as possible if you only count those who attended the physical event.
Collaborating for Authentic Local Content
Network with other non-competing area businesses to host a community event or digital-only Q&A. Collaborate to run joint specials and share each other’s posts to expand both your audiences.
Hire a local celebrity to appear at a physical event. Share the social media posts of businesses and individuals in the community.
This is what a physical-digital integrated brand presence looks like. These two are inseparable in the eyes of your target audience.
You’ll generate community love and keep that positive energy flowing around your firm.
Amplifying Local Visibility with Targeted Advertising
Social media advertising offers powerful tools for targeting your local audience. With geo-targeting, you can narrow down to the zip code. And yes, you absolutely should. Don’t pay for clicks or impressions from people who are not actually able to become your clients because they’re somewhere else.
You can take this even further with locally segmented ads based on zip code, town, or region if you have several locations. Specifically, mention the community or use an image or identifier that will get people’s attention in that area. Then, guide them to a landing page for the location closest to them.
Analyzing for Local Impact
Track and analyze your local reach by reviewing where your new followers, engagement, and ad clicks are coming from. If you discover that a significant percentage are outside of your area, further localize your content. You’re decreasing wasted ad and social media management time spending while increasing your reach among the locals.
Local Signals Add Up: Local Social Media Tactics for Accountants Work
Local content + a great in-person client experience = success for your financial services company. Getting hyper-local saves you time and money while increasing your reach among likely clients and reminding existing ones why they’ve chosen you.
You’re not only increasing visibility but also making meaningful connections and building trust, which you can leverage to grow a financial services empire. But to do that, it’s important to have the right small business-minded, locally-minded marketing software on your side.
Surefire Local is that all-in-one local marketing platform. Our software makes localizing and managing your online presence easy, saving you time while helping you get the marketing ROI that justifies this investment in your firm’s success. By consolidating your marketing efforts, Surefire Local ensures that your practice doesn’t just appear on the local map—it stands out. You can become not a choice, but the choice in your area. Here are some of the tools you could be using now to build a local online brand that reflects your in-person commitment to your clients:
- Website / Local SEO optimizations: We make it easy to create uber-relevant geo-tagged content for your social media, business profiles, website, and more.
- Online review management: Automate review reminders to capitalize on the moment after you’ve delighted a client with your top-notch money management skills. Track your monthly review volume and sentiment. Respond more quickly and easily to less-than-stellar statements.
- Content marketing. Use our software to research and create highly relevant local content. From blog posts to case studies to short social media videos, we help you make impactful content that quickly builds trust with strangers and that you can convert into a growing client base.
- Social media management: Our all-in-one platform helps you maintain a consistently fabulous social media presence with post scheduling, analytics, and comment response tools
- Analytics and reporting: Get the full view of how your social media drives revenues with easy-to-understand visual reporting and AI-powered suggestions to enhance performance.
- Educational resources – We want to see you get the most out of our software, so we post videos, host webinars, and publish blog tutorials to give you actionable tactics to improve local performance.
Aren’t you just a little curious about how using tools like these could completely change your relationship with your community? Discover how Surefire Local can transform your online presence and help you connect more meaningfully with your local community. Attend a Surefire Local demo today and take the first step towards a more localized, impactful online strategy.