Social Media im Finanzvertrieb: Sichtbar werden und Kunden gewinnen

Alexandra Weck is a Sales 4.0 expert for asset managers, an entrepreneur, a speaker and a former banker, with more than 17 years of experience in the financial sector. Through her social media consulting, she now mainly supports independent asset managers, family offices and financial advisors in systematically winning new mandates, without cold calling and without classic marketing agencies. She was also one of the eagerly awaited speakers at this year's Fondsfrauen Summit, where she spoke about social media.

Alexandra, how and for what purpose did you get started with social media?

I still belong to the generation that grew up completely analog, born in 1988. But I experienced the beginnings of social media firsthand. When I lived in Munich, I was an influencer, just like that, in my private life. As a travel and lifestyle influencer, I had around 25,000 followers. At some point, the monetization of social media came along, and you could run ads.

Later, when I worked at Baader Bank, I was responsible for various projects there. One of them was building up Scalable Capital as a project within Baader Bank. Their marketing was supposed to be digital, which was just getting started at the time. For me, that was the turning point: combining sales and social media.

In 2022, I gave a talk at the Fondskongress in Mannheim, for the FFB. It was about how wealth advisors can win new clients through social media. The lecture room was so full that they had to close the doors. That is when it became clear to me: social media is a huge topic in financial sales too, but at the time, people still did not know how to go about it.

So how should one go about using social media in financial sales today?

I experienced social media from my teenage years onward. Back then, I was on every platform. That automatically makes you an expert, because you actually use it. You just try things out.

But it is difficult to monetize social media reach in the financial sector if you do not do it properly. The problem is that agencies do not know the financial service providers, and on top of that, they are not very familiar with compliance. They do not know which advertising claims are allowed and which are not, for example that you are not allowed to give investment recommendations. At the time, I was one of the few people who came from the industry and also knew how to handle social media. Today I work as a consultant and offer strategies through podcasts and webinars.

How important do you consider social media activity to be for a career in the financial sector?

Very important. Anyone who wants to build a career cannot avoid LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become established as a career platform. XING does not do much for your career anymore. It has somehow fallen out of favor. The likelihood that someone will offer you a great deal through XING is very low.

So should you close your XING account then?

I actually recommend keeping your XING account, with your name and photo. But only so that no one else can misuse it. You can simply write that you are present there but not active. Otherwise there is a risk that someone else grabs your identity and causes mischief with it. So it is better to hold that space with your own name and a photo, ideally on every platform. The Collien Fernandes case shows just how real the danger of identity theft is.

What should the posts you publish look like? It is not great, after all, to just post things like "I am so excited to attend this or that event."

About 20% of your content should be personal. Things like that help new people notice you and become followers.

Do you mean really private, personal things?

No, I do not mean private, I mean personal. So not your children, your pets, your food. But people want to know who you are. Reveal something about your values and your views, something "lightly personal". That could be, for example, a stance on a particular topic. I would leave out politics and religion here, though. You could describe a specific situation you experienced. Maybe a colleague was treated unfairly. You can describe that well from a third-person perspective and then ask at the end: how would you have handled that? Or "back then I said nothing, but today, now that I am in a leadership position, I would have handled it like this." The important thing is to stay authentic and to feel comfortable with the information you are sharing.

Many people shy away from opening up personally, though...

... yes, but what counts as too personal varies a great deal. I have a client, for example, who does not want to share anything personal. But he does say that he is a father of two and has a dog. That is something personal, isn't it!

Okay, so 20% personal things... and the rest?

About 80% should be pure business content. If you find it hard to script something entirely your own, you can also take a press article, for example from Fonds Professionell, Private Banking Magazin or similar, and then add your own opinion to it.

At the Fondsfrauen Summit, for example, I took a selfie with Dr. Andrea Gartenbach and wrote about how what she said had influenced me.

Okay, those are the do's. What are the don'ts?

I would advise against posts like "I met 15 people at a conference" with hardly any real content behind them.

You should also make sure not to get lost in the crowd. These days, almost everyone is on LinkedIn, and everyone has access to AI too. That is why a lot of people write the same generic stuff, there are so many overly generic posts! What matters is bringing in your own positioning, your own opinion. Simply take the conference you attended and put it into context: why does this matter to me, specifically?

How important is the number of followers?

Actually, it is not that important. People can see your content without being a follower. That should not be underestimated. The people who do not react, who do not give you a "like", are still there, and they are a great asset. I have a lot of people who keep seeing my posts again and again, even if they never comment.

How often should you post?

It is easy to think: if I post every day, then people will see something from me every day. But that is not how it works. Take Simona Stoytchkova, for example: she never sees my posts, even though she follows me. That is because she is in a different topical bubble. We should not be afraid that everyone sees our posts every single day. The algorithm makes sure that does not happen anyway.

Does it make sense to post every day?

Why not? With the help of AI, you can easily manage that in 5 minutes a day. You can create a content plan three months in advance and then let AI do the work. I think you should produce something at least 3 times a week. For a lot of people, it is like fitness or nutrition. They set themselves the goal of "I'll post 3 times a week." Then if it does not work out one week, many give up and tell themselves "well, it doesn't matter anymore now!" AI can help you stick with it.

How long should a post be so that you do not overwhelm anyone?

You have to test that. I have written both very short and fairly long posts that were successful. These days I use the LinkedIn newsletter, which shows the reading time for each post right away.

Are there rules for how a good post should be structured?

Many LinkedIn coaches say: only I have discovered the one system that works. But it depends on your target clients. If they tend to be analytical, write more analytical posts. The bait has to appeal to the fish.

What you should think about with every post, though, is: who do I want to reach? What do I want to tell these people? And what do I want to achieve with it?

How critical is the content you post allowed to be?

What you are and are not allowed to do is set by law. Most of what is not prohibited is allowed, legally speaking. Of course a post can also take a critical stance on a topic. But then it should be deliberate criticism that is also properly thought through. If you say the truth that many people think but do not say out loud, that is received positively. I deliberately step on a lot of my clients' toes.

How so?

My clients are often entrepreneurs, many of them asset managers. In one post, for example, I told them: you leave the bank, giving up fat bonuses and a comfortable job, in order to start your own company. You have to deal with all the regulation yourselves, which is also a risk. And now you are afraid of a bit of social media? Something like that naturally strikes a nerve!

If you hit a point like that, you have a good chance that readers become clients. You do not have to insult anyone to do that. But you are allowed to voice criticism that wakes people up and ultimately helps them too. That shows that you have a stance and values... and people want to engage with someone like that!

What can people do if they do not dare to post critical things themselves?

The barrier is lower if you comment on criticism from other people. A lot of people also see that on LinkedIn.

What a good post looks like also changes over time. How has that developed?

Simply writing a summary still worked 3 to 4 years ago, but nobody wants to read that today. Anyone can do that today with AI, and it still gets done a lot. Simply cheering on an event also comes across as a bit shallow. Nowadays, posts like "Hey, that was good! These were my takeaways. I am using this for my job." work better.

Should you use AI when writing your posts?

You can also do everything without AI. My ideas come without AI, but AI helps me put my ideas into words faster. I still add to and cut things from the AI-generated posts, and then they are good! I think everyone should use AI. It also helps when you are under pressure to be creative every single day.

Which AI do you use?

I use Claude, and I pay for it myself.

AI helps a lot with efficiency. That is of course why ghostwriters often use AI too, but they do not always brief it properly.

How do you brief the AI?

I really take my time for that; setting up the AI takes me about half a day. We store, for example, the compliance guidelines that apply to banks or asset managers. And then I feed in my client's entire marketing concept. So when the client then says, "I would like a post on this or that topic," the AI can script it razor sharp. It does not come across as generic filler either. But you have to put in the groundwork first.

Recently, a client told me that AI only produces nonsense. We looked into it together and found that his prompt was only 10 lines long. Mine run to 30 to 50 pages.

Thank you very much, Alexandra, for these practical insights!

Foto: Felder-Photography

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