The hypothalamus in the brain provides the feel good sensation of referring others on or by making recommendations and drives the importance of Twitter for our industry, said Montlake.
Hotwire research revealed just 14% of people trust adverts, where 90% trust recommendations via social media.
“The gap in trust in financial services created by the banks can be filled by you, the voice of the independent broker,” said Montlake.
“It only takes me 15 minutes each day,” he added, “so the brokers who say they just don’t have time for Twitter must be lying,” he said.
Coreco Links In with every client after first meeting and re-tweets customer testimonials as a way to gain “traction” and generate further leads, said Montlake.
He added that using blogs, Twitter or LinkedIn also offer a way to confront and counter negative criticism online by using the media to answer each and every point.
In June this year, Morgan Stanley gave 17,000 of its US advisers access to LinkedIn and Twitter after a year-long pilot, however, the global bank expects advisers to stick to a library of ‘pre-approved content.’
Ian Giles, director at Ian Giles marketing limited told delegates that they should use the four big platforms, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube to highlight business achievements. These include the type of business done, the number of members a firm or network has, showcase employee profiles and highlight any charity events that the firm has or will undertake.
He added that firms could also use social media more effectively to engage and educate intermediaries.
“It’s a well-known statistic now that YouTube is the second most used engine after Google. So when you’re looking for information or trying to work out how to do something, that’s generally where most people go to find out.
“An increasing number of companies use short YouTube videos to show customers, whether their B2B or B2C, how something works. This seems a fairly obvious step forward for companies to show how they underwrite or carry out compliance.
“Products in the mortgage industry are broadly homogenised. How can you make your company look like a differentiator? The differentiator is quite often the human beings within a company so why not show them at work?”
He added that businesses should also look at using foursquare – a free app where members can share and save the places they’ve visited – to promote the geographic coverage and depth of service provided by BDMs.
