Episode Summary
In part two of this conversation, Tiffany and Jimmy move from which social media platforms financial services firms should choose to what to do once you’re actually on them. They talk through a practical reality many marketing teams face: the textbook answer is to tailor content for each platform but real-world time and resource constraints often require a more flexible approach.
They also dig into Reddit, which keeps showing up in search results and SEO conversations but brings real compliance concerns for financial services firms. Tiffany and Jimmy explain where Reddit may be useful, where it becomes risky, and how marketers can use it for research without jumping into the conversation directly.
Key Takeaways:
This episode focuses on what happens after you choose your social media platforms, including how to manage content across channels, how to think about Reddit, and how to keep your social presence from creating confusion.
- Problem statement: Financial services marketers often know they need social media but the harder question is how to manage it well. Teams run into practical issues around duplicating content, experimenting with new platforms, and maintaining accounts they no longer actively use.
- Why it matters: A social strategy that looks manageable on paper can get messy fast. Without clear choices, firms can end up with inactive accounts, compliance concerns, and content that does not fit the platform or audience it is reaching.
- Real‑life example: Tiffany and Jimmy describe a common issue they see with clients: brands create accounts on every platform, then leave some inactive for months or years. When those accounts are still linked on the website, it can make the company look disorganized or create doubt. Their recommendation? Keep the handle if needed but deactivate or remove inactive accounts from the website until the company is ready to maintain them
- Highlight any surprising or myth‑busting takeaways:
- Reddit may be “winning the Google search game” but that doesn’t automatically make it a good fit for financial services firms.
- Reddit can still be useful in two ways: advertising (if there's a budget) and research, if marketers want to see what people are actually asking about online.
Sometimes the most strategic move is not adding another platform. It’s cleaning up the ones you already have so your online presence looks current and intentional.
Don’t Miss the ONE Thing You Should Go Do First!
- Take a look at your social media accounts right now. If your firm is only actively using two out of five platforms, remove the inactive ones from your website and consider deactivating the accounts you are not maintaining. That simple cleanup can make your brand look more current, organized, and trustworthy.
Links & Resources
- Out & About Podcast #12: Best Social Media Platforms for Financial Services
- Out & About Podcast #11: Marketing in 2026: Trends, Tips, Tactics, and More
- Out & About Podcast #10: What Are Your Marketing Resolutions?
Join Us!
- Want more practical ideas? Join the Out & About newsletter for fresh insights into financial services marketing and downloadable resources.
Transcript
Tiffany (00:10):
Hey marketers, Tiffany here. Just want to set the stage before we dive into the episode. So this is part two of our social media podcasts. If you haven't heard the last one, part one, episode 12, make sure you take a step back and go find that one and listen to that. But we're going to answer so many more questions in this episode. I'm really excited for you to dive in. There's a lot of frequently asked questions, so make sure you tune in. And if you have any questions, as always, reach out. We're always happy to answer more and share more about what we're seeing day to day. So without further ado, onto the episode.
(00:55):
Okay. Let's talk about that. We'll just give people a seat in our client meetings. So if you work in financial services marketing, here's your answer. So what do we tell? I know we do this together, so we can share the answer, but what do we tell people and say like, okay, should we be writing separate posts for Facebook or LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera? There's a time resource question in there. Is it worth it? Is it not? I'll let you start running with it, but I know we have the same answer.
Jimmy (01:32):
Yeah. So I would say the textbook answer is every platform should have its own content.
Tiffany (01:40):
That's the textbook answer for sure.
Jimmy (01:41):
That's the textbook answer. The topic could be the same, but it needs to be written in a slightly different way just to cater to that platform.
Tiffany (01:49):
Yep.
Jimmy (01:49):
So again, that in itself should help narrow down choices for you. Do I have the time to manage three platforms, two platforms, five platforms? And then the next thing would be if you truly are kind of like, no, we definitely need LinkedIn, we definitely need another one, Facebook or Instagram or something else. But we really don't have the resources. I think you could get away with certain platforms that are similar that you could post something similar without necessarily needing to change it very much. And I would say to a certain extent, if we talk about, again, the mainstream, the more popular ones, I think LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty close. And again, we're talking financial services, LinkedIn and Facebook are pretty close. Yep. Yeah.
Tiffany (02:45):
Yeah. That's what we tend to say. If you have to, they can be written the same. Obviously, Instagram is sometimes different because you can't put the link in, so that has to change. If we are to sort of say we have the time, we'll do this for some clients. We'll write the LinkedIn post for more of your circle of influence, more of your referrals. So for example, a tax planning article. You write this tax planning article, share it on LinkedIn. So depending on your greater strategy, you may want to write this tax planning article caption a little bit more like, "Hey, this information could be good for your client." Well, it's not for your clients.
(03:47):
Help me out, Jimmy. You know what I'm saying? Right?
Jimmy (03:50):
Exactly. I mean, say Tiffany, you're in a financial services company and you write content and I'm in accounting or an attorney, and then I read the content and go, "Oh yeah, this is really helpful."
Tiffany (04:04):
My clients would be so interested.
Jimmy (04:05):
My clients would find this helpful. Let me share it. Right?
Tiffany (04:08):
Yeah.
Jimmy (04:08):
So that will form one part of your content.
Tiffany (04:12):
Sorry, let me just jump on that. It's a little more professional potentially, a little bit more of the technical, a little more nitty gritty maybe. Yeah. A little more of that. And then Facebook, I'll let you run with that.
Jimmy (04:27):
Yes, yes, yes. And I feel it always depends again on your strategy, what works best for you.
Tiffany (04:39):
The other layer of it.
Jimmy (04:40):
Maybe that slides quite a lot on LinkedIn or maybe you feel like, oh, a lot of people on LinkedIn are potential clients and then my COI is a little bit less. It doesn't mean then all you talk about are COIs or all you talk about are clients; it just means you shift that slider, right? Every third post, it's going to be about clients.
Tiffany (05:06):
Yes. I love that. Yes, exactly. Oh, goodness. We are opening a whole can of worms because of all the strategies in there, you want to have your team posts and your events and things like that. So just saying when you talk about tax planning, you may want to do that versus so this is what we've done for some clients. We'll write that thinking more, okay, they're following COIs, they're working their network, they're really trying to build a referral network on LinkedIn. So while they're doing that, when we post, it's more for those types of people. On Facebook, we'll write that more for an end client. So their actual clients who might be reading this and think like, "Oh, I need tax planning. Well, I'll need to talk to my advisor." Or we've talked about more personal things, the end of life type of planning, life transitions.
(06:00):
So then it's more, if they are going to share it, they're probably going to share it with their friends or family, not with their clients, which is more what we'd be thinking on LinkedIn and Facebook, it's a little more if they were going to share it. Like you said, if they were to interact with it, their family's going to see it. So you have to be a little careful around divorce topics or even end of life, just all the sensitive topics.
Jimmy (06:24):
Yeah, I know. Like the divorce topic, you don't want to be like, "I saw you like this post on some divorce." Is everything okay?
Tiffany (06:34):
I know.
Jimmy (06:34):
You have to be — I know something that's happening.
Tiffany (06:36):
Yeah. But on the flip side, I think it's good to know that people are more inclined to share things with maybe friends or family types. I don't know, but I can see that on LinkedIn too. So it's not a clean cut line. But it's just something to explore as we're working through strategy. So okay, we're just going on and on for a long time here.
Jimmy (07:03):
I would also add what you just said, right? Oh, it could be this and it could be something else that really worked on that note, it then helps if you just try, just post, just try and start with something, look at what works. I mean, all of these dashboards are free. You don't have to pay to get access to the dashboard and then you just could see like, oh, this post seems to resonate quite a bit, it got a lot of likes. Who are the ones liking it? Are they following my page? Are they COIs?
Tiffany (07:40):
Yes.
Jimmy (07:41):
Maybe they were clients, potential clients or existing clients? Then that helps you to go, oh, so actually maybe writing about just saying like divorce or something else, for some reason it worked for me on LinkedIn. Everyone will have their own kind of uniqueness, just like fingerprints, right? It'll be unique to you what works, that formula.
Tiffany (08:09):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I know. I'm looking over my notes. Do we want to talk about any of the trendy things? As opposed to Facebook. Social media? Yes. What's the new thing?
Jimmy (08:24):
If we don't talk about Reddit, because anyone who has searched something on Google will see. It will be Reddit says … . Or when the auto complete will say blah, blah, blah, Reddit, on Reddit.
Tiffany (08:40):
Yes. I've just noticed that fairly recently. Whatever you're searching — how to cook ramen noodles — and it will automatically give you the potential option of Reddit.
Jimmy (08:54):
And it's pretty high up.
Tiffany (08:56):
And that's the other thing, even if you don't ask it to drop it Reddit —
Jimmy (08:59):
It will show you.
Tiffany (09:01):
And it's usually like who knows what'll happen by the time this goes live in about a month, but it'll usually say forums or something. It'll label that section of the search engine results page, forums. And so Quora's in there, a couple others, but by and large, it's going to be Reddit above and beyond anything else. So Reddit is definitely winning the Google game, the search game, probably then the AI game in there, but what do we do with that?
Jimmy (09:40):
Yeah. Well, Reddit is doing really well. I mean, it's been around for like what, over 20 years and last year — was it last year? No, in 2024 they had an IPO
Tiffany (09:51):
Thereabouts.
Jimmy (09:52):
I mean, they obviously have to send a thank you hamper to Google because just a few years ago, I think that was what happened, right? I mean, we all know SEO, it's very much on what do people actually like, "What do people find useful?" And that's how Google internally goes, "Well, a lot of people like this page or when we show them this result, they go there and they spend three minutes reading it. Okay, let's push that to the top."
(10:21):
And what kind of better marriage, I guess, or better fellows would be Reddit, where it's very much just people talking to people, peers, and it's just so many subreddits. There's a subreddit for anything and everything, however obscure. And then people are commenting and asking questions because that's part of how Reddit works, right? You post something, typically it's a question and people respond to it. So if you kind of take 10 steps back, smear your glasses with Vaseline, it kind of looks like Google in a way, the way they operate. So that's why there is a synergy there and they, Google took note of that and they decided, you know what, maybe that's a good resource. There's always a but.
Tiffany (11:14):
Well, the but is that, I mean, we've really not done any work with any clients on Reddit because it's a compliance issue. To put it lightly at this point, I can't imagine creating content on Reddit. If we were to create content, it would be a question or post or a comment. I can't imagine the compliance part of it at this point because we have no control over any of it. We don't own any sort of page. It would be this amazing thing if, say our clients were serving, I'm going to make something up, architects for tree houses, like super, super niche, right? It would be amazing.
Jimmy (12:21):
I'm sure there's a subreddit for that.
Tiffany (12:23):
That's right. It would be amazing if they could. Wouldn't that be cool if they could create a subreddit about that topic and then everyone join in and then you just pop in there every once in a while and share retirement planning information for the architects of tree houses. But there's just no way — I mean, we have clients whose compliance officer insist that comments be turned off even in their social media posts because you can't control it. Not all of them, but some of them do. So I mean, a Reddit is just a whole other can of worms where you really can't control. People have anonymous accounts and things like that.
(13:12):
I wonder if Reddit could shift in some way so we could support clients being there.
Jimmy (13:19):
Yeah. So much to comment on based on what you've said, because Reddit — Okay, number one, to create a Reddit account, you just create one, right? Correct. It's not like, "Oh, Facebook, you need to have your first name.
Tiffany (13:35):
There’s no verification.
Jimmy (13:36):
Check mark. Yeah. Or like LinkedIn, you need to have a picture. I mean, not to say there are no scam LinkedIn accounts at all, but —
Tiffany (13:43):
Yeah, there’s plenty of those.
Jimmy (13:44):
But that barrier to create the scam accounts is just higher. But for Reddit, I mean, it's not uncommon for people to have several Reddit accounts.
Tiffany (13:53):
Oh yeah, you see it all the time, right? Again, you look up how to cook ramen noodles and then you look at all the comments and it'll say deleted, deleted, deleted, because people have deleted that account and opened another one.
Jimmy (14:07):
Yeah. All of them openly say, "This is my burner account for following teapots, my secret obsession," or something like that. So therein, you don't know, is this somebody who's nearing retirement? Is this somebody who's — you just don't know, number one.
Tiffany (14:26):
The strategic question. Why are we even going again?
Jimmy (14:30):
No one is just great. And then number two, let's talk about the positive. There are a lot of good things that could come up, right? I mean, super active, super engaged, things move really quickly. So you can get really good rewards if you do it well, but then you have to take the good with the bad. If it blows up badly, it blows up badly. And Redditors, they have zero tolerance for salesy marketing. All of us, if we use Reddit enough, all of us have seen at some point somebody comes in — moderators. "Ooh, if you're on this teapot subreddit, I really love this brand of teapot, blah, blah, blah." And then they will get flamed. People will say, "It's obvious you're from this brand."
Tiffany (15:19):
Yep, exactly. It gets shut down.
Jimmy (15:20):
So if you have that resource, are you able to handle that? Do you have that resource to constantly monitor?
Tiffany (15:26):
No.
Jimmy (15:27):
And remember, if you do set up a subreddit page, or if you try to join a subreddit page, each subreddit, it's like its own country, right? It has their own rules, their own moderators, their own admins. It's a lot of work. So if you do it well, if it's the place where if you do it well, great, great payoff. But then it's a lot.
Tiffany (15:50):
It’s a lot.
Jimmy (15:51):
And I just am not convinced at this moment that it's something our clients or financial services should go in. Maybe advertising though, I would say.
Tiffany (16:02):
I was going to say, there's two things I think it could be done and one of them is advertising. We don't recommend that a lot, kind of going back to what you said, watch the data. So we're not big on starting with ads, but it's something to kind of look around at; there's some interesting Reddit ad options but the other thing too is just research, right? So if your key target demographic is engineers at XYZ company, there may be a subreddit group for them or there may be a subreddit group for the XYZ company or sometimes there's subreddit groups just about like RSUs for that company or retirement accounts for — you know what I mean? You can kind of go in and start to see like, "Oh, what are people talking about around benefits packages —
Jimmy (16:59):
Use it as a resource.
Tiffany (17:00):
Yes, exactly. You can kind of just, I would not recommend jumping in there, but “what are people asking about and what time of the year are they always asking?" And then you can use that to build out content you know people are searching for because they're writing about it in Reddit and it's popping up. So that would be a really great use of that too.
Jimmy (17:23):
I like that. So two things then that are relevant to like our clients and just people in financial services. I think one, if you do have the budget, then yeah, I mean, and you want to go into Reddit because it's just so active and maybe advertising and then two, which is free, just need your time, use it as a resource, go in, see what people are saying, and then just fight the urge to say, "Call me. I can help you."
Tiffany (17:53):
I know. Fight the urge. Use that information and turn it into content, really good content, long form content, make a video about it, do all the things and hopefully that person will just find you when they Google it. But yes —
Jimmy (18:12):
Resist the urge.
Tiffany (18:13):
You do not want to go down on Reddit. No, just don't do it.
Jimmy (18:18):
Yeah, that's what we recommend about Reddit. I kind of also want to just add another thing.
(18:28):
Not so specific to Reddit, but just social media in general. I think the other question people might have would be how many should I have, right? How many platforms should I be on?
Tiffany (18:41):
That's the other layer of the question.
Jimmy (18:42):
And we have also seen many clients, and this is in no way saying, "Oh, they're doing the wrong thing." It is a very natural thing when you start a company to go, "Oh, I need to make sure I have all of my accounts set up. I may not need them, but I need to set them up. So I have X, I have Facebook, I have Instagram, blah, blah, blah." And if I have them, shouldn't I list them on my website? Things like that, right? So we have seen many clients and many other brands. They're not clients, many other companies that have a lot of accounts across all platforms. Do you really need that? Sure. Take that account first so you have the handle, but you don't necessarily need to use it or publicize it immediately. You can always keep it private or just deactivate but keep that handle, right?
Tiffany (19:31):
Yep.
Jimmy (19:32):
Start with the one you're most confident with, again, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and remember you can add. It's easier to add. I mean, it's easy to take away too. You just remove it from the website, but once it's out in the public eye and you remove it, it's just not a good look. So easier to add just like, I don't know, hair products, just like makeup, easier to add than to try and take out like, "Ooh, too much blush. How do I ... " So start small, I think, yeah.
Tiffany (20:07):
Yes. And then also make sure your accounts are linked to an email address multiple people in the company have access to. So when someone leaves — this has happened so many times with clients where we can't get access again to some account we didn't feel like using. I mean, like I said, in my yes, it circles back all the time. We don't really care about Facebook. Now we do care about Facebook. Oh, we're getting off of Twitter and now we want to get back on Twitter or whatever, X, whatever. Just make sure multiple people have access so it's not like, "Oh, we didn't care about that account and now we do.”
Jimmy (20:48):
Yes.
Tiffany (20:50):
Yeah.
Jimmy (20:50):
Now who has the magic key to go with?
Tiffany (20:54):
Yeah. Just have a social media email address or something in the company so it’s just not linked to one person.
Jimmy (21:01):
Yeah. I think it's good to have that protocol of having a master list of all the passwords, who's there. Always make sure, just like the safety deposit box, do people have to have the key to open it, right?
Tiffany (21:16):
Exactly.
Jimmy (21:17):
We can do this.
Tiffany (21:17):
We can do this. Awesome. Okay. So what is our one action step for everyone?
Jimmy (21:25):
Quickly? Oh, I changed it.
Tiffany (21:27):
I'm so excited.
Jimmy (21:28):
We were talking about it and I changed it, which is kind of related to what we just talked about. So my one takeaway to recommend is look at your social media accounts right now. If you have more than what you need and you're only using two out of five regularly, then remove those from your website, maybe deactivate the account. By deactivating, it doesn't mean deleting. You can deactivate it so it's not searchable but you can still keep it. Because again, we have seen brands, companies, clients, sometimes having accounts like X and all that, and they haven't posted in months or maybe even years. You're doing yourself a disservice because if it's on the website and people go in, it's strange if the last post was in 2021.
Tiffany (22:30):
It's not a good look. It makes it look like your company's struggling in some fashion, right?
Jimmy (22:36):
Why? Why is it like that?
Tiffany (22:38):
The why question comes up. Yeah.
Jimmy (22:40):
And so it’s uncomfortable.
Tiffany (22:41):
It is uncomfortable. So yeah, we would recommend deactivating and/or sometimes if we're kind of stepping away from a platform, we'll put out a post that just says, "Hey, we're putting out all our energy this way. We'll kind of be sunsetting this in the next three months. Come follow us over here." Something like that so people kind of know what's going on if you have been active there. But I agree. You definitely don't want it prominent on your website that you're on Instagram or X or Facebook and then you go there and you realize you haven't posted. I mean, legitimately, this is what I always think, what are they doing? Did someone quit? Do they just not have time? It makes it feel like your company must be frazzled or something.
Jimmy (23:29):
Yeah. And you don't want to just create that room for people to start making up impressions of like, why is it like that? Are they not very detailed? Do I want to trust them with my money?
Tiffany (23:45):
Right. I mean, even stores, haven't you done this where you Google some boutique you want to go to or something like that and you see they haven't posted in like three years and you're like, "Well, maybe they're not even open." Maybe they don't care anymore. It feels yucky. So I love that. That's a really good suggestion. Just clean it up.
Jimmy (24:05):
And easy.
Tiffany (24:06):
Totally easy. And you can start 2026 just focused on what matters. Although I say that because by the time this comes out, it will not be the beginning of ‘26. So we will be well into Q1 but start Q2 of 2026.
Jimmy (24:20):
Not too late.
Tiffany (24:21):
No, it's never too late.
Jimmy (24:23):
Never too late to do that. Never too late to start a gym membership. It doesn't have to be January 1.
Tiffany (24:29):
Exactly. I love it. Awesome. Okay. Well, anything else we want to talk about about social media accounts?
Jimmy (24:40):
As usual, we could go on forever. In fact, maybe this needs to be cut into part one and part two.
Tiffany (24:45):
Yes.
Jimmy (24:46):
Right?
Tiffany (24:47):
I think it will be.
Jimmy (24:48):
I think we've talked about it a lot, but yeah, if any of you have questions, just send it to us.
Tiffany (24:55):
Absolutely.
Jimmy (24:56):
We can talk about some of those questions.
Tiffany (24:58):
We are all about helping you in that financial services seat. So if this sparked questions for you, please DM any of us here at the company if you're connected here at Out & About or send us an email. There's lots of ways to get in touch and we all work together very closely. So we'll just send whoever needs to know the question.
Jimmy (25:22):
On LinkedIn. Leave a comment.
Tiffany (25:26):
Yeah. Even better.
Jimmy (25:27):
We’ll see it and then we will leave a comment.
Tiffany (25:29):
Below the likes there.
Jimmy (25:30):
I know. Like subscribe. No. LinkedIn will be like follow. There you go. Leave a comment. Share. Repost if you find this helpful.
Tiffany (25:42):
Absolutely. Yeah. And if you love this conversation, make sure you also go to outandaboutcommunications.com/community. You can sign up for our newsletter.
Jimmy (25:57):
It's free to join.
Tiffany (25:57):
It's free to join.
Jimmy (25:59):
Free.
Tiffany (26:00):
Yeah. It's like a fan club but even better. So get on our newsletter list. We're always trying to make sure our newsletter has lots of good resources. I mean, you'll get links to the podcast but also we're sending out checklists and worksheets and things we send to our clients. So kind of aligned with the things we're talking about that month. So you definitely want to make sure you're grabbing those. And if you missed one or there's anything you heard about we promised we were going to share that resource and you got into the newsletter too late, just let us know and we'll send you a link. So I think you'll love it over there.
Jimmy (26:39):
We just want to set you up for success.
Tiffany (26:42):
We absolutely do. We love this community. We love financial services and the people who work in marketing in those seats and we know it's meaningful work. It's meaningful and we know it feels lonely, so we are here to support. And yeah, tune in next time, subscribe and do all those things like Jimmy mentioned.
Jimmy (26:59):
Exactly.
Tiffany (27:00):
And we'll keep answering these questions and probably talking about social media again.
Jimmy (27:06):
We will, for sure.
Tiffany (27:07):
Yes. Always. Always. All right. Thanks so much. Take care everyone.
