Career Tips and Business Ideas for Finance and Accounting Professionals – here’s our latest round-up of great reads sourced from around the web. Whether you’re looking to market your accountancy practice or embark on a job search, there’s something here for you.

First up, a couple of great posts for anyone keen to raise the profile of their accounting practice and generate more referral business and sales leads. Replace the word “Consulting” in this first post with “Accountancy” and you’ve got some great insights on actionable steps for your business:

Is Your Consulting Firm Top of Mind?

In a similar vein, intriguing ideas here on how changing the way you describe your services and the impact they will have on clients can dramatically improve the new business wins you bring in:

Marketing Tip: Sell them ideas!

And last but not least – an excellent write-up from a former recruiter about working effectively with a recruitment agency to secure your next career move:

How to make recruiters work for you: be punctual, serious and respectful
Of course if you’re toying with a career move, feel free to call us and we’d be delighted to help.

Whether your goal is to attract more clients to your accounting business or to secure a new role in the financial industry, you can further your career and achieve your goals by better leveraging digital and social channels.

How? Try following our simple steps to stand out from the crowd – whether that be competing businesses or other jobseekers.

Step 1 – Ensure you can be found

The most important step in becoming more digitally savvy is to make sure you can be found online.

If you want to be head-hunted by financial recruiters, or you would like your accountancy practice to be found by prospective clients, they must be able to find you to begin with.

With millions of websites and social profiles online it can be easy to get lost amongst them.

One of the first things to consider is what keywords are recruiters and prospective clients going to search for when looking for candidates/business partners? Brainstorm possible keywords and then incorporate them into your Social Profiles/ Blog / Business Website. For example, a candidate might target keywords a recruiter may use for a specific role: eg. Chartered Accountant London – and then look to expand on the skills and experience related keywords that might relate to such a position (hint: search in related job adverts to find ideas for suitable keywords, they’ll stand out as the things recruiters are looking for in that hire)

You should look to pepper these target keywords in places such as your LinkedIn headline, job titles, summary, skills section and descriptions of your current and previous roles. Ideally take this a step further and incorporate them into other social profiles such as Twitter and Google+.

For a prospective client searching for a practice, their target keywords may be: Small Accountancy Firm London. Add these keywords throughout your website: page titles, various web pages, meta titles and descriptions. Although it is important to add these keywords throughout your entire website, please be mindful that it must read naturally. Also include these in your social profiles, as often your profiles may actually rank higher on Google than your SME website.

This task is a must to ensure you are found online, because many recruiters and prospective clients will begin their search on Google or on LinkedIn

Step 2 – Ensure your story is compelling

Now that you have mastered how to drive recruiters / prospective clients to your online presence, it is imperative that what they see there inspires them.

There is no point driving traffic to your Social Profile / Website only for them to be disappointed and leave straight away. Make sure that once they find you, they want to contact you.

With regards to Social Profiles, that means writing compelling summaries focused on your achievements, adding past project examples, and sharing interesting financial content to engage with like-minded professionals.

Similarly, with your practice’s website you must ensure that your website is user friendly, easy to navigate and gets your business’s message across simply. What services do you offer? For what sort of clients? Do you have testimonials from satisfied customers? Are your contact details easy to find and do you offer several different ways for people to get in touch? If your practice’s message is unclear and the website is complicated to use, prospective clients are going to leave in search of a better website and in turn, another practice.

Step 3 – Become a thought leader

You have now successfully driven recruiters and / or prospective clients to your Social Profile / Website and got them to the point where they are interested in you. Now it is time to show off your expertise.

One of the best ways to highlight your experience and knowledge within your niche sector is to create relevant content and share it.

Ensure that you have a compelling blog with interesting feature articles and facts and figures about the financial industry, anything you know prospective clients or employers will find informative to read. Create this all on your website or publish on your LinkedIn profile. This may sound time consuming, but not all the posts have to be that long and they could just be you offering some thoughts or insights on some of the latest financial news.

With regards to looking for work, publish content on your LinkedIn profile, share updates with your LinkedIn network, contribute to other financial industry blogs or indeed start your own.

Creating your own content will highlight your expertise within your niche and help you secure a new job, or work with a new client. By creating insightful content within the financial sector you take the steps to becoming a thought leader and building professional credibility for yourself.

Step 4 – Build your influence & visibility

Lastly, you need to ensure all your social profiles are complete and updated regularly.

By now you have a website / social profiles that are optimised to be found for target keywords and they are filled with compelling content proving you to be a thought leader within the Financial industry. This is all fantastic, but you must also remember the power of Social Media.

Social Media platforms are a great way to create a network of contacts within your niche. Use your Social Profiles to share relevant financial news, your own content, reshare interesting updates, comment on other people’s posts / updates and get in front of the top influencers in the Financial industry. Follow people that you find interesting, and chances are if they see that you’re sharing content that is relevant to them they’ll follow back.

Once you have built a strong brand on Social Media you can successfully put yourself and / or your practice in front of many people within your industry and if an influencer shares your updates, the door will open to many more opportunities. So log onto your Social Media Platforms and get tweeting, liking and linking. It’s more integral to your career success than ever before.

Are you thinking of changing jobs this coming year? If so, be sure to download our app for Android or iPhone today.