What your licensee worries about in a social post

The most common reason a broker or adviser posts nothing for six months is not time. It is the half-formed worry that something in the post will come back on them.

That worry is reasonable, and it is also much broader than it needs to be. Across six years of writing content for licensed professionals, the same four things cause nearly all of the actual problems. Everything else is people being cautious about the wrong thing.

Worth saying up front: your licensee, aggregator or professional body sets the rules you are held to, and their view beats anything you read here, including this. What follows is the pattern, not permission.

1. Drifting from general information into advice

This is the big one, and the line is narrower than most people think but clearer than they fear.

General information describes how something works for people in a category. Advice recommends what a particular person should do, taking their circumstances into account. ‘Fixed rates suit people who value certainty over flexibility’ is information. ‘You should fix’ is not.

Where it goes wrong is almost never the post itself. It is the comments. Someone asks ‘should I fix at the moment?’, the reply feels helpful, and two sentences later there is a recommendation with no file note behind it.

The fix is a rule, agreed in advance, that anyone answering your accounts follows: questions about a specific person’s situation get a warm holding reply and a move to a private channel. ‘Good question, and the answer depends on a few things I would want to look at properly. Send me a DM and we will work it out.’

2. Numbers without their assumptions

A rate or a repayment on its own invites someone to treat it as an offer. The same figure with its assumptions attached is illustrative, and every licensee I have dealt with is comfortable with the second version.

The assumptions are usually three: the amount, the term, the rate used. ‘$2,962 a month on $500,000 over 30 years at 5.89% p.a.’ is a sentence, not fine print, and it belongs in the post rather than in a caption nobody expands.

If the figure is an example rather than something on offer, say so in the same breath. ‘Illustrative only’ does more work than a wall of disclaimers at the bottom.

• Information describes a category of people. Advice recommends to a person
• Numbers need their assumptions in the same sentence, not in a footer
• Agree the comment rule before you need it, not during

3. Missing identifiers

The least interesting item on this list and the one that gets flagged most often in audits, because it is easy to check. Credit representative numbers, AFSL details, trading name versus licensed entity, whatever your licensee requires and wherever they require it.

The practical answer is to stop treating it as a per-post decision. Put it in the profile bio, in the page’s about section, and in the footer of any graphic template you use regularly. Then it is handled, permanently, and nobody has to remember.

4. Repeating something you cannot stand behind

Sharing a news article with ‘great news for borrowers’ attaches your name to a claim you did not write and may not have read past the headline. Same for statistics pulled from a post someone else made, and same for a forecast presented as a fact.

The version that stays safe is also the version that reads better: say where it came from, say what it means for the reader, and leave the prediction to the person who made it. ‘The RBA held this week. On a $600,000 loan, that means nothing changes for now, which is worth knowing if you were bracing for it.’

What licensees are not worried about

Worth listing, because these are the things people self-censor for no reason.

Personality is fine. Photos of your team, your office, your dog at the office. Local commentary, community involvement, plain-language education, answering common questions, explaining a process, being funny if you are funny. None of that is a compliance issue, and all of it is what makes the compliant content worth reading.

The caution most professionals carry does not actually protect them. It just produces a feed that says nothing, which carries its own cost — you are still being compared to the broker down the road, and silence is not neutral.

The ten minute conversation worth having

Take three posts you would like to publish, in the format you would like to use, and send them to your licensee or aggregator with one question: is this format acceptable, and what would you change?

You get an answer specific to you rather than a general one, and you usually get a template you can reuse indefinitely. Most people never ask, and then spend years guessing at a line that someone would have drawn for them in ten minutes.