A $17-billion RIA doubles down on a social media strategy that netted it 50 Facebook employees

I applaud BAM for their innovative thinking in leveraging credible thought leaders to create content on behalf of the firm. However, I completely disagree with the statement “Being seen as credible authority by a respected source … cannot be replicated or conferred by
your own blog or Facebook page.”

How do you think these folks (or any of us) became credible authorities in the 1st place? Through creating, publishing, syndicating and sharing unique thought leadership views on our own blogs, social media profiles, etc.

If you are truly a thought leader, it doesn’t matter if you start from zero. You can build a loyal and trusted following through blogging and content marketing that can produce business results. I’m living proof of this and so are the guys mentioned in this article. Building online influence breeds business success no matter who you are are what you do.

http://blog.wiredadvisor.com/thought-leadership-content-marketing-in-social-media-times/

Great story!

Brooke, you’re still a skeptic?

Pat (de Tocqueville),

Thank you.

I’m a skeptic but admittedly not a very well-informed one.

Any chance I could get a Pat Allen special? It could be entitled: How RIABiz is wrong on social media and how is living up to its hype — if you look past the obvious

(or something like that)

Brooke

Oh my, now you’ve really elevated things, haven’t you?

RIABiz is not wrong on social media, though—you continue to publish some of the best stories of how it’s being applied. I think it’s more like you’re biased against it (that’s a step beyond skepticism) while my bias is in favor.

If you start me out with a few statements that capture your deep-seated bias (who hurt you, Brooke?) and give me some time, I will take your bait and submit something for your consideration. Thanks for the invitation.

Good challenge. I’ll work on better articulating my bias. It certainly begins with disliking things that are hyped. But I believe there are things that are over-hyped that are still underrated — like California, the Beatles. Tom Brady and Google.

Brooke

Hi Brooke…as my advisor friend David Armstrong says, “social media minus a content strategy is like sending out empty envelopes.” It’s the content strategy that drives social media success, ultimately. Hope you’re well!

I love this conversation. Stephanie, I think you’ve struck an interesting point. I think you’re right – you can build your brand with blogs and Twitter. But it just takes a LOT of effort and that may be a challenge for a smaller RIA who has to meet regularly with clients. Stephanie, you have built a huge social media following and so does Pat, but you are both VERY consistent and work really hard at it – just like the guys that Buckingham brought over. I just wonder if it’s difficult for some in the industry who meet with clients frequently to have the social-media consistency.

I’m not an RIA and I’m the first to admit that I have problems being consistent with things like my Twitter page and I’ve been trying to be more consistent but it has been a huge challenge. So, Pat – I guess that’s where my skepticism comes into play sometimes – it just seems like a very slow process (at least for me). I feel like I could Tweet 50 times a day and still not build much of a following. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong. I think the issue is having more reasonable expectations and being consistent.

Thanks so much for sharing Lisa. It does take time, and more importantly, it takes planning, strategy, and a systematic approach to implement your strategy. Remember too that Pat and I both run businesses full-time. We don’t have the time to spend all day everyday on blogging and social media. Having a system and leveraging tools is a BIG part of building traction. Once you get that marketing system down, it just becomes part of your day and replaces those activities that don’t necessarily drive business or strengthen client relationships. It does take time to build a following, but most give up before they really see the true benefits or learn the tools.

I started out communicating in print (as a journalist even). But just as I was starting to bump up against the ceiling and floors and walls of print, I learned about the Internet. For me it was like being in the stacks at a university library and opening one book that led to another that led to another. The Web opened a world of possibilities that I am still not over.

Now it’s my perspective that publishing a Website about your products and services and then just going on with your life in the real world (only) also has limitations. Social media enables interaction and listening in a way that elevates personal and business experience. It requires some learning and practices, as Steph says, but to use the Web to find like-minded people, interact with them and be influenced by them is a modern-day invention. The world is flatter now, and there’s opportunity here unrivalled by anything that’s gone before, even and especially for time-starved advisors who need to spend most of their time with clients.

OK, just re-read that last sentence and I understand that, in a certain light, some editors might consider it verging on “hype.” I’ll try to control myself in what I submit to you.

Loved the exchange today, thanks!

Hey Stephanie, You’ve obviously hit it on the nail about the strategy and systematic approach. Most of us just don’t have that. I know you and Pat are both completely swamped and can’t spend all of your energy on social media.

But my point is that despite how busy you both are – you both MAKE the time for several interactive Tweets a day and that’s what many others fail to do (myself included) Heck, if one of my kid’s gets sick – suddenly I’m so busy with everything else, that I forget about things like Twitter and LinkedIn and “go dark” with no interaction on those sites a few days.

Where you both excel is your consistency. Because regardless of how busy you are, you both make it a priority to offer interactive Tweets – in addition to your other systems that you already have in place.

I think the real skepticism about Twitter/LinkedIn/social media is this false notion out there that it’s “easy” to build your profile and get 10,000 followers in a few weeks and it’s not easy – unless you’re a celebrity or a politician.

I totally believe in BAM and totally believe in what they are doing. First the people there know what they are doing. Second they are not afraid to share great ideas. Third, social medial is real and I see if work every day in a number of business situations. However, you need to have talent and write information that is valuable and relevant or you are just wasting your time. The fact that they went beyond their own great knowledge and talent pool and hired Dan Solin speaks to their commitment.

Lisa you are right on. I think you have to have a passion for marketing as well as making it a priority. Believe me I have many dark days where I don’t make an appearance at all. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to unplug here and there. Twitter is not my favorite channel either. It’s more noisy than the others, but it’s an easy way to strike up a discussion with someone you don’t know and have no barrier to entry.

Great comments Pat!

This is a fascinating story. Glad I found it through the participants’ tweets.

Susan,

I appreciate your forceful tact!

Brooke

Stephanie, note in your first comment that you left off “alone” in your reference to my quote. The point I was making is that you need to have something to deliver on your blog and a compelling reason people will want to listen to you. It isn’t just about starting a blog or having a Facebook page…that’s a piece of the puzzle not the entire puzzle. Good discussion all!

Hi Joe! I was referring to the quote under your pic. The word “alone” wasn’t in there and that is the more visible one :). I completely understand your point that without the compelling message you absolutely can’t be successful, but I don’t agree that you must have 3rd party credibility to be successful. I’m living proof of that and so is Carl. Carl created a fantastic message and committed himself to marketing that message…and then it opened doors for him. He didn’t start out as a NY Times Blogger. It happened as a result of his hard work.

If you do get picked up or quoted by the big media outlets (and I have as well) it can help to accelerate credibility and visibility (as well as publishing a book can) but it’s not an absolute requirement for business success. With a solid digital marketing message and plan, industry thought leaders can attract their audiences organically and develop business opportunities on their own and that is the point I was trying to make.

Regardless, I think the BAM marketing strategy is terrific, and the 3 guys creating the educational content are compelling thought leaders! It’s an interesting way to “scale” the plan if you will, so that many advisors can leverage the great work they are doing…but I believe those advisors still need to build their own brands and share their own unique messages.

OK, so what do we have? We have a correlation of some events – self-reported. It appears more activity on the PR side correlating with significant asset gathering from a single company or population.

Can we say one thing caused another? There have to be many other factors at play. If you look at other B2B sales processes you see internal, and not public, factors are the strongest.

It is easy to believe, and claim, that what is publicly available and easiest to see and talk about is what’s most important. That is probably not true.

The missing piece is data and evidence of claims. The label of “skeptic” is misleading. Is an advisor a “skeptic” if they demand evidence for investment claims?

Here are a few reasons for sober thinking: – The evidence is that social media has no buying influence in other industries, including B2C. IBM just published some stark data — from the Christmas season. – Even if an advisor wants to adopt this strategy — they can’t. There are very few headline worthy bloggers – and they are already taken.

The idea that by writing some articles billions of dollars in new assets will flow into your firm is a appealing fantasy but likely not much more.

There is a report out from SEI and Standard Charter Bank called FutureWealthy. One of the findings is that:

“Wealthier Clients Demand More Communication
Donald Jay Korn Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The more wealth a client has, the more time they spend communicating–and that includes communications with their financial advisors.

The highlights emphasize:

- The primacy of email as the main communications tool

- The greater wealth the more communications are demanded

- The increasing importance of private and secure websites/portals for information exchange.

We work with clients to build these private portals vs. social media – they are important and proprietary.

Here’s a little science of social media.

Professionals of all stripes need to learn and change our communications styles to better fit what is memorable to our brains.

“Effortless chatter is better than well-crafted sentences at tapping into our minds’ basic language capacities—because human brains evolved to prioritize and remember unfiltered information from social interaction.”

For good or ill, there is evidence that the casual, conversation and somewhat offhand style of social media is actually most adapted to how our brains naturally take in information. It makes the most memorable kind of communications!

More on this research here: http://wp.me/pXvvI-kq

When you begin to look at social media as a distributive conduit for your intellectual capital used to increase client engagement, then everything tends to fall into proper place. The fact that social media will almost always increase brand awareness via social sharing is simply icing on the cake. I’ve spent the past 20 years embedded in the RIA community and the single biggest marketing-related problem I’ve seen present at the vast majority of firms is their inability to get their intellectual capital outside the firm’s four walls. And this is why coupling content/digital media creation for inbound marketing purposes with social media is the killer combo today, especially considering the proliferation of mobile device usage.

Of course, then you have the multitude of real-time communication possibilities provided by social like G+ hangouts and YT hangouts on air. Throw in some live streaming media sessions when appropriate and now you’ve essentially become a broadcaster – all for an infinitesimal investment compared with the legacy broadcast technologies the major networks are stuck with. We are living in exciting times!

The facts are that these kinds of claims are common but conjecture. There simply is no evidence that somed is engaging at all, especially for anyone but 20 somethings, let alone that it leads to buying behavior – even in B2C let alone professional B2B.

The biggest marketing problem we see is “cost of sales” not being a line item in the budget. All firms disinvest in sales and growth – that’s the industry culture.

In addition, there is accumlating research that somed has little business impact.

Please provide data to support “The fact that social media will almost always increase brand awareness via social sharing”.

Hey Elmer – that will be pretty easy; all it takes is one contact to become aware of a firm’s brand due to social media – there’s your increase. It’s going to be much more difficult to actually quantify that relationship, which is why I didn’t even try.

I’m not saying to spend hours maintaining a social presence – quite the opposite. Read the articles I’ve written on the subject and you’ll see that’s not what i’m advocating. What I advocate is to use a web 2.0 development framework with actual content creation and then tag social on to the backend of those efforts.

No, like an advisor needs to have evidence to make professional recommendations and results that can be replicated, so marketers need to have proof – well beyond one case.

If there is not hard data backing up any recommendations and opinions, why spend time on anything? Swapping opinions and stories isn’t professional information exchange.

Elmer,

I like data but in a business like ours, we don’t always have that luxury and this is a business of qualitative and quantitative factors.

People who want all data all the time in this business may have missed their calling. They might be better suited for a field like biotechnology where you don’t even get up to the plate until you have stage four clinical trials stretched out across decades.

Brooke

The claim that data, evidence and standards of professional proof are out of place in financial services and professional investment advice is telling but unsupportable for any profession — and probably presents legal liability.