Online success tips

The following is an edited transcript of the Sept. 13 webcast “Extreme Makeover: Social-Media Edition.” It was moderated by deputy editor Evan Cooper. InvestmentNews: Deborah, tell us a little bit about your firm and what you do. Ms. Fox: I've been a financial planner for 27 years, doing comprehensive financial planning and wealth management. But about 14 years ago, I started a niche practice, Fox College Funding [LLC], which is probably how I am best known in our profession. We specialize in working with higher-income, higher-net-worth parents with a college-bound high school student to help them figure out how to mitigate the cost of college. Those parents are past the savings stage and are trying to figure out how to pay less for college. It's niche planning. Finally, I operate the Fox Financial Planning Network, which is a service we started a couple of years ago that helps advisers get fully systematized in their practices in order to offer more services and be much more efficient. We have a work flow system with hundreds of documents for various procedures that we help advisers customize to their practice. InvestmentNews: Tell us what social media you use. Ms. Fox: I have a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account and a Facebook account. Facebook was first, after my family said, “You should put something up there.” That was a number of years ago and it really has become a wreck because I don't use it. But I have “friended” all of these people — some for business and some personally — so now it's a whole mishmash; I don't want business people seeing what my cousin is doing with her baby in the evenings. How do you separate the two? I need some help there, because I obviously did that one wrong. I have a LinkedIn profile, too, but I'm not really using it to push out information actively. When I set it up, though, it had me set up a link to my blog — Pay for College — which I post to regularly. So that's kind of how I'm active in LinkedIn; my blog is being pushed out to people who I'm connected to, and surprisingly, I do get a lot of contacts, considering that I don't actively log in and do much there. InvestmentNews: Where do you stand from a compliance point of view? Ms. Fox: I'm a fee-only planner affiliated with an independent broker-dealer. Fox College Funding is considered an outside business activity for me, as is Fox Financial Planning Network. InvestmentNews: And the broker-dealer approves the material you put on the social-media sites? Ms. Fox: Correct. InvestmentNews: Let's turn things over first to Stephanie, who will talk about LinkedIn and how that can be used.

EASY YET COMPLEX

Ms. Sammons: I am the founder of Wired Advisor, a company that helps financial professionals navigate social media and evolve their practices in the age of social media. First of all, I would kind of echo Deborah's sentiments in that social media on the surface seems like a simple thing. It's great, it's free, and it's not difficult to create a quick profile here and there. But in reality, social media is very complex, sophisticated and requires a lot of hard work and tremendous efforts in order to make it work for you. And then, on top of that, there's the layer of compliance that we have to be so cautious and careful about to make sure that we're following guidelines and best practices. So, to start with, I believe personally — and have built a company around — the idea that the No. 1 rule for success in social media is building a powerful, compliant, comprehensive foundation on all, not just one, of the major sites. Even if you don't think that clients or prospects are out there on the various social-media sites, they can still serve as a benefit to you, your reputation and your brand. When you build a portfolio for a client and when you bring a new client into your practice, you work really hard to put together a portfolio of high-quality investments that match their goals and risk tolerance. I would like you to think about doing the same thing when you put time and effort into building your social-media portfolio. You don't just want to haphazardly throw information out there. You want to be cautious and careful, and build a very professional presence. This will accomplish three objectives for you — credibility, authority and personality. First, you want to instill confidence and trust in the people with whom you work and with whom you want to work. Second, you want to establish yourself as an expert. And third, you want to be likable. You want to be transparent about who you are and what you care about. You want to be human. At the end of the day, people do business with people they like. Let's start with LinkedIn. I've spent a significant amount of time on this network over the past few years, studying, researching and testing what works and what doesn't. I'd like to hit on some high points that pertain to Deborah's presence on LinkedIn. Some quick facts about the LinkedIn audience: It is the largest professional social network, with more than 120 million affluent and influential members. It is not just a place to have a profile or a résumé. It is literally a dynamic, virtual, perpetual professional networking event. It is always on. I Googled Deborah — I think I put “financial planner” in there — and her LinkedIn profile comes in as the No. 6 search result on the first Google page. It is important to understand that people research people. Hundreds of millions of people searches happen every day on sites like Google. What are they going to find out about you? If you have a well-developed social-media profile, like on LinkedIn, it is going to rank well in search results for your name. It is almost always going to come up on the first page. Another thing to know is that people also search within LinkedIn, which means that because it is a search engine within itself, people are going to come across your name and your profile without even meaning to, by just randomly through groups, and second- and third-degree connections. The take-away is that your profile is a part of your reputation. And you want your online reputation to match your offline reputation — it is a piece of your brand, and you need to fully develop this reputation asset. On the home page when someone logs into LinkedIn and views your profile, the first thing they see at the top of the page is your profile box. Research that we follow on web marketing tells us that when the majority of people come to a website or a profile, they don't necessarily scroll down. Usually, they just focus on what they see when they land there. So the first impression of Deborah is her profile box and what she has there; that's her story. She can do a lot to improve this and make a very powerful first impression among the people who find her through search and want to learn more about her. Advisers also need to think of their LinkedIn profile as a dynamic, searchable, 360-degree business profile that links together your professional presence. So it goes beyond LinkedIn. It is going to show up on the Google and Bing search engines. It is going to show up and be able to be integrated with other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. And it also can be a part of your blog and/or your website. There are even third-party business sites now such as Hoovers and Crunch Base that are tying in LinkedIn profiles.

REFINE ONLINE

Quickly, let's walk through how Deborah can optimize her profile box. Deborah, I like your picture there, but I saw your picture on your Twitter profile and I love that one. It is just you looking straight ahead. It is more personable, and I think it would be really effective for your LinkedIn profile. You want a professional image there that is recognizable, trustworthy and professional, so it's really important to have a great professional image there in your profile. You want a compelling headline. People use fancy terms to describe what they do and who they are and what career field they are in. But the truth is, “financial adviser” and “financial planner” get millions more searches on Google than any of those fancy titles. You need to have words like that in your LinkedIn headline and throughout your profile so that common people who are searching for someone like you can find you. It's really important to use those keywords that your target markets use and stay away from jargon. Who you help and how you help them is what you want to think about for your headline. Since Deborah focuses on two areas to build her business, her headline could say something like “financial adviser practice management training” and then a slash mark to separate that from “college-planning programs for families.” When you give current and past positions, don't be afraid to list more than one role in your current position. LinkedIn allows you to do that, and it is an opportunity, again, to get more descriptive about who you are, what you do and who you help. In Deborah's case, she's got the financial practice focused on helping people and families plan for and fund the cost of college, but she also has a business where she helps financial advisers systematize their practice. Both of these roles should be listed in her current roles. Education is one of four ways that LinkedIn allows you to expand your natural market connections, and I would list all the schools you have attended, including your high school. It is a great way to find people to connect with around a common thread. In addressing your website, use descriptive terms. You can even have a call to action there. What are you linking to? Describe what's there. You would be amazed at how many clicks those links get. In Deborah's case, she has a company website and a blog website. I really don't know where I am going, so I probably won't click there. So she needs to update that. LinkedIn and Twitter are starting to go together like peanut butter and jelly. So essentially, you can kill two birds with one stone. If you share something in one place, you can automatically share it in the other, which is why it helps to keep your profile fresh and updated. My vanity URL ends with my name. LinkedIn allows you to customize this URL, which helps you get found by your name both in search engines and within LinkedIn. Your name actually becomes a keyword. Your best opportunity with social media is with your existing connections. Most of our business as financial professionals comes from referrals and introductions. So you have to leverage the low-hanging fruit here and get your offline network online. On her LinkedIn profile, I believe Deborah listed 93 connections. I guarantee, Deborah, that you have many more relationships than that, plus those people you have come into contact with and those who you know within professional networks. Bringing those contacts online and connecting with them will increase your opportunities for introductions and referrals — and business success. Ultimately, the more connections you have, the more opportunities for introductions and referrals. And you can add connections by importing them through a spreadsheet. LinkedIn will show you who you are connected to or who shared the same history with you with regard to the schools that you attended, classmates, colleagues and people you may know. Spend a lot of time there building your network. Once you build your foundation, it is time to start getting visible. I have seen a lot of people try to get very visible, and you click back to learn more about them and it is incredibly disappointing. They just haven't done a good job and it doesn't look credible, because they haven't put a lot of time and effort into their foundation.

TWEET WITH THE ELITE

InvestmentNews: Now that we've covered LinkedIn, Pat, can you tell us how Deborah can use Twitter to complement some of the things she's doing? Ms. Allen: Deborah mentioned a few things that make Twitter a really good match for her business. The fact that some of her business comes from referrals from advisers around the country makes networking in person hard. Her need to communicate and keep people informed is ongoing. She already has blog posts, e-books and webinars, so there is competency there. Taking part in social networks is really just a natural extension of what she already does, although most of it she does on her own domain. Getting acquainted with Twitter takes some effort. My recommendation is that Deborah and her team really commit to it. Echoing the point that Stephanie made, you have to anticipate how people are going to be looking for you, or looking for somebody who does what you do. I have a couple of comments about Deborah's account. One is, you are using the terms “financial planner” and “financial advisor.” That's great; they're exactly what people look at. And note that the latter does not end with an “er.” If you look for “financial adviser” on Twitter, you are likely to find somebody in the U.K. Here is the common oversight, though. You really have to include the name of your firm. People are going to search for the name of your firm. You can be on Twitter, but without the firm name, people are not going to be able to find you. And I would also recommend, even though I respect that what you do is college funding, the term “college planning” is probably going to get you more hits. So you need to put that somewhere in the bio. You are going to need compliance, Deborah, so you need a compliance-approved Twitter account profile page, and it ought to be branded consistently with the other content that the firm produces. Sure, most of that content is on your domain, but the Twitter page ought to look like it belongs. One of the differences between Twitter and Facebook or LinkedIn is the tools that can be put to use to get the most out of what you are doing. At a high level, Deborah is going to want to be able to tweet from her desktop, her laptop and her smart phone. So she is going to need some apps for that. Deborah, you are going to want to be thoughtful and even careful about who you follow. When you tweet, you are going to have to consider that you are on the West Coast. If you are tweeting too late, you are going to miss the business day on the East Coast. And also, you need to be really thoughtful about how you are going to measure your reach and your effectiveness, so you are going to need to trick out your Twitter with some tools. To get the most out of Twitter, I recommend that you listen, you share, you engage, you measure and then you learn from what you are doing and make some adjustments. What Deborah is going to do is create her own custom community that she is going to listen to and probably share interests with. She is going to build her list of those she follows using at least four categories. All of the searches I am going to describe can take place on Twitter.com as well as on other sites.

THE PAYOFF

For starters, she is going to use the Twitter e-mail match capability. This is a lot like LinkedIn's match capability. She is going to find the clients and others who she cares about in real life. Then she is going to search the Twitter bios and look for accounts that describe themselves as interested in what she cares about — college planning, college funding, whatever. These are the people who are new to her. This is the beginning of Twitter paying off for the time that you are spending on it. Then you are going to search for terms that are being used, conversations that are under way about topics that you care about. Not everybody knows enough to put college planning in their bio, right? So it is hit or miss. And then you are probably going to use Twitter to find people who are tweeting in a specific geographic area, probably your local area. And that is what is so powerful about the advanced search on Twitter. You can actually say, “Show me who is tweeting in this ZIP code.” So as connected as Deborah is in real life, by now I hope you are starting to see how much more plugged in she is going to be by listening to her very own handmade community, not what you see on Twitter.com but her own community, whose members are talking in public, online, on Twitter, in real time. InvestmentNews: How much of this is a compliance problem for advisers who are overseen by broker-dealers? Can they do this? Ms. Allen: Every bit of it is a compliance consideration. But broker-dealers are allowing it now. All of this assumes that there is a check with your broker-dealer and your compliance people. [The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc.] released some guidance last year and some more in the last several weeks. The best tweets are about something that others can use, can react to or at least relate to. Most of the tweets that you send are going to be tweets that are going to be forwarding people's attention to someone else's content. And that is how Twitter works. There is a kind of generosity that it is going to come back to you, but you can't do more talking about yourself than you talk about others. You are really underleveraging Twitter when you use it simply to direct people to information that is somewhere else. Put some information in the tweet. Don't use the tweet as an envelope. Open the envelope, drill down to a news bite of information — iShares tweeted a line the other day to drive people to an investment perspective on the iShares website. Their tweet said: “We now have no preference for developed-market equities over emerging-market equity.” So, you see, they extracted something that communicates even in a tiny tweet and then they included the link, and no doubt it drove people to the full perspective. InvestmentNews: Thanks, Pat. Now let's turn now to Kristin Andree, who is our social-media columnist in print at Investment News. Kristin, tell us a little bit about Facebook and where that could work for Deborah. Ms. Andree: Facebook is quite honestly probably the last of the social-media sites that financial advisers think about adopting. And in researching for this webcast and for the columns and other things I do, I'm seeing that financial advisers have a huge opportunity with Facebook. The reason I say that is because no one is doing a great job with it. When I research “financial advisers” or “financial planners” on Facebook, there is truthfully not a lot of people out there doing a bang-up job — which means there is a huge opportunity. As Pat mentioned with Twitter, though, Facebook does tend to work better for advisers who serve a niche market. That's why one of the very first things I typically recommend people do before tackling social media is to think about who their target market is. When we look at Facebook specifically, there are a couple of things we assess.

BUSINESS VS. PLEASURE

Deborah, you said you started your Facebook profile a few years ago, which is a great start. You mentioned that it was hard to keep your business and your personal communications separate — the question of how you make sure that your clients and prospects are not seeing pictures of your niece's graduation. Here's how to address that. The page containing your profile is your personal page, and you know that because it says “Add Friend.” People are “friending” you instead of giving you a “like.” I recommend that advisers set up a separate business page. This allows you to keep your personal communications personal and allows you to have a separate page for promoting your business. Just look at your page on Facebook and scroll down. On the bottom left, it says “create a business page.” You also can have a feed to your blog, and an events page or video. Any of those pages are available. It doesn't mean that you need to use all of them. The content that you really need first is an info page. What is the basic information about you? What do you do? Who do you do it for? And where are you? Do you have a national practice or do you focus on people in a specific city or area? What is your niche market? You should be really talking to the people coming to view your page. The info page is typically the first place they are going to go other than your custom landing page, which we will talk about in a second.

"MAKE IT PERSONAL'

What do you want them to do? Should they sign up for your newsletter or anything else that builds your following? You can link to a blog. A lot of advisers will post educational videos on there, short videos — one to two minutes — that offer some tips, techniques or information that you want your target market to understand and know. But, above all, you want to make it personal. All of the research now shows that people are buying you. They are picking their advisers based on you as a person and who they think you are. Are you credible? Are you an authority? Do you have a personality? That is what they are looking at. So this gives you an opportunity on Facebook to post some pictures and make it more personal, and then add some other relevant resources. When somebody takes the time to look at your business pages, the last thing you want to do is let them click on something and have it say, “There are no videos available; there are no events to-date.” Make sure that if you have a page listed on the menu, you have content to go along with it. Be consistent with your updates. People are going to research you. They are going to Google you. If they come across a profile page that has not been updated recently, the assumption on their part is that you are not paying attention. And if you are not paying attention to something as small as that, they wonder if you are going to pay attention to their portfolio or answer their questions when they call. You want to make sure you are not too general or broad-based. This is where the niche comes into play. If you are a generalist, you must try to focus it down as much as you can. The more specific and niche your market can be, the better results you will have on Facebook. Finally, don't share irrelevant information, and avoid jargon and anything too technical. Don't make the conversation one-sided. Don't post links that don't work, and make sure that you are updating your profile regularly. InvestmentNews: How much time a day should an adviser spend on social media, whether it be tweeting or updating LinkedIn or Facebook? Let's start with Pat. If advisers tweet, for example, how much time should that take? Ms. Allen: If being social and being visible on the web is a priority for you, then look at what you are doing right now that is less effective and stop doing it. InvestmentNews: In other words, you're saying make this a priority and do more of it. Kristin, what would you say? Ms. Andree: You need to start with what would work for you. You may not need to use all three tools to start with. While they are great, time may be a factor. I think that just having a plan in place overall would be the best thing. InvestmentNews: And Stephanie, what about LinkedIn time? Ms. Sammons: How can you maximize your impact for the least amount of time? Well, when you are posting for LinkedIn, do it during business hours. That is when most people are on LinkedIn. With Facebook, a lot of people are surfing in the evenings and on the weekends, so you have to be strategic about when you engage. InvestmentNews: Deborah, what did you think? Did you get some good ideas, and what were they? Ms. Fox: My “aha!” moment was, “OK, I get this, I could create just a few sentences of something and cross-fertilize.” I was thinking I would have to create content for all three social-media sites, but I don't. I can see where I can use them for multiple sources. That's a big thing. And I had no idea that you could create a business page on Facebook, so that help in separating business from personal was great. I also appreciated finding out that talking about nonadvisory topics is OK. If you have some sort of niche where there is information that you can share that isn't investment-related or advisory-service-related, you can still build relationships. With my blog, I never talk about 529 plans or investments. I talk about everything else and try to build relationships.