RegEd

    A reminder: You can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. There are a lot of opinions and advice tossed around on how to be social, as well as who to be on social. Recently, RegEd's Blane Warrene was giving a speech in Philadelphia and sat with a financial advisor who stated that he had been coached on what persona to use on social. Blane's question to him - how long is that sustainable? Personas, in our view, are how you define customer models when building a sales pipeline, not how to behave online. It can make sense for brands that have defined fictional identities - think Peanuts and Met Life. For you, whether you are a brand or an individual, the business you've built has your signature culture and voice in place. This is what endears you to your clients and influencers and, quite simply, why you get out of bed in the morning to work (as does your staff). By thinking about that culture and voice, you can extend that to your activities and engagement on social media. Quite simply, being yourself adds immense value. A Note: We were thrilled to discover the Social Media Minute was ranked among the top five podcasts for financial advisors by Bill Winterberg at FPPad.com. The credit goes to our listeners who've been generous in tuning in, sharing and supporting our efforts. Thank you!

    Some questions have come in from listeners on various ways to advertise on Facebook. We cover the basics of using Facebook's advertising tools in this session. In general, ads on Facebook break down on three fronts: 1) Promote a Page ad 2) Custom Ads that may link external to Facebook 3) Boost a Post Promoting your Page is quite easy - and Facebook offers a power editor for items 1 and 2 above - where you can target a number of parameters, compete for click rates as well as setting budgets overall (and time frames). These ads offer the most flexibility and provide analytics to track your efforts. Boosting a post enables you to move a post higher in the News Feed to a wider audience. The default is to expose the boosted post to those who Like your Page and their Friends (which can be a wide reach). Your boost budget will then show you how far you can reach into that wider network of Facebook users. We've seen boosting an effective way to get our webinar events a wider reach, increasing the number of attendees registering. Some helpful Facebook guidance on this front: Facebook Ads Facebook Boost Post Our most recent webinar on Facebook from November 2013

    When helping our customers build their social media presence, the question we receive most often is, "who can I follow to see how other folks in the industry are using social media successfully?" Everyday you'll see lists of financial services thought leaders in the press, as well as the 'Follow Friday' hashtag being used on Twitter (#FF). We try to share our recommendations on who is sharing great content online via our Twitter lists. See our RegEd Arkovi account and stroll through the public lists. There are also some great lists to subscribe to - for example Pat Allen (@rocktheboatmktg) maintains lists of asset managers and broker dealers on Twitter. See the show notes below for more Twitter resources. Show Notes: See our episode on building Twitter lists @regedarkovi lists  @rocktheboatmktg lists Michael Kitces: 15 Powerful Tweeters Everyone Should Adviser Should Know The Best Tweets for Your Money The Top Financial Tweeters to Follow 

    The dramatic shift to social communications also means much of what we reference in articles, blogs, presentations and other mediums originates on social media platforms. The habits we had in the analog world of citing material from print and other traditional formats should transition with us into the digital front of content creation and publishing. In this episode, we discuss some tools and resources online, good habits such as gathering source material using a tool like Evernote - which makes it much easier to properly make a citation later - and habits for thinking about bibliographic notes in mediums like public presentations or online video where typical reference notes are not as easy as in an article. Show Notes www.tweet2cite.com - input a Twitter URL to a tweet and get back MLA, APA and Wikipedia citations ready to use. Excellent example of a style guide offering guidance on social media citations - The American Psychological Association Style Guide: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/social-media/

    In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Marion Underwood, child clinical psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Underwood started a longitudinal study 10 years ago with several hundred nine-year olds that in 2012 expanded to include their use of Facebook as they left high school for college and careers. This is at the central intersection of society, culture, technology and the evolution of adolescence. Dr. Underwood's study will ultimately inform not only experts like herself, but parents, school counselors and educators - and candidly - all of us who are living and working at the convergence of technology and daily life. Some anticipated results are shared in this discussion - along with what will be some surprising validators for many listeners. Moreover, from our perspective, many of the broad themes she visits apply to our business endeavors with social media: - Do we prohibit or enable modern technology and social platforms in our business - Do we teach & lead while we monitor the use of social media - Do we take the time to learn from the data to improve ourselves and our constituents use of social platforms...and many more. You can visit Dr. Underwood's page at the University of Texas at Dallas web site here.

    Chuck Hammond, co-founder of the 401k Study Group, joins us to discuss his mission in helping advisors and informing clients on best practices for retirement plans. Notably, he also outlines the process they used from day one, with eight interested participants to now hundreds of advisors engagement. Social media has played an important role in conjunction with good, old-fashioned phone work to communicate the story and expand the group's reach. Tune in to hear more! Show Notes: 401k Study Group website LinkedIn Group 401k Study Group Podcast

    We're joined by Bill Winterberg (@billwinterberg on Twitter) of the FPPad, as well as resident practice management columnist at Morningstar Advisor magazine. An effective way to learn often involved hearing how someone else tackled the challenges of building a business, using modern marketing tools or even just found more productive ways to work. Bill exemplifies this in his business by not only using productivity tools to operate his business, but also sharing the process and allowing the rest of us to get the recipe. Bill shares how he launched FPPad and also provides some insight into what drove him to evolve to more interactive formats for his weekly Bits & Bytes column. Don't miss some great tips here. And of course, the episode title came from one of Blane's long-winded questions...hear Bill bust his chops for it! Show Notes: FPPad  Bill's Morningstar columns Also, to subscribe to our podcast on your Android or iOS devices , see here: Stitcher (Android) iTunes  

    The JOBS Act does more than seek to free up capital in an ongoing tight credit market for small business. It also means new marketing capabilities for hedge funds - and more to the point - opportunities for financial advisors and wealth managers to focus energy on helping clients navigate the new (and possibly complex) investment strategies they may see or hear of. April Rudin spends her time focused in the high net worth space, working with both hedge funds and financial advisors. She amplifies (or perhaps informs) that work in her columns for the Huffington Post, Wealth Management and others. See our show notes below to see her coverage. We dive into the effects of the JOBS Act, discuss marketing opportunities,as well as how to navigate this likely new stream of content to hit the market by year end. As always, we also take the time to chat on personal versus professional and social media. We found April's answer one of a parent's wisdom. Don't miss it. Show Notes: April is @therudingroup on Twitter Huffington Post WealthManagement.com

    One of our favorite things to do is host discussions with folks in the thick of being digital in their business - from individual financial advisors to folks who serve the financial advisor community. Today we had a chance to catch up with the latter. Ahyoung An, Manager of Marketing and Community Development at BrightTALK, took some time to fill us in on what is happening of interest to our industry. My own favorite function of BrightTALK is the ability to subscribe to a channel - in my case - Thought Leadership for Financial Advisors. While I do speak on webcasts they host , I also discover many other speakers I may not otherwise know of on that channel. Learn more about BrightTALK (like the 2 minute videos and iPad support) and also hear our chat on the convergence of professional and personal on social media. Ahyoung also sent us over a free, ungated report that offers a glimpse into the statistics of the BrightTALK platform. Show Notes: Thought Leadership for Financial Advisors Some of our recent BrightTALK webcasts: It's More Than 140 Characters - with Pat Allen, Kristen Luke and Leslie Marshall Guest Blogging with Stephanie Sammons

    In a continuing theme of our coverage on social media, we don't neglect to ensure you are aware of best practices in security and privacy. Twitter updated its security settings for 2-factor authentication on August 6, 2013 that makes it even better. 1.  You can use cell phone (for SMS) or a code generated in the app. This is great for when you have WiFi but no phone service. Excellent for international use. 2.  You can span added security across all accounts you manage. 3.  Have a backup code for when you really don't have your phone with you. and much more! By the way - let us know what topics you hope we'll cover. We look forward to firing up our research engines to help make social media more effective for you. Show Notes: The Twitter blog post  Our YouTube Playlist on Privacy and Security Some recent podcast episodes on privacy and security: Don't Miss a Health Check on Privacy  Can You Hack Proof Yourself?      

    Graph search is a brand new expansion of Facebook's search capabilities. We discussed this last week as it pertains to personal profiles on the platform, but we've also had inquiries as to how it will work for business and brands using Pages. The toolset for Pages is quite rudimentary as far as design. Facebook is focused on rolling graph search out across its billion users worldwide -and then will push it to mobile by the end of this year. We imagine behind the scenes big advertisers and brands are discussing and making suggestions to Facebook on what could be valuable for graph search in the future. Likewise, there are plenty of bright folks in the marketing space looking at this as well. In the meantime, you can do some insightful searches - for example in the graph search bar in Facebook (top search bar to the right of the Facebook logo in desktop web browser) - you can type "people who like [insert page name] and [insert topic, keyword or other business name]". Forbes also outlined 7 potentially valuable searches for Pages.

    Blogging has become a must for many financial advisors. It's an effective way to build business, connect with customers and prospects, and demonstrate thought leadership. No one knows this better than Susan Weiner of Investment Writing. Susan focuses on helping financial professionals increase the impact of their writing on clients and prospects. In this episode of the Social Media Minute, we had the opportunity to sit down with Susan to discuss her new book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, as well as how she developed the successful social media presence she has today.

    The hashtag has come a long way! It emerged as a way to organize tweets on Twitter from disparate sources into one view as they are clickable due to the use of the # sign - i.e. #regegqanda (we use this for our webinars so folks can ask questions on social before, during and after). Now the hashtag has expanded beyond Twitter to include support on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest. This provides an opportunity to sit back and think a bit more strategically about how this simple tool can help you. 1.  You can organize your content thematically across social platforms. This offers consistency to how folks can you find on one platform and potentially discover you on another (perhaps someone connected to you on Twitter, then by nature of using consistent hashtags, they also find you on Google+). 2.  You should study the topical area or industry sector you focus on and assess the use of hashtags. Are there opportunities to connect with new peers via these hashtags, find conversations you can contribute to? 3.  Can you leverage an existing, well-used hashtag and contribute content to it meaningfully without spamming? 4.  Measure those hashtags, both ones you create and those you participate in and ensure you see how they are used and what engagement you are seeing. Show Notes Not Just for Twitter Anymore - The 3 Best Practices for Using #Hashtags on Social Media Unlocking the Power Behind Twitter's Secret Weapons: Hashtags Our podcast (episode 6!) on hashtags 

    Facebook has once again enhanced its search engine with it's most recent upgrade, Graph Search. This introduces many intriguing features for those with personal profiles, and as always, also prompts some thoughts about privacy. In our view, Facebook handled this upgrade effectively by deploying an information page (see the show notes) that defines Graph Search, includes a behind the scenes discussion on how the mechanics of the search tool works, and perhaps most importantly, included a reminder about user privacy settings. Central to this podcast discussion is how you choose to use your Facebook personal profile. We advise folks on this particular social platform to use Facebook Pages for business and keep their traditional profile personal. This means to truly manage your privacy settings, you need to consider how you curate your Facebook personal profile. Key Benefit of Graph Search: Discovery - finding who else in your network or geographic region shares a similar interest (For example, you can now search for friends who live close by and also happen to share your love of Starbucks.) Facebook's focus is to create a stronger social experience by matching your friends to common likes between you both. Key Tools to Consider: 1.  Audience Selector: you can control on a post by post basis what folks see. 2. Managing future and past posts via Privacy Settings: decide who can see your posts (Friends, Friends of friends, etc). This does not mean that any past public posts are not still cached somewhere else even once past posts are re-configured. 3.  Control who can look you up by your phone and email address. 4. Review your Activity Log to confirm what is visible and manage accordingly.   Show Notes: RegEd screencast on configuring the Privacy Settings on your Facebook personal profile  Facebook's Graph Search information page

    A hat tip to Leo Laporte and Twit.tv - definitely tune in to the first 15 minutes of episode 414 of This Week in Tech. Prepare for an eye opening discussion on what appears to be deceptive practices from a trusted web destination. Our focus is to encourage you to keep honing your own good habits online:   1) Use a password manager like Last Pass, 1Password or RoboForm 2) Don't use the same password at multiple sites 3) Remember the good old habits we learned years back on email attachments - don't assume anything is safe when it is sent to you by a third party (attachments and links). Also, when someone sends you a direct message that says "you won't believe what they are saying about you online", DON"T CLICK ON IT. Just call the person who sent it and ask them if they know they sent it to you! Show Notes: TWiT 414 Privacy Tools mentioned by TWiT noted in this episode Ghostery Screencasts on Settings Privacy and Security on Social Platforms The Security Arms Race - from American Banker