Social Media Guide,
Morals, Spice & Survey

Plan · Practice · Profit | June 2011

Welcome to the June 2011 edition of our Plan · Practice · Profit E-Newsletter!

This edition includes:

WebVisor: The Financial Advisors Guide To The Internet
Social Media Survey
Does Your Social Media Consultant Have Morals?
The Opportunity Cost Of Not Having Social Media
A Unique Way To Spice Up Your LinkedIn Current Profile

It’s a Buffer Day on Tuesday, June 7^th as I write this e-newsletter and I’ve just reviewed our One Page Business Plan, Budget Cash Flow and Sales Activity Calculator Documents to make sure we are on track to achieve our projected ending bank balance for August 31^st. While considering this, I’ve two financial advisor speaking presentations to complete June 15^th in Calgary & June 16^th in Saskatoon until late August.

I’m looking forward to the summer on Vancouver Island for some Staycation breaks at the end of July and August and some Buffer Days to improve the back end of our business.With a longer term holiday view in mind, we have just confirmed our booking of a 50′ Catamaran with Voyage Charters for a sailing holiday with our best friends; Chris & Annie, Dave & Cheryl and Dave & Pam in the British Virgin Islands starting January 28^th, 2012 and Laura and are very excited.

An added bonus is that Chris has been working with Laura and I as our business coach since 2004 and we have built a strong personal and business friendship over the years and we will be able to trade stories like we did on one afternoon in the BVIs on the beach of Jost Van Dyke Island in 2010.

“In November 2010, NAIFA-Iowa launched a new program to bring MDRT quality speakers to four locations in our state. Simon Reilly of Leading Advisor was one of our speakers. Simon was a joy to work with, and our attendees gave his presentation very high marks. In response to our survey, 95 percent reported taking at least one thing away from the event that they could put to work in their practice immediately and 97 percent felt the program was worth their time away from the office. I personally got so much from his talk that I’ve retained him as my business coach. We’ve been working together for just over four months now, and I’ve already seen a vast improvement in my management company’s productivity and our bottom line.”

Michele Grassley Clarke

Executive Director

NAIFA-Iowa

Cedar Falls, IA

The summer months will include improving the back end of our business in advance of speaking in the capital cities of Canada and the USA at Advocis Ottawa and the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors Annual Convention during the week of September 12^th through September 16^th.If I could only kick it up one more notch and book a financial advisor speaking presentation in London, England the same week… I’d be like Phil Collins doing UK & USA dates via the Concord for LiveAid. 🙂

I’ll share more about what we are doing to improve the back end of our business in a future e-newsletter.

One of the things that we will be doing is deepening our understanding of Social Media so that we get Leading Advisor’s message out to more financial and investment advisors.

WebVisor: The Financial Advisors Guide To The Internet

To this end, I’m going to invest some time in re-reading WebVisor: The Financial Advisors Guide To The Internet to again deepen our understanding of Social Media and improve our Social Media Plan.You can purchase their book on their WebVisor website.

Social Media Survey

I recently did an ad hoc social media survey of financial advisors that provided us with financial advisor speaking testimonials from the last two events that I spoke at, and here is what we found:

80% of advisors had a website
25% of advisors worked with an assistant
49% of advisors were on LinkedIn
9% of advisors were on Twitter
7% of advisors were on FaceBook

While most advisors have websites, this confirmed an assumption that I have had for a while that most advisors are engaging Social Media 2.0 via LinkedIn versus FaceBook or Twitter for either the reasons of compliance or time.

So my focus is shifting to working on our business versus in our business creating e-newsletter content so my creative time is limited for the June – August and I will leave you with: 5 minutes before show time at the Toronto Independent Financial Brokers Summit on May 18th, 2011.

Does Your Social Media Consultant Have Morals?

“One of the pioneers of internet commerce wrestles with his morals and a struggle to drown in a sea of conmen, mobsters, drug addicts and porn stars” is the overview of the In Flight movie called Middle Men that caught my eye on my Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Toronto on Sunday, March 27th.

The Middle Men overview reminded me of a Social Media con man that had seduced one of my clients with promises of top SEO rankings in their product niche in their region.While my client was telling me about this new SEO messiah that they had hired, I Googled the key words for my client’s product in their region and they were already number one.

I asked my client why they were investing with this person.

My client explained to me that Google was installing new search engine algorithms and that if you didn’t have the right key words, your web site would be pushed down to the bottom of Google never to be seen again.

This is true.

True for sites that are just a repeated cut and paste of the same key words that are related to a sea of conmen, mobsters, drug addicts and porn stars.

BTW – I didn’t watch the movie.

“I’ve always known you have to be accountable to yourself. It’s nice to have plans but if you don’t have action, if you don’t lay it out, it’s not going to happen. It’s all about focus, focus, focus. The One Page Business Plan is excellent way to create focus and the system allows for benchmarks, dates and times for added accountability.

I know that in 12 months when I sit down and look at this stuff, if I measure it against the other things that I’m doing, revenue, expenses and all that other stuff, you can’t help but get closer to your targets if you just keep focusing.

The second thing that I found really helpful was the larger experience that you have where you quickly identified how to handle a press kit even though I kind of know that stuff, I’ve haven’t done it, you gave me some business ideas that I wouldn’t necessarily think about. The idea of branding myself as a Financial Interpreter^(TM) is an excellent way for me to describe what I do.“

Rod Tyler

Tyler & Associates

Regina, SK

The Opportunity Cost Of Not Having Social Media

Not all Canadians want to interact with financial industry firms through social media, but it’s still important for firms to have a presence on the increasingly prominent platforms, experts said on Tuesday.

At a financial industry conference hosted by Google in Toronto, speakers presented research conducted by Forrester Research, Inc. on Canadians’ social media habits and preferences. The research showed that 66% of Canadians aren’t particularly interested in corresponding with financial institutions through social media.

However, other Canadians are very open to this type of interaction. Thirteen per cent of individuals said they’d be interested in being alerted of offers from financial institutions through social media; 11% said they’d like to receive customer service through social media; 9% said they seek out customer reviews through this channel; and 9% said they’d be willing to provide their own recommendations via social media.

Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY) has found that a growing number of customers are embracing the platform.

“We’re seeing the trends of consumers wanting to interact with us in the social space,” said Tracy Hackett, vice president of marketing at RBC.

Hackett said it’s important for financial institutions to embrace this opportunity to engage with customers. Other speakers at the conference agreed that the space is too big to ignore.

About half of all Canadians are members of Facebook, and almost half a million are on Twitter every day, noted Dave Resnick, head of financial services at Google Canada.

“They’re some pretty compelling stats,” he said.

But firms must not approach social media as a traditional marketing platform, speakers warned. Social media is unique, since the firm cannot control the conversation.

“You’ve got to be ready to listen and respond,” Hackett said.

Rather than discussing products on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Hackett finds that customers typically want to discuss customer service, or recent experiences that they’ve had with the bank.

“They’re very discriminating,” she said. “Consumers are going to speak to you about the things that they want, whether it’s what you want to talk about or not.”

Mark Atkinson, director of online marketing and sales at RBC, said he expects social media to become an increasingly important marketing tool for financial services industry. Some firms have been reluctant to embrace it so far, since the strategy’s return-on-investment is not yet clear.

“Over time, will there be a business case for it? Yes. Short term, is it there? Probably not convinced from a pure ROI perspective,” Atkinson said.

Paul Regan, director of media innovation and strategy at the Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS), agreed that it’s challenging to measure the ROI of a social media strategy. But he said firms should consider the opportunity cost of not having a social media presence.

“People are having conversations about your brand whether you’re there or not, and you can potentially positively influence that relationship, or not be there at all,” he said.

Note this article is a cut and paste from …

Social media too big for banks to ignore – Customers typically want to discuss customer service not products, Tuesday, May 31, 2011 – The Investment Executive By Megan Harman

A Unique Way to Spice Up Your LinkedIn Current Profile

Is your LinkedIn Current Profile stagnant with the same information (other than the updates you share everyday)?

Spice it up with the various items that add to your professional experience.

As an example, you could add in new CE courses that you have attended or the new designations that you have completed on.

During a meeting I had with my VA last week; she commented on how my use of my LinkedIn Current Profileis unique.

For more, please scroll down …

Your followers will benefit as they will receive an update about your Profile.

I use my Current Profile section as a place to highlight my financial advisor speaking events.

Note that if you add in the kind of updates that I am talking about, make sure you uncheck the “update my headline to” box because your LinkedIn Professional Headlines will change from your main tag line to read like this example “Speaker in April 2011 at Advocis Winnipeg” while you might want it to read something like; Financial Advisor / Investment Advisor Coach, Speaker, Trainer and Writer. You can see where we have made this error right after my name in the above example where we have changed it back in the example at the very bottom of this blog.

When I’ve completed my financial advisor speaking event, then I uncheck the “I currently work here” box and fill in the completed / end speaking date and the financial advisor speaking event is moved to the Past section on my Profile.

Speaking is a large part of what I do, and with each financial advisor speaking engagement I do it adds to my current professional experience.

Again, my LinkedIn Professional Headlines reads; Financial Advisor / Investment Advisor Coach, Speaker, Trainer and Writer.

With coaching, speaking, training and writing in mind, we have taken our LinkedIn Profile Current update strategy one step further by adding in; “Made the Top 5 and the #2 Spot at Advisor.ca Name That Visionary Contest” which is now incorporating writing into our Current section of our LinkedIn Profile.