Sponsored by: Northern Trust Investments
Panelists: Brent Hunsberger, Gail Marks Jarvis, Robert Powell, Roger Wohlner
Moderator: Pat Allen
September 15, 2010
Hello, this is Bob Huebscher, publisher of Advisor Perspectives. Welcome to today's webinar, Engage the Media Using Social Media. Some financial advisors are finding that their participation in social media is helping attract the attention of journalists. Media coverage can raise a firm or an advisor's profile, leading to new opportunities and even new business.
Our panel today includes three journalists and a social media-savvy advisor. We are pleased to welcome Robert Powell, MarketWatch.com retirement blogger and editor of Retirement Weekly Newsletter; Gail Marks-Jarvis, a syndicated personal finance columnist for The Chicago Tribune; Brent Hunsberger, a personal finance columnist at The Oregonian representing a regional publication. Our advisor is financial planner Roger Wohlner of Asset Strategy Consultants. And the panel will be moderated by Pat Allen of AdvisorTweets.com and Rock the Boat Marketing.
The webinar will run about 60 minutes, with a final 15 minutes devoted to your questions. Today's webinar is sponsored by Northern Trust Investments, whose participation in social media includes its Fixedology Twitter account.
So I am happy to introduce Pat Allen, a social media and digital consultant. Pat runs Advisortweets.com and Rock the Boat Marketing a consulting boutique. Pat will moderate today's discussion. Pat, I turn it over to you.
[Pat] Thank you Bob. You know, we are seeing a growing number of individual advisors marketing themselves and their firms online today with what they have to say and how they are saying it. The advisors’ interest is in building a personal brand. Many advisors are doing it by marketing their views as opposed to marketing a list of products and services. It is called content marketing.
The media business of course is going through its own disruption, but what isn’t changing is journalists’ interest in identifying interesting subjects from credible sources. Today's discussion is about the intersection of advisor's interests and the media's interest.
Previously, when financial media wanted to talk to a financial advisor, a call or an e-mail might have gone to a wire-house or to a professional association. Today's financial reporters are open to meeting individual advisors online. But they are journalists, remember, and to many, using social media to engage the media sounds like an updated version of "How do I get in the paper?" You can expect financial journalists working today to have their doubts, or even have some biases, about what heightened interaction with advisors can do to serve their interests.
We think the next sixty minutes will be special, as advisors raise their online profiles and reach out with content they are hoping will be noticed. There is no play book yet on how to meet the media. We thank our panel for taking the time to peel back the veil a little and to explain how this “dance,” if you will, works.
First we will hear from Roger Wohlner, a CFP® who has developed some social media best practices. After Roger each of our panelists will take a turn describing their perspective and what they are looking for in topics and sources. Then, what is expected when a journalist expresses interest and makes contact with you? We have carved out time to be sure to discuss the best practices there. Finally, we have blocked plenty of time for your questions. It promises to be a fast 60 minutes.
Now let's meet Roger. Roger Wohlner is a CFP® based in Illinois. Roger, by any definition, would have to be considered social media-savvy. If you search Roger’s name in Google, you will find that he has created profiles on multiple social sites. That is a best practice. He is a regular blogger on his own site, and he uses his Twitter account, @rwohlner, which you will see on the slide to promote his search engine-optimized blog post. He uses his Twitter account to refer his followers to his and others’ posts, as well as to generally comment on his favorite personal finance topics.
Roger, how much media attention has all this activity attracted? And what impact do you think it has had on your business?
[Roger] Thank you, Pat. The media attention has been interesting. I think one of the first media contacts I had is one of our panelists, Bob Powell from Market Watch. I recall early on and I think even before I was on Twitter, I had made a comment in a LinkedIn discussion group, and I saw it quoted in one of Bob’s articles on Market Watch. Then last year a few times I received a couple e-mails from Bob asking me to comment on a couple of articles, and he was kind enough to include those quotes in a couple of his articles.
Another one that came directly via social media was a couple of articles that a reporter did on Forbes.com late last year, including one that was essentially an interview about financial organizations that I still use to this day as a promotional piece. That was interesting because that arose from a referral from somebody I had met online – a group called Bright Scope that benchmarks 401(k) plans. Someone from Bright Scope been talking to this particular reporter and put us together, and we ended up speaking. She quoted me in several articles in Forbes.
Recently I received an e-mail contact from a woman at Thomson Reuters with a couple questions about target date funds. I think that arose because of a couple blog posts and some comments I had made on social media about target date funds. Investopedia comes to mind, and a couple of others. I don't know exactly how these folks found my name, but in a couple of cases I received either calls or e-mails saying they wanted to talk to me about this subject or that.
So I think in terms of engaging the media, certainly the things that I have done online have helped. And certainly it has also led to a few prospective clients contacting me because they had seen something, whether it was on Twitter, or a blog post, or perhaps in the media that I had written or been quoted in. So I think, all in all, all of this has really helped raise my profile.
[Pat] If you had to select one thing you do, which do you think has been the most effective?
[Roger] Probably the combination of blogging then promoting the blog on Twitter. Actually, we have a group of us. We called ourselves the “blog pack,” and we try to promote each other's blog. There are about six of us, and we do a once-a-month conference call. So I think probably the combination of those two has done the most in terms of visibility.
[Pat] That’s great. So let's take a look at how, once you get quoted in the media, you actually leverage your media opportunity. On this slide we are looking at, you appeared in a Wall Street Journal article on ETFs. And then later that day I noticed that you posted something in an exchange traded funds LinkedIn group about that. If that is a social media best practice, what were you achieving there?
[Roger] Since a good part of my business involves 401(k) plans, I really was looking for some discussion and some answers as to why I should be considering using ETF's in 401(k) plans. As you can see from my quote there, I have not seen anything to convince me that this is a better solution than using indexed mutual funds. So with this particular post what I was actually trying to do was to elicit some feedback. And I got plenty, both in the discussion group and in some direct e-mails, which was helpful. I also had some people with some different opinions, which was fine too. So that was really what the intent was with that.
[Pat] That was really interesting to us, because here you used your blog post to comment about ETFs. You tweeted about the availability of your blog post. Somehow you got the attention of a Wall Street Journal reporter, then you flipped it into yet more interest in the LinkedIn group. And we know some reporters do participate in LinkedIn groups as a way of knowing who the subject-matter experts are. So well done!
[Roger] Actually this particular Wall Street [Journal] quote was interesting, because the reporter Ari Weinberg has always worked for the Wall Street Journal, but he used to work for a now defunct online community called FiLife. And Ari and I corresponded a few times. We had actually talked a good two to three months before this ever appeared in the Wall Street Journal about it and we had this interview. I didn't even know my quote was in there until the other person quoted in the article, Ari Rosenbaum, an ERISA attorney out of New York, put it up on Twitter. So I think I actually was in here because this particular reporter found me, because of an online presence.
[Pat] Right. Having considered everything you have done in the last year or two – I think that's what you said previously, you have really only been active in social media for two years. Well, two years, that is a long time in social media. But what have you learned about marketing?
[Roger] I have learned that there is probably more about marketing that I don't know than what I do know. But I have learned that you really need to try and focus. I think you need to do what I am trying to do now, and that is take it to the next step. All these online contacts are great, and it builds your visibility, but you do need to get out and try to meet some of these people. And I have more specifically tried to do that via my LinkedIn contacts. I'm really making an effort to either meet many of these people if they are here in Chicago in person, or at least talk to them live by phone, because I think that is really the way to take the relationships to the next step. But I think social media has been a great door-opener in a lot of cases, and certainly it has built awareness of me much more than anything I had done before.
[Pat] One more question for you, Roger. That’s a social media best practice as well, once you have met someone online to take it offline and to actually turn it into a real contact. As they used to say at Edward Jones: Do you make an effort to meet the media?
[Roger] No, not really. Because I don't think it's really – I think our panelists can talk to you more about that. I mean, certainly by phone, yes. If they are receptive to it, but I don't think most of our panelists are looking to meet their sources face-to-face. I could be wrong, but I have never really tried to engage the media in that way. If the initial contact is by e-mail, oftentimes if they are going to use you, I have found at least in my case that there will be a phone conversation. So I guess meeting them that way yes, but as far as maybe in person, probably not.
[Pat] Thanks Roger. And we will be hearing from Roger later as he joins us as we talk to the media. But now it is time for our other panelists. We’ve got Brent Hunsberger, Gail Marks-Jarvis – and Gail has found a quiet room at the Morning Star ETF investor conference. She is joining us from there – and Bob Powell.
As you listen to their perspectives, it will be obvious to you that, just as advisors are experimenting and learning, so are the media. Practices are definitely evolving. Brent Hunsberger is first up for us. He is first of all a finance columnist at The Oregonian. And on Twitter he tweets under @OnlyMoney. Welcome Brent. Thanks for joining us.
[Brent] Thank you.
[Pat] We are all set for you. Can we start with how exactly you research personal finance topics?
[Brent] Sure. Well usually when I start off on a column idea – let’s say Monday or Tuesday, because my columns appear usually on Sunday – I'll start off using Google, just to research the topic. I’m looking mostly, to start, for what kind of research has been done by academics or institutions on the topic, and also what else has been written in the past. So that I might look at somewhat of a fresher angle, or a more current angle, and so I will see who else has been quoted and who is considered a go-to expert on the topic. I also look through logs using Google reader, which is basically an RSS feed that allows me to compile blog posts and categorize them, and I follow multiple blogs and also see what has been written recently. So that's kind of how it starts.
I consider myself writing more for a regional audience here in Oregon, so I am unlike maybe Gail, who is syndicated nationally. I am going to start by looking for help locally among advisors and planners. I find that, generally speaking, they can help quite well and are well schooled on the topics. Generally speaking, I will look for people who specialize in or have a passion for whatever I am writing about. So I am not just casting an entirely broad net, but I am also looking to meet new planners and advisors, so that I am not quoting the same people over and over again.
So I do that by searching for their websites primarily. I e-mail them based on that, but I also will cold-call and will look to meet new people out at events as well, FPA meetings or what have you. So even though this is the age of social media, so to speak, and I use these tools, there is still nothing better than talking by phone and meeting people for coffee or face-to-face at functions. That is still the basic way, I think. Basically the old way of reporting still rules for me.
[Pat] So you are on Twitter quite a bit. Do you meet financial advisors that way, or do their tweets direct you to their content?
[Brent] Yeah, they can. I find Twitter to be a great source of news, actually, news or new research. Information travels faster there than a traditional Associated Press newswire for instance. So I have clicked through to advisors’ websites that way, or to studies that I find are helpful. So I would say I check Twitter just about every day.
[Pat] Did you explicitly say that you have got some advisor blog feeds in your Google reader?
[Brent] There are some. A lot of advisors have, as I can tell, stayed away from that, maybe have some compliance concerns. But I do have some, yeah.
[Pat] I'm sorry, you said you stay away from it?
[Brent] No, I think some advisors have stayed away from blogging, but I do follow some advisor blogs, yes.
[Pat] Okay. But in your research for work, sometimes your research takes you to advisors’ websites or advisors’ blogs?
[Brent] Right.
[Pat] Well thank you, Brent. We will check back with you later. And of course Brent is going to be part of the conversation as we go on. Next up we would like to welcome Gail MarksJarvis. She is a syndicated personal finance columnist for the Chicago Tribune. And Gail tweets under @GailMarksJarvis.
Welcome Gail, and let's start with the same question for you. How are you researching personal finance topics, again with the eye of to what extent do they take you to financial advisor content?
[Gail] Thank you, Pat. It is nice to be here. I have a very eclectic approach. First of all, what I am trying to do for my readers is, I'm trying to understand the markets. And the markets, means everything from the stock market, to the bond market, to currencies, to markets around the world, to commodities. It is broad. It is huge.
And I am trying to bring that down – after I understand it – I’m trying to bring it down to the individual level. And I’m trying to tell individuals how to apply that, so what they might do in terms of investing strategies, or how the economy might affect their jobs.
And then I try to get into personal finance strategies. So I do basically two different types of columns that run nationally. One is basically more markets-oriented, macro, big picture. The other one is very micro; it is, “What do you do?”
For example, one column that I did recently was “You Hate the CDs you See in the Bank, Maybe you can Negotiate for a Better Rate.” And the idea for that actually came from a party, when I was surrounded by senior citizens who had millions of dollars, and they were frustrated because they weren't getting good rates on their CDs. And an individual in the room explained that she was negotiating. And a couple of other people piped in and said that they were too.
Now, if an advisor had come to me and had given me that same tip that people were negotiating for better rates on CDs, I would have listened to that advisor, and that might have been the beginning of the column.
But, with that said, regularly what I am doing is I get about 500 e-mails a day. They are from top strategists all over the country, from people that work for banking institutions and hedge funds and from money managers, all giving me their typical thoughts of the day. I'm getting analysts from the IMF and the European Union, and I am getting people from other parts of the world.
And I am getting on the phone and calling money managers and hedge fund managers that I have known for years and respect because they have original thinking. So they are looking at the news of the day and they are tweaking it. They are not just repeating back what they read in the Wall Street Journal, or saw on CNBC, but they are calling me back and they are saying I saw this, and, with that thought, I am taking it to this level. They are tying things together. They are creative thinkers. And out of that I am seeing the world anew, and I am bringing that thinking to my readers.
[Pat] So are you saying that the challenge for financial advisors is to help you tell a story, or to provide you with some original ideas? And what is available, or what can the advisors tell you? I mean the trope is sort of Main Street versus Wall Street. Is that what you are looking for from advisors?
[Gail] Mohammed Al-Arian is giving me the thought about “the new normal.” And he is the originator of that thinking. And he is explaining that in-depth. So I don't need a financial advisor to come to me and say you know, I think that we are going to be in the new normal for a long period of time. And you usually see that in newsletters of financial advisors. They are repeating what they read from someone else.
What I am looking for are strategies: Okay, if we are in the new normal, how do we bring that down to people's portfolios? How do we bring that down to actionable types of things for people's finances, whether it is handling debt, or sending their kids to college, or getting financial aid, or getting better rates on CDs, or picking a certain ETF and avoiding another ETF? I am looking for advisors to tell me how they are applying things to their clients’ portfolios. And with that, that can be a column that provides people with a solution.
[Pat] How does an advisor get your attention Gail?
[Gail] Many different ways, and I know this is about social media. And I do use Twitter, and I have tried to figure out Facebook – haven't quite figured it out. I'm on LinkedIn mostly because people invite me to be linked in to them. But I think the advisors who have been able to get my attention over the years have primarily come to me in different ways. One is I am out in the community a lot. I am at an ETF conference right now. I will be meeting advisors here. I know that they are plugged in. I know that they are curious. And I know that they are looking for solutions. That is why they are here. So I am interested in them. So I’m meeting people, and I am picking up cards. And they may follow up with me, but I might actually follow up with them to see their thinking in the future.
But a lot of people I have picked up over the years are people that have sent me e-mails when I have written a column. And sometimes they have disagreed with me, but they have done it in a nice way. And they haven't just disagreed, but they have told me something new, and it's not just a gross generalization. It's something that goes beyond the obvious.
So, for example, a lot of times if I call a financial advisor about a problem I want answered for people in their investment portfolios, they will give me pat answers like, diversification is important, asset allocation is important. I don't need that kind of information. Those are the basics. And my other journalistic peers that are on this conference call are probably feeling the same way. We have the basics down. What we need to do is know how to go beyond the basics when there is a certain situation.
[Pat] And previously – and I don't think you were pandering because you are such an enthusiast for Twitter – previously you said that you are still interested enough in Twitter that you look at your followers. So that is one way of getting your attention if a financial advisor was to follow you. And you also mentioned those who post on your blog – obviously you read your comments on your blog.
[Gail] Everyone who is following me on Twitter, I look them up. I try to do a quick background check to see if there is someone that I might want to be in touch with in the future. One of the reasons why I don't use social media as much as some people is that I have so much information coming at me, and I have so much good information that I want to get through it. So every night I bring home about three hours of reading that I do before I go to sleep at night, reports, thoughts from white papers, all that kind of thing.
When I try to use social media, so if I just try to look up things on Twitter or just do web searches and whatnot, I will find so much noise. And it just takes too long to get through it. It might be someone credible, or it might not.
For example, I have a friend who is a money manager, who I talk to a couple of times a week. He and I met 10 years ago, when I wrote a column on shorting, and he thought it was interesting and called me about it. And he recently e-mailed me something that he found on a blog that he thought was interesting. I read it, and it was interesting. And then I started to do some research to find out if the blogger was worth knowing or not, or what their background was, or if they were credible.
And one of the reasons I worry about credibility is I know that if I quote someone in my column, I will give them instant credibility, because my readers will think that I screened them. And the last thing that I want to do is give a future Madoff any attention.
So this individual, this money manager sent me this blog post, and it was interesting. I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out who this person was doing the blog. And then my phone rang, and I got busy with my next column, and I just set it aside. It was just taking too long to figure out if this person was credible or not. And one thing I do with advisors who I do use in my column, I require that they send me their ADV forms 1 and 2, just to do a quick background check.
[Pat] Great, thank you Gail. The broader the audience, the higher the hurdle I guess is your point. And what is so interesting and in the spirit of this webinar is that advisors are really expanding the reach of their voice. And obviously the media is going to have more and more input for them to have to filter. And one of the things that I know Christian Luke and some of the other marketing experts are helping financial advisors with is personal branding. Implied in that personal branding is, what do you stand for? Make sure that it is obvious, so when someone like Gail Marks-Jarvis is doing some due diligence on your site, you want to make sure that your value proposition is crystal clear.
[Gail] One of the things I would mention is, I do have a blog at the Chicago Tribune. It is called ChicagoTribune.com/money. And I know that the other people on here have also the ability to take comments from advisors or anyone else from the public on their blogs. And that is just sitting there waiting, waiting for someone who has an idea, who is clever, who wants to get their information across. They can put a comment on my blog, at ChicagoTribune.com/money, at any time on the topics I am writing about. And if they put their name there, that is for all to see.
So sometimes I think – maybe other people don't feel as overwhelmed as I do with social media, but it seems like people are just casting things in the wind and hoping people see them. And yet there are some credible blogs, where people could be putting their comments for all to see, and it wouldn't just be casting in the wind.
[Pat] It's a great idea Gail. And it is search engine optimization as well. I don't know this for a fact about the ChicagoTribune.com/money blog, but some blogs do give you search engine juice if you link back to your site from that blog. So it’s a great idea, and great idea to extend your voice to the Tribune's readership and Gail's readership.
Next up we want to welcome Bob Powell.
[Robert] So thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. So, in terms of how I research personal finance topics, I will get to that in a second, but just by the way of background, just to amplify my biography for a little bit, I am writing for Market Watch. I’m writing, in essence, and editing three things for them. One is a weekly column called “Your Portfolio,” which is designed to help people make adjustments to their portfolios in a real-time way. The other is something called “On Retirement,” which is designed to help people plan for and live in retirement. And the last thing I do is edit a subscription newsletter called “Retirement Weekly,” which I sometimes refer to as the Times, but focus solely and almost entirely on all things retirement.
When I am researching personal finance topics, it's across that spectrum with regard to investments and retirement where I am looking for subject-matter experts and content that I think would do two things. One, as Gail said, what we are here trying to do is provide value to our readers. There are plenty of things that readers can get from many different places. But, in many ways, we have the opportunity to serve as – I will describe it as a concierge service. We take all the stuff that is coming at us through a big giant fire hose, whether it's your e-mails, or Google, or RSS feeds, or whatever the case may be, and sift through it to separate the wheat from the chaff, and then present to readers things that are actionable, that are unique, that are different from what they might get in other places. And the thing that I am trying to achieve at the end of the day is to impart of some sort of wisdom, some insight that they haven't been able to get from somewhere else. And, to that end, I, probably like Gail and Brent, work non-stop at this.
I eat, breathe, and sleep all things retirement and all things investments. I sign up for more RSS feeds than you could imagine. I belong to more LinkedIn groups that I would care to admit. I read the national NBER reports and the SSRI report, trade magazines, peer reviewed magazines, attend conferences. So it's almost a nonstop activity in terms of trying to research personal finance topics.
I will say that in recent times I have become fond of LinkedIn. I will talk a little bit more about that in a second. I am not so fond of Twitter and not so fond of Facebook for searching for personal finance topics. I look to one degree of separation to find personal finance stories as well. I used to, when my mother-in-law and father-in-law were still alive, I often said that she was my best source of story ideas, for a couple reasons. One is, she was retired, and she and her friends were always thinking about things, whether it was money, or travel, or whether to buy an annuity, or how to shop for a CD, or whatever it was, she was a constant source of story ideas for me that I thought reflected what people were going through in middle America in terms of retirement-related issues. Do you want me to stop there for a second?
[Pat] Sure. Well, I guess the question is, when do you meet financial advisors? And could you describe a scenario when a financial advisor provided value for you, because obviously our audience is financial advisors, and if they provide value for you their profile is elevated by that. When do you interact with them? Because I know you do Bob, I know you do talk to financial advisors
[Robert] Sure. I talk a lot with financial advisors. I think the best things that financial advisors can do for me is a couple things. One is like Gail said, do you have a unique perspective on something. We get every week, all of us on this call get weekly commentaries from Merrill Lynch, from PIMCO, from S&P, from Morning Star, and on and on and on. So there is no shortage of unique perspective. I think it is your take on maybe some of the commentary that is out there, or unique commentary that is not being offered up from Merrill Lynch, UBS, on and on and on.
The other is, I think one of the things that advisors have to offer is what is going on in their practice. What kind of problems and goals are they tackling inside their practice? Have they discovered something unique about divorce in this day and age that might be worth telling? Is the client experience that they are having something that would be of interest to a reporter and then to a reporter's audience? So I would think that is someplace where an advisor could be especially helpful to me: What is going on in the trenches from your perspective, and how you're dealing with it.
I think I am probably less interested in their takes on inflation, the economy, and GDP, and that sort of thing, because there is no shortage of that. Though, I might say, there is an opportunity for people to provide perspective on current events that might be different or to provide commentary. One of the things I look at in terms of what drives copy I write, might be new products, new research, new legislation. If, for instance, there is something passed – we just had today the Labor Department holding two days of lifetime income hearings that were webcast live on the web. And let's say the day comes when lifetime income options become a permanent part of 401(k)’s. I think that would be of interest to me to talk to advisors who are dealing directly and specifically with this in their practice somehow, some way, and providing maybe some unique perspectives around how that is being applied and what people are doing that might be different.
[Pat] Can we talk about what you do on LinkedIn now and your value there?
[Robert] Yes, by all means, sure. I join a lot of groups 401(k), IRA, pension, just a lot of groups, and then I sort of just watch the flow. I watch the questions that are being asked by either the group leader or the members of that. I watch the answers that are coming across. So I'm always searching for either someone who is posting an interesting question or someone who is answering those questions in ways that I didn't anticipate. That's not to say that these folks become instantly quoted in a column I might write. Like Gail said, the moment we quote someone is the moment we give them credibility that they may or may not deserve. So I guess I am a passive watcher of the flow in these sites. And I can say that I have found experts and subject-matter experts from joining these LinkedIn groups.
I did say that I don't use Twitter, but I have used it in the past, and it did lead to what I felt was a fairly good story on self-directed IRAs, which created me some enemies at the leading provider of self-directed IRAs in this country. But in the main I would avoid Twitter and prefer LinkedIn in terms of finding subject-matter experts.
I will tell you that, when I am casting the net, I cast it wide and far. LinkedIn is not the only thing I use. Today we were talking before the call amongst ourselves about ETF funds, and I am writing a column for tomorrow that will look at a new global inflation-linked bond fund that has been filed but hasn't been launched yet. I used the web to find out whether there were any other funds of this kind and who the authorities were on global inflation-linked bond funds. So it's a useful device for me. I didn't find anyone on LinkedIn, but I found several people by using Google search.
[Brent] May I jump in here for a minute Pat? This is Brent. I just want to add something to what Bob said about how advisors can add value for us. Advisors are dealing with people on the street all the time in a general sense. As Bob said, he gets his ideas from a relative. That is where some of the best ideas come from. So when advisors see a trend among their clients that they think is new or concerns them, we would like to know about it. We would like to hear some of the specific anecdotes. You don't have to breach client confidentiality to do that. Also, if you see something that you are concerned about you can call us as well.
As an example, I found out that the Oregon College Savings Plan had a toxic bond fund inside it from an advisor who made the link himself after reading a Morningstar report. That became a huge issue here. It was in Illinois as well, because Oppenheimer funds operated both plans. So, looking for trends – we are always looking for trends, and if you guys see any that cause concern, we want to know about it.
[Gail] I totally agree with that, and a lot of times people say, “Well, how do I know of I have something interesting to tell?” And my advice on that is if you are working with clients and you have worked with them on an issue that makes you want to tell someone else about it – maybe you go home at night and talk about it, maybe you talk about it with your neighbors, or maybe you talk about it with your other clients – that is probably something interesting enough that we might want to hear about it as well.
[Robert] I would throw this out: Roger, I think you participate in the study group. My guess is that the stuff that goes on in study groups, if you participate in one assuming that it is related to client issues as opposed to practice-management issues, would be of great interest to financial planners.
[Roger] I'll keep that in mind.
[Pat] Thank you to the panelists, for their overviews. We are going to go right now to the questions, because one of the questions is related to our final slide, which was, what happens once a journalist is engaged? What is the timeline? And what are the expectations on both sides? And actually we have gotten quite a few questions asking about compliance.
And, by the way, I will get into the questions. But I do want to encourage you if you have a question to submit one using the questions box below the webinar presentation you see on the screen.
There are a few questions for Roger saying, “You are a CFP® who doesn't appear to be FINRA-regulated.” But the question really has to do with, what about financial advisors who are FINRA-regulated, who do have a layer of review and must get approval from compliance? And I would like to throw it out first to the panelists to say, if a financial advisor comes to you and has a great idea, or you talk to them and it's been a great interview, to what extent have you found yourself able to work with advisors who do have layers of compliance that they need to get approval from?
[Robert] This is Bob. I will just sort of quickly mention that my motto is minimum delay and maximum disclosure. So if an advisor has to talk to me and then get something approved, it's often of little use to me, because I am usually on a tight deadline. So I prefer to talk to someone who can speak on the record without worry.
[Gail] Deadlines are essential. We are working so fast now. This industry has become so fast that I am writing three columns a week. I am supposed to be putting blog posts up every day, and sometimes miss it, because I am so busy. I am on TV and radio every day. And, given all of that, when I am working on a column, I usually have to turn it around within hours. Usually maybe four hours is all I’ve got. And so I need to reach someone really fast.
[Pat] But does that mean, and I hope that it wouldn't – you still talk to Merrill Lynch advisors. You still talk to Raymond James advisors. You have quoted them previously.
[Gail] Oh, yes. I'll talk to them, but what I am saying is they have to respond very quickly. I can’t go through calling someone – if I have a situation where I call an advisor, and the advisor says I have to go check with my compliance department, I immediately decide, “forget that person.” Over the years, with my experience, they do get back to you, but it might be 10 o'clock in the morning and my column has to go out the door at four o'clock because it goes all over the country. So I have to meet deadlines of papers all over the country. And I will often hear back from that person at 4:00, 4:30, or 5 o'clock. And they just wasted their whole day trying to get permission, and luckily I wasn't sitting around waiting for them to call me back.
[Robert] Let me add one thing: I have started using e-mail on occasion to write to people to say I am working on a column about XYZ. My deadline is Tuesday at five o'clock. If you can help that's great. If you can help, let me know quickly. If you can't, just send an e-mail saying you can't be of help. In some cases, someone will ask if they can set up a phone call. In other cases, they can ask if they can send an e-mail response, which I don't mind for a couple reasons. One is the risk of being misquoted is less, but I also I think it gives people a chance to be asynchronous with my time schedule.
[Gail] I have on occasion taken comments from people through e-mail, but I find that there is much more chance for error with an e-mail and I will tell you why. It is not put into context, and I am very careful about context. When I am really doing an interview, I might spend an hour with a person. And the reason is they think they are saying it clearly, but I may not understand it clearly and my readers might not. So I have to put it into a context, and often I will repeat back what I think they are saying, and say, “Is that correct, or do I need to understand something else about this?” So e-mails make me nervous, because I'm afraid of making an error with them.
[Robert] I would reinforce what Gail just said. I don't want to rely on e-mails. In fact, I think e-mails don't afford us the chance to find the other parts of the story, because they tend to be one-dimensional, or they are static answers in response to a question. Whereas in a dialogue someone might say something that would create a question that I hadn't thought of before. So the preference would be phone.
[Pat] This is a related question from someone in the audience. It is related, but it is different. Roger might actually have an answer as well. The question is: “I was once interviewed by a newspaper journalist. I was astonished by the difference between what I said and what was reported. How can sources protect themselves against inaccurate reporting of their opinion?” Roger, have you ever felt there was a disconnect between what you said and what was published?
[Roger] Fortunately, only on rare occasions. There is one particular reporter, who I don't think it was malicious or even intentional, but I felt that what I said and even the essence of what I said didn't come across in what came out in this individual's publication. So I really haven't had much contact with this person since, but if this individual did contact me, I would just respectfully decline. I think it is just a chance you take.
And I think, as I think Gail had said about the time she likes to put in, I've had situations. There was a woman with Forbes online. I think she must have called me six or eight times as she wrote the story – it was more of a feature than a deadline piece – to make sure she had it right. So I think most of the journalists that I have dealt with – and I have dealt with Bob, who is on this panel, and he is the same way – they go to painstaking steps to make sure that they are not misquoting you.
Now, the other side of it is one of the things that I had to get used to is I remember one of the first interviews I did, I think it was Kiplinger’s, I must of spoken to the reporter for a half an hour. And a lot of it was we were both trying to figure out some background on this particular story angle. I think there was one line in there. That was okay. Sometimes you may talk to a reporter for quite a while, and there will be one or two lines in the story, but that's okay, because they are talking to other people and that is just where it fits. I thankfully have not been misquoted or anything of that sort very often, but it is one of the risks. I don't think it's the end of the world, either.
[Brent] I would just say that over the years I have become more open to telling people how they are going to be quoted once I know, once I have gotten the story into good shape, or the column. If I have time, I’ll gladly tell them how they are quoted, tell them how I have paraphrased. We can't, by policy – at least at the Oregonian, and I’m sure it’s true at the Chicago Tribune – let people see what we are writing before it’s published, but we don't want to get it wrong either. It damages our credibility and it causes headaches for both of us. So I think a number of us will go out of our way to try to prevent that.
[Pat] Here's another question, and thank you for the questions that are coming in. We are going to try to keep the clip fast. The question is: “This is an old school versus new school question. Advisors investing in press releases or who have previously, how does the panel feel about traditional press releases versus social media announcements? Do you pay any attention to press releases?”
[Gail] I look at them. The press releases, like everything else, need to be done well. A lot of what comes across in a press release is either so general that you don't see what is useful there, or the language that is used, like in the case of a technology or something, is such that you don't even know what they are talking about. So it has to be done well, and I just say to people, “If you really have something that you think is important to say – other than ‘I exist, and I can talk to you about saving for college,’ – send me an e-mail with your idea or even give me a phone call, but notice when my columns appear.” My columns appear on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays, and that means that the day before I'm busy writing the column, so don't call me on those days because I can't pay attention.
[Pat] Okay, the other panelists, no interest in press releases, or save the dollars?
[Robert] I look at press releases. I mean I look at everything. If it's of interest it goes in the interesting pile, and if it's not interesting I delete it. So I would say keep sending them. I'm not opposed to them. I also save everything too, I must admit, even the stuff I should delete. So I'm looking at my inbox right now and it has 25,000 e-mails, which at least allows me to search for whatever, lifetime income options, and find what has been sent to me on that subject.
[Pat] Here is a question. And again, forgive the randomness of the questions. Roger, your profile has been raised, but has it increased business and revenue for all the time it takes you to blog and to participate in the discussion groups?
[Roger] It's hard to say. Not as much as maybe I would've thought going into it, but, as I said, I think what I have found is I have really got to take it to the next step of leveraging some of these contacts. I would say many of the contacts I have made, a lot of them through LinkedIn, and maybe less through Twitter, maybe they have been other advisors, which has been very helpful.
For example, I have got a client question that I am working on now, and I am really not an expert in this area, but I know an advisor who is through Twitter. And I will hopefully find an answer that way. So for the length I have been on it, probably not.
I wouldn't say that blogging takes a lot of time either. I typically do it in the evening. I write a couple of them if I can. The way I tend to write, and everybody is different, is if I think of something I just start typing it and it flows, and then I put it aside and reread it and publish it. So I don't really spend a lot of time there.
And most of the tweets that I do for example are things that I may sit for a half an hour in the morning and find 10, or 15 things that I want to tweet over a couple day period, and put them out on Hootsweet. I do check back during the day and try to engage with people, and that is where I think the value comes.
I did go into it thinking clients would flock to me, and clearly that has not been my experience. It may be the experience of some other advisors. But I think it has been worthwhile in a couple of ways, because, as far as the planning for my business, I have a couple of ideas of a couple of directions I am going to go. And I never would've even considered those had I not become involved in social media and some of that. So I think it has been very worthwhile for me personally, but I know other advisors think it's a waste of time. So everybody has their own take on it, I think based on their experience.
[Pat] Another question: “Do any of the panelists regularly search social networking sites for advisors who quote them?” So that is a really interesting question. Of course in social media it's all about the listening. Are you running any sort of alerts on your own names or on your own blogs? Track backs.
[Roger] I have Google alerts set up for my own name so I get to see where it gets reposted and then what people are saying. I once wrote a somewhat negative piece about reverse mortgages that keeps getting posted to industry sites, saying that it was hogwash.
[Pat] the question about track back has to do with, when someone is a blogger and they get a link from someone else's site, you are appreciative. Do you appreciate that traffic Bob, or no?
[Robert] Track back?
[Pat] When someone is linking back to your site.
[Robert] Oh. No, I don't go out of my way to thank them. I should. Good idea.
[Gail] Yeah, it is interesting to see where it goes. I have Google alerts set up, too, so I know if my name is used. I have a Google alert both for my name and also for the title of my book, because I want to know all the different places where these show up. I don't go back and thank people. I know that's how it's done. I know that is the right protocol in social media. It has just never occurred to me.
[Pat] And you all sound pretty busy as it is, and I don't necessarily mean for you to thank, but is that another way to get your attention? It sounds like it is if you have got alerts set.
[Gail] Oh definitely.
[Pat] As we wrap up in the last final minutes, if there is one thing that you could say to a financial advisor who would definitely like to learn from this discussion, if there is something you could tell them not to do, or to do, what would it be? Is there something that through the years that you thought advisors just didn't get, and now that they are marketing themselves more, they really need to get.
[Brent] I don't know that advisors don't get this, but I would just say, if you are specifically seeking publicity for publicity’s sake, that is the wrong way to go about it. If you are true to yourself and you are passionate about something, or you want to share what you have developed as your niche, we will notice and value that more, because that is what I want, somebody who knows their stuff and is passionate about it.
[Gail] I completely agree with that. If you have a strategy, a solution to offer, I’m there waiting to hear it, but I need to separate that out. And I am going to quote back an editor who said to my editor, if he saw another column in any newspaper about how people can save money in a 529 plan to go to college he was going to, quote, "vomit."
I'm telling you that because the distinction is, we don't need to know to open a 529 plan. More what I am looking for is, if people are trying to keep money safe in a 529 plan just before their children go to college, and there might be a bond bubble, what do people do? And the key thing that I am leaving you with is the question, always, “What should people do?”
[Pat] I think we will leave it. It is on the hour straight up, and I want to thank each one of the panelists for participating in today's webinar. I learned a lot, and I hope you did as well. I would also like to thank Advisor Perspectives’ Bob Huebscher for presenting the webinar. Bob?
[Bob H.] Thanks Pat, and thanks to our panelists Brent, Gail, Robert, and Roger. We know that advisors are very interested in social media and learning how it might help build their practice, and we hope that this webinar provided some helpful insight on that topic.
I also want to thank our sponsor Northern Trust Investments whose participation in social media includes its Fixedology Twitter account that can be followed using @fixedology on Twitter for updates on the fixed income market and economic events impacting it.
We will have a replay of today's webinar available on our site, AdvisorPerspectives.com. You will be able to find that under the webinars sub-menu, which is beneath the newsletter menu, on our main menu. That will be posted tomorrow afternoon, so Thursday afternoon. You will be able to hear a replay of the entire webinar.
Remember, if you have a question or comment, send it to .
