This particular session was delivered to a group of successful financial professionals.  Some were traditional financial advisors and others really focused on group benefits and pensions for companies in Canada.  None-the-less, social media has not been easy to adopt for the financial community because of both tradition and regulation.

Anyhow, I think the reason @Ambermac has been successful is because she has taken the bizarre language of social media and brought it down into her compelling 10 keys:

1.  Create a Social Media Policy
2.  Be Authentic
3.  Be Original
4.  Be Consistent
5  Choose your tools
6.  Be mindful of your digital reputation
7.  Measure Analytics
8.  Take care of your website
9.  Go Mobile
10.  Watch for the trends

A few other quick facts from Ambermacs presentation:

• Canadians spend more time on the internet than other countries
• We view 147 videos per month per person on YouTube
• There are over 17 million Canadians on Facebook (which is 51.2% of the population)
• The fastest growing user group on Facebook is 55+ women
• There are over $2 billion tweets every month
• The Motorola brick phone back in 1986 cost about $4000

My two cents

I embraced social media at the beginning of 2011 and after 6 months, I can’t help but agree with Amber’s points.  My favorite line from her presentation is: “Social Media is not HARD but it is HARD WORK. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying.”

My twist on Social media is like anything else it’s one of those things that you will get out, what you put in.  If you don’t put much into it, you probably won’t get much out of it.  But at the same time, the more you put in, the more powerful it becomes.

The way I adopted social media is I took it in steps.  Just like babies learn to crawl before walking and walking before jumping and running, Take social media in steps and learn ways to adopt the opportunity.  I started with twitter and if you want to follow me @jimyih, I’d love to hear from.  I then moved to a facebook page and now I am trying to learn and understand linkedin.

The bottom line is this . . . change is inevitable.  It’s already started and it’s not going to stop.  You can look at this as a time waster or the opportunity to evolve and grow not just as a business owner but as a parent, a friend, a colleague and a person.  Good luck in your evolution and development.

The post 10 Keys to Social Media for Financial Advisors appeared first on Jim Yih.

For example, one of the ways to drive revenues and make your website profitable is to sell books.  It does not have to be your own book but it could be your favorite books.  You see this all the time.  There are so many books in the marketplace that people don’t know what to choose?  Too much choice has paralyzed people from making decisions.  As a professional in the financial industry people love to know what like to read.  People love seeing what other people are reading.  It’s an endorsement or testimonial.

Another idea is to market other people’s seminars, tools, book through affiliate programs.  Remember, it’s not just about making money, it’s about providing a worthwhile service or product to your clients.  Make sure it’s something you believe in.

In the end, we may not sell books, or seminars but we are still selling ourselves and our services.   Paypal came out with 5 Tips that can boost online sales. Although the list is geared to direct selling on the internet, indirect sellers can also benefit.

I thought this was a great list of tips.  If you are interested, I would encourage you to click on the link because they have some graphical examples but here’s the quick list:

1. Do make calls-to-action (CTAs) obvious

2. Do use an action colour for buttons

3. Do use the principle of proximity to group related items

4. Do control the flow in your design

5. Do use whitespace

Although these tips are great for e-commerce websites, these are great tips for any website.

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Trying to get your message to people becomes increasingly harder because of the increased stimulus in the market place.  Here’s three quick tips for marketing during the busy holiday season:

• Keep your messages short and meaningful – Less is more.  People are busy and long emails or pitches will often get tosses.  Keep subject lines between 10-25 characters in length, concentrating on words that will encourage your customers to take action.  Really focus on your use of words.

• Make it personal – Rather than blast something out to everyone, try to create customized messages for target groups of people.  Try to segment your list of contacts based on any number of different criteria.  Pick a group of people that have bought the same product or service in the past 6 months and delivery a special message for them.  Or maybe you have your top clients, why not create a special just for your best clients.  However you choose to differentiate, differentiate.  Your customers will appreciate the personal touch.

• Plan a Sending Schedule – Sending messages at the right time is just as important as sending the right message.  I’ve struggled with this on Twitter because Twitter messages are not that sticky.  For example, If may be better to send messages in the morning for early birds who get up early to get things done.  How many people check emails and messages at lunch break?  I’ve noticed that twitter activity picks up around lunch time so some people like to do some reading then.  Create a well thought out sending schedule that incorporates the day of the month, the day of the week and even the time of day.  Make a schedule and stick to it.  (Don’t forget to analyze your campaign later to see what was most effective).

Although these message tips might be timely for the holiday season, they are also great tips no matter what time of year it is!  Happy Marketing.

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There are a lot of different definitions of marketing but for me, marketing is simply communication.  Marketing is the process and strategies to let clients and potential clients know about your products and services.  It includes the sales process but is also bigger than just the sales process.

Traditional marketing strategies included communication through radio, print and television.  When I first started my business, I utilized print media as a key marketing strategy.  We held ‘FREE’ retirement workshops and to get people to attend, we spent money putting ads in a couple of the local newspapers.  Print advertising was fairly costly given each ad was roughly $500 to $1500 per ad.  The nice thing about print advertising is it tends to be sticky.  In other words, people can cut out the ads and keep them unlike radio or television.  I also explored some radio marketing on one of the local talk to the experts programs.

That was over 10 years ago.  If I started the business again, would I stick with traditional forms of media marketing like newspaper ads and radio?  Some argue that traditional media like print is dying a slow death given the massive growth of new media outlets like the internet and it’s applications like Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and YouTube.

Is the internet and social media the new future of marketing?

The answer is probably yes but that also does not mean that traditional forms of media will die a slow death.

The internet and social media have created a whole new set of tools for marketing.  On one hand, social media strategies can have a huge reach and can be much more cost effective than traditional media forms.

On the other hand, social media can have too broad of a reach and you may not have to spend money but you may find that you waste hours and hours because social media is ‘noisy’ and distracting.

I think social media has taken a bite out of the market share of traditional media but I’m not sure traditional media is dead.  There was a time when TV came along and then a lot of people thought that would be the end of radio.  Not only has radio survived but it has evolved into other streams like satellite radio.  Some thought the internet would crush television but TV is still as strong as ever.  There’s no question TV, radio and print have had to adapt and change with the massive growth of the internet and social media but it is far from being a dinosaur.

Make a choice

If you have to choose, neither is better or worse.  They both have pros and cons to any business.  The challenge is more choice means more confusion.  If you add in other marketing strategies like referral programs, seminars, networking, writing books and articles, etc we have so many marketing tools to choose from.   It’s much easier making a decision between 2 or 3 choices as opposed to 10 or 15.  Regardless, a choice needs to be made.  Pick a few strategies (more than 1 and less than 6) and stick with it.

Success comes in developing a plan that includes a multi-tool marketing approach that might include some traditional media, some web based marketing strategies and maybe some other strategies.  Find a way to coordinate the marketing into an integrated approach.

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1. Make your home page appealing and interesting.  You have seconds to make a first impression
2. Spend time on your ABOUT page because it is the second most important page on your site.  Your ABOUT page is your BRAND and it better be good, unique and interesting.
3. Make your site dynamic with content.  If you want to get noticed on the web, you have to have content that can be searched for.

I‘m not going to fool you, the toughest part of the Internet is getting found.  It’s truly like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes.  If you think about the billion and billions of pages out there, how are people going to find you?

The first thing I have to disclose is I am not expert but I have built a presence on the Internet.  Even though I am not an expert, I offer you a few ideas that I have used to get noticed when you are the needle in the haystack:

Find a great URL – A great URL is one that is relevant, catchy and easy to spell without mistakes.  Some people say all the good URLs are taken but there are still ones out there.  You just have to be creative. The best URL I ever got was RetireHappy.ca.  I think it is great because it is short, memorable, it is descriptive, it shows my expertise and people always want to talk about it.

Promote your URL – Once you have a website, it is important to incorporate the URL into all of your marketing material.  One tip is to incorporate the URL right into your company logo.  For example, my logo for this site incorporates the url AdvisorThinkBox.com.  My logo could easily be just “Advisor Think Box” but simply adding the dot com to the logo promotes the URL too.  I did the same thing with JimYih.com.  On my business cards, I simply added the dot com to the logo.  If you have a catchy tag line, see if you can get that URL and build it into your logo.  A really easy example of this is www.Justdoit.com.  They didn’t just brand nike.com but also their tag line.

Write an article for a prominent site – I have over 1000 articles on my website www.WealthWebGurus.com because I’ve been writing for almost 15 years.  Some of my articles rank very high on google.  For example if you search “Self-Directed RRSPs”  I am right at the top.  A lot of my articles are not ranked that high but there is merit in writing for sites that have high traffic.  For example, I now write for one of Canada’s biggest Personal Finance Blogs, www.CanadianFinanceBlog.com.  If you google “CPP” one of my articles shows up on page 5 but the article I wrote for CanadianFinanceBlog is on page 1.   There are sites like About.com, Ezinearticles.com, ehow.com, etc that have built a business publishing content for other people.  These sites are usually ranked high because of the amount of content and traffic they have.  In the financial industry, offer to write for site that want content to increase your visibility. You could even write a guest post for my WealthWebgurus site.

Write comments on other blogs – Most blogs want comments on their articles. When people like the article, they will often read the comments too.  When you post a comment, you are creating some exposure.  Be considerate and make sure you do not SPAM when making comments.  I found a blog that I really enjoy www.BalanceJunkie.com.  She is an excellent writer and writes about topics that interest me.  I started posting comments regularly and now she makes an effort to help promote my sites.  Getting the exposure from her was not my original intent but it has taught me to develop relationships with other people that have content that you enjoy.

Dynamic content – I’ve written about this before in my post “Websites are the new business card”.  There are static sites and dynamic sites and it is way better to have a dynamic site.  Some people say that they do not have the time to keep their site with new content but it’s easier than you think.  Chances are you read the news or articles.  There is content you like and don’t like.  You don’t have to re-invent the wheel everytime by writing a new article or posting a blog.  Create a place on your website for links to this content.  Even get your assistant to post it up.  Another way to create dynamic content is to have account access on your site.  If you do this, you need to make it easy for your clients to find your content.  For example, right beside the login box for clients, put a BEST ARTICLES heading with a list of some of your own articles.

Twitter – Twitter is the new craze.  In a very short period of time, Twitter has become the 12 most visited website.  As an advisor how can you take advantage of this exposure?  It’s really simple.  Get and account and start following people that you like.  It’s kind of like a news service but customized to your interests.  Then when you find great articles, re-tweet those articles out and you will become a filter of great information and people will start to follow you.

Search Engine optimization – Google is the largest search engine in the world.  Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world.  There are businesses out there that claim they can get you ranked higher on prominent search engines.  Personally, I am not a fan of paying for SEO.  I’ve done it in the past but I do not think the results justified the cost.  Remember, I’m not the expert but for what it is worth, I’ve learned that relevance, quality and promotion will be the best forms of SEO.

Social Media – I was looking for a friend of mine from the financial industry.  When I googled his name, I found him through Linked in and Facebook before his company website.  Utilizing social media helps you get found.  Google your own name and see if it comes up and where it comes up.  Google my name and you will see that my sites come up but so do the social media sites.

My two cents

This is far form an exhaustive list of ideas to enhance your visibility on the web, but you can’t do everything so hopefully you can start somewhere.  It’s all about taking one or two ideas and running with it.  It’s all about action and commitment.  If you want more online presence, you can’t just site back and wait for it to happen. Just do it!

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Your home page is the first impression.  Your home page, within seconds will determine if people stay and look around or if they simply move on to the next site.  It’s kind of like meeting someone for the first time.  The first visual impression is important.

If they get to the about page, that means they want to learn a little more.  This is the page where you have a chance to connect with them.  In a face to face conversation, it’s the “What do you do for a living?”  You also have seconds to make an impression. Your visitor wants to see if you can back up the impression from the home page.

So if you are still reading this, take a moment and go to your website and read your “About” page.  What do you think?

Now I want you to take a look at three other financial advisors sites.  Go to their “About” pages and have a read.  I just finished going through 20 financial advisor sites and for the most part, they all said the same thing:

“We care about our clients”

“We listen and provide client centered solutions”

“We provide a one stop shop for our clients”

“We provide excellent service”

I could go on but I think you get the idea.  Did you have the same experience?  Was your “ABOUT” page the same as others?  If so, how are you supposed to stand out and get noticed?

When you went though this exercise, did you read something that jumped out at you?  Did it make you want to read more?  If so, what made it different?

Dare to be different

After going through this exercise, you amy feel the need to change the content of your “ABOUT” page.  Before you do, here are a few tips to help you develop a better ABOUT page.

Define your difference. Really think about what people call your unique selling proposition.  In developing a brand, it is important to have what they call an elevator pitch.  10 seconds to say what you do and why you are different in as interesting way possible.

Tell a story.  Story telling is an ancient art because stories evoke emotion.  They create pictures and the best story tellers capture our attention.  If you want to be different, get away from the typical dull, corporate lines.  A generic “professional” bio with your degree, professional history and years of experience is all too common, flat and uninspiring.  Tell a real story about you – something interesting about your personal life.

Talk in first person. Most websites are in third person.  For your ABOUT page, switch it up and talk to your visit as if they were there sitting in front of you.  tell them why you came into the business.  Tell them why you want to help them and give them real examples of how you helped others.  Write this to your ideal client.

Create a specialty. It’s OK if you do all thing and provide a one stop shop but what are you really good at?  What kind of work really excites you?  What are you really passionate about?  When you know your passion, excitement typically shows so you should highlight this in your ABOUT page.

Use pictures. It’s all about creating lasting impressions.  In the web world, that’s a matter of minutes.  Creating impressions requires the use of key power words and phrases.  Maybe highlight these words by bolding them (but be careful not to bold too much).  Also, enhance your image with powerful photos.  Get them professionally done and don’t just take the typical head shot.  Try to get some other poses that show your personality.

Add a testimonial.  Not only are testimonials good third party references but they are useful at breaking up text and can make the ABOUT page more visually appealing.  If you don’t have  a testimonial, try a quote that really captures you and your approach.  If it is catchy, make it prominent.  It can be a real eye catcher.

One of the hardest things to do it write about ourselves.  If you fall into that camp, get others to help you out.  Find a few people you trust to write down some of your strongest qualities.  Ask them what makes you unique.  Ask your spouse or some clients or even another peer in your industry.  Invest in your ABOUT page as it is one of the most important pages in your website.

The post Is your ‘ABOUT’ page dull? appeared first on Jim Yih.

I’ve been very curious about facebook because everything I read about social media says I should be on facebook for my business.  I’ve always struggled with this because I prefer to separate my personal life from my business affairs.

Facebook has made some changes this year that really helped me to understand how to separate business from personal and it has to do with the difference between a profile and a page.

What is a facebook profile?

A facebook profile is really meant for an individual.  It is designed for people to connect with other people as opposed to people connecting with businesses, organizations or communities.  With a profile, there is more privacy because only friends can see certain aspects of your profile.  To add a friend to your network, you must send a request and they must accept.

What is a facebook page?

A facebook page is designed more for promotional and business use.  Facebook pages can be used by individual like an author, celebrity, musician, etc.  Facebook pages are also for businesses, organization, product, band, association, etc.

Pages are fully viewable to the general public.  You do not have to be logged into facebook to view a page.

“Become and Fan” vs “Like”

At one time, if you had a fan page or business page, you accumulated “Fans” who volunteered to become a fan of your page or product or business.  Facebook has now removed the reference to being a ‘fan’ and now you will see the ‘like’ button everywhere.  Anyone can like a page or an blog or a site.  You can put the like button anywhere.  Some bloggers are adding the ‘like ’button’ under all of their blog posts and if people like the post, they can ‘like’ it.

You have to have a profile in order to create a page. You may only administer a Facebook Page if you are an authorized representative of the subject of the Page.
Financial Advisors need to get on facebook

Facebook is the second most visited site in the world next to Google.  If you do not have a website, you can easily create a web presence by simply creating a Facebook page for your business.

Creating a Facebook page is so easy to do.  I have created three pages:

• Group Benefits Online
• WealthWebGurus
• Empowering Edmonton

If you do have a website but it is static in nature (In other words, you do not change the content), you can also create a facebook page to create more communication and interaction with your clients and prospects.

Facebook is one of the new forms of online communication and having a facebook page can help you create and manage relationships.

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To me, this concept of matching advisors and clients is not entirely new.  For example, I’ve worked with www.ProfessionalReferrals.ca or AdvisorWorld.com They too, tried to match advisors with potential clients.  Obviously the approach and strategy might be different but the basic concept is the same.

Another startup company called TrueBlueConnect.com also hopes to make a mark in the same niche.  Their website says “TrueBlue Connect is on a mission to connect investors with the expertise they need to reach their financial and personal goals. There are many kinds of financial experts, so we have designed a service that will match each investor with a Financial Advisor who has the right training, background and personal experience for that investor.  We believe every investor deserves a great Advisor. Let us help you find yours – at no cost to you.”

When I talked to Liz Metcalfe of TrueBlue Connect, she used the metaphor of an online dating site for advisors and investors.

My two cents

I think the concept is intersting and it beceomes more relevant as technology becomes the primary way we communicate.  I still beleive the client – advisor relationship is about trust and communication.  Becaue money is one of the most important things in our life, the relationship investors have with their advisors is a very important one.  I recently wrote and article about social media and how success will come from and advisors ability to engage or participate because at the end of the day it is still about relationships and communication.

Online dating has become a big business of it’s own.  Will this concept of meeting a financial advisor through a website work?  Only time will tell but from a technology and business perspective, it sure intrigues me.  What do you think?

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His response was “There is not a specific platform or channel that is the right answer. The truth is that you need a strong strategy that defines the types of content you would be best at producing, what the overall business objectives are, and a whole swath of other questions that will lead you to the optimal tactics.”

My two cents

I get a lot of advisors who wonder if they should get into this whole social media thing.  My belief is social media is another way to network, market and brand yourself.  It’s clearly not the only way but advocates will argue that it is the ‘best’ way and the way of the future.  I don’t think anyone can argue that facebook, twitter and blogging is part of our lives now and will only become more prominent moving forward.  As a relative newbie to the world of social media, I offer some of my comments on each social media strategy

Facebook – My big problem was blurring the lines between personal friends and business contacts.  I created a profile for myself and realized this was more of a social thing than a business thing.  The great news moving forward is Facebooks commitment to the business world.  Facebook is putting a lot of effort and resources to their “Facebook Pages”.  Instead of becoming “Fans” of businesses, celebrities, or organizations, you now “Like” a Facebook page.  My belief is that every business should have a facebook page but the ultimate success comes in the interaction or relationship you have with your “Likers” (That’s not a facebook term but my interpretation of what someone who likes a page might be called).  Having a facebook page and doing nothing with it is no different than having a static website and never changing it.  The cool thing is you are in control.  I remember my first website was the typical static brochure but the problem was if you needed to make a change, you had to call a web designer and pay them money.  With facebook, you control everything.  You make the changes.  You need to be involved or what I call engaged.

Twitter(@JimYih) – It took me a while to get into twitter and make sense of it but now I really like it.  I spend about 20 mintues a day looking through the people I follow to see if anything is interesting.  It has replaced the newspaper for me.  I see a lot of people having conversations though twitter (tweeting back and forth) but I must admit I don’t really get that yet.  For me Twitter is a link to information.  I read some links from twitter, some good and some bad and then I re-tweet the good articles to my followers.  Here’s the magic.  At first I was just tweeting my own articles and not getting a lot of followers but the minute I started to re-tweet other peoples stuff, my followers started to increase.  In a nutshell, I think twittering is about giving before getting.  If you go in with a me strategy, I think people will see right through that.  Twitter is a new way of developing relationships.  People follow you for a while and see if they like what you tweet.  If not, they move on.  It’s kind of like dating.  As I said, what I love about twitter is the link to information but what I don’t like is the abundance of information.  Like anything, I am htting information overload.  I could manage the information when I was following about 15 people.  Now I am up to 73 people and it’s just too much.  I’m now learning to set up lists and use other filtering programs like tweetdeck and hootsuite but it’s a constant learning curve.

Blogging (WealthWebGurus.com, GroupBenefitsOnline.ca) – As you can see, I am a big fan of blogging.  It’s another form of expression.  I think it’s a way for your audience, your clients and prospects to get to know you.  When you write and article or a post, you are sharing your expertise, opinions, and thoughts.  I am also biased because not only do I like to write, I feel like I have to write.  Writing formulates my thoughts and organizes my ideas.  I love blogging but the trick to blogging is to build an audience.  That’s the hard part and as Mitch Joel says, “don’t assume the ‘build it and they will come’ model will work.”

The bottom line is like any marketing strategy, you have to find something that ‘fits’ your style.  For me it’s not about facebook or twitter or blogging.  It’s about social media and that involves all three.  Technology links the three together so well now that it’s easier and easier to do all three.  They really do work together.  If you want to get into the social media game, then jump in and engage and understand it is all about relationships.  If you don’t want to get into the social media game, just remember there are clients of yours that are engaging in it today and your competition is getting into it.

The post Which Social Media is the best way to build an audience? appeared first on Jim Yih.

Does this statement seem odd to you?  Shouldn’t the only person to run a financial advising business be a financial advisor?  Here’s my point. The principles to running a business are universal.  The most successful businesses are run by exceptional entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs understand business.

The financial advisor that wants to be successful needs to take their financial advisor hat off and put on their business hat.  They need to think about branding and marketing.  You can be the best financial advisor in the world but if no one knows you exist, then your business will not excel.

I’ve always said, you can take an average product or service with exceptional marketing and you will have exceptional results.  Take a superior product with average marketing and you will likely get average results.  Don’t you see some of this in the financial industry.  Do you know financial advisors who are not the best advisors technically but they get results because they are good at networking or really good with people or just great marketers?  Do you know advisors who are really smart and technically strong but fail to succeed because they have no one to talk to?

The best person to run a business of any kind is a business person so put on your business hat and figure out how you are going to grow that business.

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