Few in number but influential, financial advisors are using social media
As global investment assets shrink in a terrible market and huge brokerages like Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch have been sold off just to say afloat, asset managers of all sizes are turning to social media for a variety of reasons. Social media helps target an asset manager’s brand message to a specific, accessible prospect base providing a sales funnel made up of extremely qualified leads. Social media also helps market any revenue-based products a financial advisor may be selling, like subscription newsletters.
Below, I list the top 12 financial advisors adopting, using, and in some cases, absolutely blowing out social media. Couple of points about how I compiled this list.
I used the term financial advisor loosely. The entries below are not all actual, licensed financial advisors but they are all in the business of giving financial advice. I looked at whether the firms were using blogs as part of a content strategy and whether they were syndicating this content out to large investment content aggregators (SeekingAlpha). I then looked at whether these firms were publishing an audited portfolio for performance tracking onto expert communities (Covestor). I looked at whether these firms were using microblog site, Twitter, video upload site, YouTube, Facebook and lastly, whether they were marketing a pureplay content product (financial newsletters).
- Timothy Sykes: Blogging, top annualized performer on Covestor, twitter-ing, Facebook, YouTube, Subscription Products
- Jim Cramer, TheStreet.com: Blogging, Video, Twitter, Subscription Newsletter
- John Reese, Validea: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Twitter, Subscription Newsletter
- Todd Sullivan: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Subscription Newsletter
- Mebane Faber: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Subscription Research site
- David Merkel: Blogging, SeekingAlpha
- Richard Shaw, QVM Group: Blogging, SeekingAlpha
- Roger Nusbaum: Blogging, SeekingAlpha
- Sean Hannon, EPIC Advisors: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Covestor
- Chris Fernandez, PeakStocks.com: Blogging, Covestor, Subscription Newsletter
- Trader Mark: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Twitter
- Zachary Scheidt: Blogging, SeekingAlpha, Subscription Newsletter
Couple of points to note:
- Ken Fisher, of Fisher Investments, is notably missing. From my vantage point, Fisher was a pioneer in direct marketing offline and is still working these channels, though a lot of those advertising dollars have moved online. No social media outlets from what I’ve seen.
- I’ve written about Timothy Sykes before, our number 1 advisor who’s adopted social media. He, in his own flamboyant way, just gets it.
- It appears younger, hungrier firms are turning to social media to help build their brands and land new customers. They are doing this by publishing their portfolios and providing actual audited results.
- Many advisors are combining a multi-prong strategy of combining a research product for sale combines with an asset management practice. It seems that these two businesses are mutually reinforcing.
- Fidelity? Vanguard? Who?
What do you think? Someone I totally missed and should have included?
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