Pushing The Envelope - 3 Simple Steps to Mastering New Media Jonathan Bentley – Chief Content Officer The Paperless Redress “Pushing the envelope” means to approach or extend the limits of what is possible. The convergence of cloud based applications, mobile delivery, aggregated and interlinked financial data, along with the deepening of social media networks is presenting such a good opportunity to push the envelope of what is possible in the advisory marketing and client communications sector. The phrase also has an interesting opposing meaning for this space in that the fundamental message for mastering this new world is to literally get away from “pushing the envelope”. That means not only do we want to move toward paperless communication, but, more importantly, to move beyond having documents as the primary delivery construct. If you are simply taking what you used to print and mail and turning them into PDF’s that you store in a web folder, then you have not yet understood the power and leverage of new media and cloud delivery. Step 1: Moving Beyond the Snapshot in Time It is important to accept that the vast majority of your clients or shareholders, who are 65 or younger, rarely give more than a cursory glance to any document you produce. While they have utility for required statements, notices and filings, they are not very useful for the important communications that help build client confidence. As two-dimensional snapshots in time, documents cannot compete with the currency and interactivity of the web. With over 90% of the affluent, even older ones, now spending hours on the web every day, and carrying it around with them on mobile devices, you can be assured that downloading and reading a PDF is the last thing they want to do.1 The clicking, drilling, and swiping they can do with their online brokerage account is more engaging and informative, provides more context and depth, and is easier to consume.2 That is the reporting view against which you are now being compared. And keep in mind that this is not just about more colorful and interactive report design. It is about controlling the context of your message. Take the common case of using the appropriate benchmark or time frame to best represent your performance. Since much of your competitive position rests on the context given to this presentation, it’s clearly important that you will be the one to set that context. While most firms understand this, what many don’t understand is that competing with the online offerings of the large banks and brokerages can be done in a very cost-effective way. Among the more important reasons, InvestCloud has become the leader in this space is that we enable firms to launch very robust, fully integrated cloud reporting for a fraction of the time and cost they expect. Step 2: Kill the Newsletter The reason that the first step is to address portfolio reporting is because the primary reason people show up is to see their numbers. Until they know what is up, what is down, and how much, they are no longer interested in your opinion. Only after they are at your site, and seen their numbers, then will they be ready for opinion or commentary. Most firms still address this with a monthly or quarterly news or 1
Smith, Aaron. "Older Adults and Technology Use." Pew Research Centers Internet American Life Project RSS. Pew Research Centers, 03 Apr. 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. 2
"Professional Financial Services: People in Households with an Online Investing/stock Trading Service (USA), 2014." Statista. Statista, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
commentary letter. The common format is a document saved as a PDF. A more effective option is to retire the document and use the same editorial exercise to create smaller bits of content, a few sentences or paragraphs rather than a article, and deliver it as a blog post. Many firms that InvestCloud works with find that they are already doing the equivalent of blogging. However, it is just delivered as a static document. Once you break up that content and begin delivering it as a weekly or monthly blog posting, not only will it be more consumable by your clients, it will also improve your search rankings. For those firms that have not started producing the editorial content to make this work, InvestCloud’s content services can help by staging curated RSS feeds tailored to your firm’s investment approach. These feeds give you a robust menu of articles that you can reference or comment on, allowing you to leverage the editorial work of others. Another interesting approach we are using is helping firms create video blogs. By simply recording and editing a Skype interview, we can produce compliant content that is more personal and engaging than written text, usually with less effort for firm principals than that required for writing. Step 3: Social Network Broadcasting As we discussed at length last week, Twitter, Facebook, and especially LinkedIn have become important and useful channels for broadcasting your message. We offered extensive statistics and the conclusions were that a clear majority of the core demographics for age and affluence on which this industry depends are regularly showing up in the social networks3. Your target audience is there and the network’s are tuned for pushing acceptable messaging along to others. While this takes some focus and work, there are now services available to do this on your behalf in a very cost effective way. InvestCloud’s content services includes not only the coordinated design of all your social media profiles to match your firm’s website, but also the provision of pushing anything you publish in your blog out all of your corporate social media pages, including those of key designated employees. Conclusion We can take for granted that certain documents, for a range of reasons, will persist long into the future. But those documents have already become just “utility” communications that have little to do with enriching and protecting your client relationships. Firms need to adopt, and with InvestCloud can now afford the robust daily online reporting that has become the competitive standard. After that, the next step is converting your client and marketing communications to a blog to make it more accessible and consumable. Finally, if you take the step of pushing that content out not only to your email list but to the social networks, you will see the power of how new media can help your firm “push the envelope”. If you would learn more about InvestCloud compliant content services and how we can help your firm develop its social media presence, visit us at www.investcloud.com or click here to request a demo. Jonathan Bentley leads InvestCloud’s content development and management division. From helping advisors better craft and deliver their stories to curating customized advisor RSS site feeds, Jonathan’s team is critical to InvestCloud’s bespoke design and site management services. Jonathan was previously founder and CEO of LightPort Inc, which merged with InvestCloud in 2013. Previously a practicing RIA, while at LightPort, Jonathan was involved in developing web portals for more than 500 advisors and money managers.
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Bennett, Shea. "28% of Time Spent Online Is Social Networking." SocialTimes. SocialTimes, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/time-spent-online/613474>.