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25 Content Highlights Of 2011
There are some people who are theatre people. There are some people who are music people. And—getting closer to the point of this post—there are the book-lovers. Me, I’m an online content junkie.
With this post, 12 months in the making, I delight in that special piece of content found swimming out there in a sea of perfectly average content. This is my list of what I found to be the best marketing, digital marketing and/or investment-related content—with a few wildcards—of 2011. It’s an updated edition of a similar list published last year at this time.
Ameriprise Taps LinkedIn Connections To Make Advisor Referrals
Six months ago, I wrote a post about companies that are sharing their business data via APIs, and the insights that result when others work with those APIs. In the last few weeks, Ameriprise Financial has unveiled a reverse of that—their financial advisor search engine now uses the LinkedIn API to enable prospective clients to tap their social networks as a means of surfacing an Ameriprise financial advisor.
Ah, here’s where this social data stuff gets interesting.
Mutual Fund, ETF Communicators Spring Into Action After S&P Warns
Standard & Poor’s Monday announcement of a negative credit outlook for the United States based on the budget deficit produced another drill for those responsible for timely and relevant investment thought leadership at mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms.
Investment strategists’ appearances on financial television shows notwithstanding, rapid public response and interpretation has not been part of asset managers’ culture. And, it doesn’t come naturally to the way that many of you like to work—few of you have training or experience in or the disposition for breaking news. So, bravo to you for reshuffling priorities to hustle from the investment strategists or economists to Compliance to layout to the Web team to…
Mutual Fund, ETF ‘Marketer Of The Year’ Nominees Link 2010 Strategies To Results
You work all day every day and many days into the evening. Once in a while you’re asked to summarize what you do, your accomplishments, the ways in which you’ve contributed to the success of your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm. What do you point to?
Five marketers were considered for Fund Action and Fund Directions’ Marketer of the Year, with the award last night going to Marty Willis, chief marketing officer of OppenheimerFunds (who I happened to mention in Monday’s post). Congratulations to Marty and her team.
Social Sharing Icons More Prevalent On Mutual Fund, ETF Sites With One Exception
Ambiguity surrounding FINRA guidance on social media (see this report from a February SEC event) forces some mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers to resort to a familiar argument when appealing to their firms’ compliance officers. “But Fund Company XYZ does it, why can’t we?” The argument meets with limited success.
Investment company Websites provide ample signs of the divergence between compliance departments’ interpretation of the FINRA guidance (influenced probably by executive management’s appetite for stepping out socially). But today let’s look at just one narrow slice of social media the extent to which sites offer social sharing icons.
Yay! Your Long-Form Content Is In Style—Now What?
To borrow a phrase from David Letterman, asset managers don’t give digital marketer jobs to chimpanzees. And it’s a good thing, too, because you need to be at your highest-functioning as online content consumption evolves and new utilities surface as a means of providing access to content your firm produces.
Content marketing by asset managers is largely in the form of thought leadership, i.e., long-form content about the markets and market opportunities. The rising popularity of mobile devices (primarily iPads but ostensibly other tablets, too) and browser tools that accommodate saving think pieces for later is driving engagement in longer content. This should be a net positive for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers.
25 Reasons To Remember 2010: Our Content Faves
A colossal amount of content flies by in the course of a year. And yet over the last 12 months, I came across some content that made a (so far) lasting impression. My favorite content from the year broke new ground, introduced new ideas, deepened my understanding or changed my mind. I found myself returning to it, emailing links to it and finding a way to work it into presentations.
Would This Help Avoid Marketing/IT Collisions?
The following post presents a bit of a dilemma and shows the conflicts that can arise in posting on two sites. I wrote the post to be published on the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) Blend site on November 11. As happy as I am for you to be able to find the post here—and think it’s germane to the work you do—there are some good comments, including from Scott Brinker, on the MENG blog that I recommend you check out, too. One idea, two sites to go to—sorry about that.
Old Way/Social Way: Advisor Log-ins Vs. Web Authentication
As inspired by our dear departed Yahoo Internet Life’s Old Way/Net Way feature years ago, we last month teed up the idea of contrasting some Old Way/Social Way examples. This is the second in an occasional series.
Old Way: Advisor Log-ins
Nearly every mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Web site has a financial advisor area that requires registration. The old old way (still practiced on some sites today) is to present all unregistered or un-logged-in advisors with a roadblock—a page with nothing on it but a form to use to register or to log in. More progressive sites (see Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and Lord Abbett) start communicating even as they’re asking advisors to register for more.
The Social Way Forces A Rethinking Of Old, Controlling Ways
When something is new, a little scary and yet ubiquitous, it may be human nature to want to limit what you absolutely need to know about it. Jersey Shore, for example, is something I’ve decided that I don’t need to follow.
In the case of investment company Web sites, mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers early on realized that their sites wouldn’t be e-commerce sites. That freed them (us as I was on the inside at that point) from thinking about transaction funnels, search engine optimization and other best practices that e-commerce sites need to master in order to survive.
