“People are talking online about you and the business you’re in. You want to take part in that conversation, you want to be in the mix.”

When mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms are early in their exploration of communicating off their own domains, that kind of exhortation by me or somebody like me is usually met with a blank stare. That’s the best case. The worst case is when they pretend they’re listening but they’re really just planning their broadcast schedule for the social sites.

So yesterday T. Rowe Price took to both Twitter and Facebook (if you have a subscription, you can read more about it on Ignites.com today). Cheers all around. In my unscientific monitoring of asset manager mentions on Twitter, my impression is that T. Rowe is the firm that’s talked about most. This may be a reflection of its client base and/or the stakes that the firm has taken in social media investments. As someone who hasn’t had to do any of the work involved, it’s about time for @TRowePrice.

What Took So Long?

I had a chance to talk to T. Rowe’s social media ringleader Dan Phelps yesterday and he outlined the thoughtful, painstaking two-year process that led to the February 1 launch.

But who could have known that would be the same date that Facebook filed its IPO? T. Rowe Price’s high profile as the mutual fund company with the largest investment in Facebook guaranteed that there would be lots of social mentions of “T Rowe” yesterday and no doubt continuing this week.

OK, I don’t know, this wasn’t discussed but my suspicion is that’s not the conversation that the T. Rowe corporate marketing communications people necessarily seek to have. But they’re listening and they’re ready to respond where appropriate. That’s the benefit of all that planning.

I call your attention to one tweet in particular from @bradledwith, a certified financial planner and wealth manager.

Here’s a financial advisor showing interest in a T. Rowe Price mutual fund on Day 1. Excellent. Except…the question being asked is tricky, isn’t it? Fund companies don’t promote their holdings and there’s no way a Twitter editorial calendar anticipated tweeting about the funds that have Facebook exposure.

In The Conversation But Not To Drive It

This is an unplanned conversation opportunity and it marks the beginning of a new way of communicating in public for @TRowePrice. Again, the conversations initiated by others are like offline conversations—unpredictable and rarely about what the brand wants to talk about.

Twitter is about content publishing, sure, but it’s also about customer service and public relations. The same question was no doubt asked on the phones yesterday and customer service handled it.

Most people on Twitter know to direct questions to companies, but this advisor probably assumed that T. Rowe had no Twitter account. Most asset managers don’t (here’s a list I keep of investment managers on Twitter).

What I like about a new account on Twitter is that T. Rowe has the opportunity to surprise this planner by showing that they were listening. They may do it directly in a way that we can all see or they may find a way to engage offline. That they’re engaging is the point. Oh and all those strategy meetings and technology testing and workflow analysis, that’s the point, too.

There’s no underestimating the importance of being fully prepared to be conversational.

I was so eager to get at the recent Advisor Perspectives/Inside Information research that I read the complete 65-page report on my 4-inch phone while sitting out in a cold car waiting for a Realtor to show my house over the weekend.

The conditions notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. “Investment Trends in the Financial Advisory Profession: Key Implications for the Investment Management Industry” lives up to its promotional email.

Authors Bob Veres (Inside Information) and Robert Huebscher (CEO of Advisor Perspectives) wrote a page-turner filled with some provocative ideas for mutual fund and ETF marketers focusing on the elusive RIA channel. The study is based on more than 1,000 responses from independent and dually-registered financial advisors to a September 2011 survey of readers of both publications.

My thanks to Huebscher for providing a review copy of the report. My intent with this post isn’t to skim the cream of what was learned. I want to respect the fact that the report is being sold. (Contact Sales [at] AdvisorPerspectives [dot] com for an executive summary and more information.)

Rather, I call your attention to a theme underlying the report. The research points to a reversal underway in how the industry had been evolving prior to 2008. Since the financial crisis, independent advisors have begun to work differently and the information that advisors need and value from asset managers has changed.

Most Advisors Are Tactically Active

At the highest level, “one of the study’s most significant results” was the high percentage—83%—of advisors who planned to make a tactical shift in the allocations of their clients’ portfolios to asset classes or investment vehicles in the next three months. As an example, the graph below from the executive summary illustrates the change envisioned for large cap equity allocations.What had been disparaged by “mainstream advisors” as market timing prior to 2008 is now common practice, the study notes.

A strength of this study for asset management marketers is that it consistently points out the implications of serving the information needs of “tactically active” advisors. Its insights should help marketing communications align their output with the information that independent advisors seek. (Also see an August 2010 Rock The Boat Marketing post “What One Advisor Wants From Asset Managers.”)

What’s more, the report says that its findings may suggest how other distribution channels will be selecting and managing investments in the near future.

Investment Screening Based On Data

In the decade or so leading up to 2008, firms’ research analysts increasingly relied upon models to build recommended fund lists and as advisors heightened their reliance on that due diligence, quantitative values—funds with at least four or five stars from Morningstar, Morningstar style boxes, assets under management, expense ratios, etc.—were used to screen the contenders from the also-rans.

While few RIAs have home office support in the form of analysts and approved lists, they earned a reputation for being even more quant-based and for doing their own mad number-crunching to evaluate funds.

One result, noted by the research: 95% of all mutual fund inflows can be attributed to a Morningstar star rating of 4 or 5.

As a digital marketer, I’ve cheered the use of data-driven screeners, often delivered via the Web. They are an objective way of surfacing funds that might otherwise not be considered. Definitely an improvement over a focus fund list that was the result of a non-transparent business agreement between a national account and an asset manager.

However, in that screen-reliant New World, many of us wondered about the future value of brand and other communications, whether in introducing a new or different (translation: doesn’t fit in a style box) mutual fund or trying to build institutional awareness.

A Shift Toward The Qualitative

But the market meltdown of 2008 has prompted a change that’s underway, according to what this research is reporting. The data suggest that independent advisors are emphasizing more qualitative factors. “Raw performance” continues to be important, the report says, but in the context of investment diversification and correlation. And, advisors are doing their own evaluations of a manager’s investment process and those evaluations are ongoing.

What is the most important investment characteristic when choosing investments for a client’s portfolio? A manager’s investment process tops the list of advisor survey respondents, as shown in the pie chart I created below. The Morningstar rating is dead last.

“Fewer than 10% included the Morningstar star rating among their top three fund selection criteria, and 33% ranked it last. Only 18% indicated that a fund’s track record was their most important criteria; 44% included it in their top three. Just 39% counted a manager’s track record among their top three criteria.”

The finding “that fewer than 50% of advisors in the 2011 sample ranked a fund’s investment performance, or the manager’s performance, as one of the most important criteria for selecting a mutual fund for client portfolios” would have “astonished” an observer just four years ago, notes the report.

Time To Rethink The Fact Sheet Template?

Consider this report and then consider the most basic of your product communications: the fact card or fact sheet.

One of the appeals of digital communicating is that routine updates can be templated and the data refreshed in an automated way. Mutual fund and ETF product communications especially lend themselves to a systematic approach. It’s not exactly set it and forget it, of course, because of fund events and disclosures that evolve over time.

But the elements of a fund sheet are fairly static, aren’t they? The Growth of $10,000 mountain chart (requiring a lot of space!), the Morningstar style box and star rating, lots of performance data and a paragraph or two about the objective or strategy. It may be time for a new template.

Note: According to the research, Morningstar may be ahead of asset managers in anticipating evolving needs. While it notes the diminishing relevance of Morningstar stars and style boxes, it says Morningstar’s new Global Fund Reports, introduced in November 2011 as forward-looking analyst ratings, are likely to be relied upon by advisors for due diligence.

Focus On Reducing Downside Risk

Across their answers to multiple questions about investment vehicle and asset classes employed, frequency of portfolio changes, etc., the advisors make it known that their focus is on reducing downside volatility in client portfolios—and on staying on top of what’s happening that could threaten their clients’ exposure.

“Investing is fundamentally about risk management,” the survey quotes one respondent as saying. This “seems to reflect the difference in mindset today from five years ago, when the response would likely have been: ‘investing is fundamentally about returns.’”

There are quite a few takeaways from the research (including some new ideas on RIA segmentation) but none is more crystal clear than this one. If your product communications are more about returns than risk management, they may need a post-2008 reboot.

Content marketing and social media weren’t mentioned once in the report (and yet I’m recommending the research anyway!) but they are implied. Advisors care vitally about your money managers’ process, especially in the “go anywhere” funds they are more likely now to embrace, according to the research.

To satisfy advisors’ continuous need for information, today’s asset managers need more than run-rate product communications and well orchestrated presentations. They need to be visible and in the mix with real-time interpretations and analyses.

Finally, this report provides reason to be optimistic if you’re marketing a small or new asset manager. Take pains to explain your value proposition and your process, make sure others are aware of it and your prospects may be good.

Don’t you just love it when the people mobilize? Lately, we’ve seen the power of the people with the OccupyWallStreet protests, the Verizon customers and supporters forcing Verizon to withdraw plans to charge a $2 fee…and then there was today.

Today was an awesome demonstration of community organization at work. I spent most of the day online, including doing research. Sure, it was an inconvenience landing on sites that were on strike in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Privacy) and PIPA (Protect IP), two provocative bills pending in the Congress. But God love them, they’re supporting what they believe in.

(Oh and me, too, I signed the petition and let my congressmen know that I oppose censorship and regulation that would threaten innovation on the Web. I’ve been following this discussion a while and I don’t see any good that can come of this legislation for users of the Internet.)

But while inspired by these examples, let’s dial it back a bit and re-focus on this business, the investment industry. There’s a lower-profile and lower-key demonstration planned for this Friday that you might want to check out.

Let’s Give The Platform A Chance

Last week Mike Barad, Morningstar’s business manager for the Financial Communications business, proposed an experiment to take place Friday.  

“Many of us love the Google+ platform, but the audience just isn’t there yet…” wrote Barad on a Google+ post. “As a result, we continue posting to multiple platforms in a rather inefficient way.” This Friday, he suggested, instead of posting to other social sites, let’s all go cold turkey and post to just Google+.

“The result should be a day with abnormally high activity on G+, which would be a sort of simulation for what the platform could look like in the future,” Barad said.

The suggestion was directed to advisors but I’m taking part, too. I like the possibilities for asset managers to use Google+ to communicate with advisors and vice versa. Plus, I am among the millions who believe there is no underestimating Google’s plans for its social platform, especially now that it’s launched Google Search, plus Your World. It’s time to begin to master it.

Ordinarily I love starting a Friday morning on Twitter when I can. But not this Friday. This Friday is #GDay (yes, Google+ uses hashtags, too) so Google+—and not Twitter—is where you’ll find me. If you’re interested in “listening” to advisors and others in the ecosystem while getting to know Google+ a little better, you should check it out, too. Barad’s page is probably the best place to start.

I escorted a loved one onto the World Wide Web over the holidays. It truly was my pleasure and honor, after years of his enduring my stories about Websites, RSS feed-reading, analytics, apps and podcasts. He—a brilliant guy and voracious newsreader who haunts the libraries but was able to spend only limited time on their desktops—finally could be online at home via his own 3G iPad and I was eager to help him.

Well, I had romanticized the Training Day. When the time for instruction came, followed by telephone calls and follow-up tutorials, I realized how much I’ve taken for granted about how different online content consumption is and how customization transforms the experience. Not to mention how frustrating the information exchange can be, for both parties involved.

It’s taken me a while to recover (yes, I think I’ll blame the trauma for the delay in publishing a Rock The Boat Marketing blog post in 2012) but I want to share with you some thinking that emerged from it.

The online content consumer has so many awesome options. That’s what I wanted to demonstrate to my newbie. The biggest difference? The ability to arrange for content he cares about to come to him, as opposed to him scouring paper publications looking for something interesting.

The flipside—what these content gathering and filtering options imply for the content producer—is what I take a stab at in the table that follows.

Reality Check

Before the mainstream use of social media and apps and RSS feed readers, etc., brands could focus on their own messages and their own delivery and promotion devices, control it all and do just fine. But given how content is discovered, followed and subscribed to today, a reality check is in order.

Brands, including mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) companies, need to consider how waves of online content consumers are being exposed to pieces of their work first and to the brand second, if at all. Realizing that content is found more often by topic, keyword or via endorsers necessarily forces a brand to be more gregarious and less set in its own ways. (On a related topic, see my July 1, 2009 post “Mind The Keywords—’Unfortunate Market Anomaly’ Won’t Help Search Traffic Find You.”)

I understand that my unregulated, unrestricted use of the social media and the Web is different from your experience as a corporate marketer blocked from accessing many, many sites. But I see too few of your firms’ content in the mix, where I go online and in the tools and services I use to extract industry-relevant content.

In this still new year, I urge you to consider the multiple ways people will encounter your content. I think there’s more for you to do to leverage your content, available content insights and your relationships with those who value your content.

What firm doesn’t crave content loyalists (the first row in the table)? But think of the others—those who wind their way around to you via a piece of your content (the subsequent rows in the table)—as prospective content converts. They represent your business’ potential for growth. Their path to you via your content deserves your close attention.

There’s nothing profound about this table and it’s not meant to be comprehensive. It’s just a simplified approach to thinking through some ways in which content is discovered and consumed and to what effect. I submit it for your review and comment, those of you who can. As always, if you’re not authorized to comment online, send me an email if you have a thought.

How Content Is Consumed And What It Means For Producers

The very best holiday wishes to you! Here’s to an even better, brighter 2012.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the 2011 content consumption insights being shared by an array of Websites. For example, Storify published its list of the top 10 tweets quoted/embedded in 2011. Closer to home, Investment News and By All Accounts are among those sharing their Top 10s.

My once-a-week blogging doesn’t come close to the output of most of the sites doing the sharing but I want to give back, too, by showing you what this blog’s readers have gravitated to. After looking at the year’s worth of data, I thought I might also give my underperformers a second chance.

If you’re spending some time over the holidays catching up on asset management marketing blogs, cheers to you. I hope you find something you to read in these lists. I’ll be back with a fresh post the week of Jan. 2, 2012.

The 5 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2011 For Asset Management Marketers

1. 10 Examples Of Mutual Fund, ETF Content In The Wild (May 4, 2011)
2. A Look At PIMCO’s Content-Dense Mobile App (May 12, 2011)
3. Where LPL, Morgan Stanley Social Media Plans Diverge (October 28, 2011)
4. Ameriprise Taps LinkedIn Connections To Make Advisor Referrals (November 16, 2011)
5. 10 Takeaways After Tracking Advisors’ Tweets For 2 Years (August 4, 2011)

Overlooked, Rejected, Despised: The 5 Least Popular Posts

1. Lead With Your Best (February 6, 2011)
2. As You Head Out In The World As a Digital Marketer (June 15, 2011)
3. When Data Tells The Story Better (May 10, 2011)
4. Will Municipal Concerns Spike Search Interest, Create Opportunity? (January 14, 2011)
5. 25 Content Highlights of 2011 (December 14, 2011—I’m hoping it’s on this list just because it’s only a week old)

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.

Uh, slight correction. Who found these? Not me, more often than not. I need to send a shout-out to the tribe of people whose content recommendations I follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, SlideShare and a little bit of Facebook. By riding along with them, I benefit from the content my connections discover and they have excellent taste.

1. Just Be Sure You’re Consulting

Six days into the new year, I read Paul Ford’s The Web Is A Customer Medium and it hasn’t been far from my mind since. You can just scan most of the content recommendations that follow, breeze through them and get the gist of what they’re about. This post may ask more of you but please keep with it.

The overarching premise is that people who use the Web expect to be consulted by brands and other entities that use the Web. If you have an online agenda that doesn’t consider the online community, there is going to be blowback. People will want to know, Ford says, “Why wasn’t I consulted?” And that’s not going to go well.

We are in an industry where I fear that many firms still think they can control what happens online. There’s a reason this is first on my list of endorsements.

2. Why Marketers Said Aha This Year

This kind of thing doesn’t always work but Daniel Burstein, director of editorial content for MECLABS, got some terrific perspectives when he interviewed attendees and speakers at Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Summit 2011 in November.

The question: What was your aha moment of 2011?

3. How Mobile’s Different

One advantage of blogging is that the blogger can take the space he or she needs to do the job right. That’s definitely the case in this thoughtful, timely explanation 10 Ways Mobile Sites Are Different from Desktop Web Sites by Shanshan Ma on the UX Matters Website.

4. A Powerful Way To Convey The Reach Of A Disaster

We loved them in 2009 and in 2010 but in 2011, some people turned on infographics and data visualizations. While it’s true that many were little more than illustrated data sheets, some data-based interactives took the art to a higher level.

The Japan Quake Map animation of more than 1,600 earthquakes in March is a superb example of how visualized data conveys information in ways that words can’t. This couldn’t have been a planned project, of course. Notice how function trumps design. Amazing. (Click on the image to go to the site to play.)

5. Why Signals Are At A Premium

One focus this year was on understanding social signals and the role of social networks in influencing people. Google’s need to capture those social signals as a means of continuing to produce relevant search results was believed to be the motivation behind Google+.

A lot happened, including the launch of Google+, after the February publication of this The Next Generation of Ranking Signals post. Nonetheless, it provides excellent background on how relatively new metrics will influence search engine ranking signals.

6. A Gallery Of Steve Jobs, The Marketer

What was so great about Apple CEO Steve Jobs? You know that some whippersnapper will ask that someday soon. Refer him or her to this awesome collection of the brand’s history from the first Macintosh computer to the iPad 2.

7. Done With 2012? File This Away For Next Year

I liked the thinking and the step-by-step breakdown of this presentation by Jamie Steven, vice president, marketing at SEOMoz on building a 2012 marketing budget. It all comes together on Slide #38.

8. When You Care, Really Care About Usability

Have you hugged a designer today? Every honest marketer recognizes the significant if sometimes nuanced contributions that design makes to communications effectiveness.

This post from the UK Website UserFocus.com expands on how four visual design principles—contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity—improve usability. The examples in the image shown here illustrate ways in which contrast can be used to distinguish primary action from a secondary action.

9. Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Unless you’re willing to subscribe on the spot, you’ll have to register for limited access to this article from the UK’s Marketing magazine site. It’s worth it for the insights on what four financial directors (CFOs) have to say about marketing and marketers. Evidently, some think that spending an afternoon “strategizing” with an advertising agency is on par with taking a lunch break.

10. There’s Listening And Then There’s Predictive Analytics

Online asset management communicators compete for investor and advisor attention with an array of wily content providers, including those who are getting very sophisticated about the content they’re serving, to whom and during what part of the day.

Watch the full Gigaom interview with Bloomberg Digital head Kevin Krim. Here’s just a taste: “The company now collects over 100 data points for every page a reader loads, based on what they interact with, what time of day it is, etc.—more than a terabyte of data every day in aggregate—and the team has 15 different algorithms running in parallel to make recommendations for what that reader might want to see next.”

11. Blogging Is This Advisor’s Job

When I tweeted this blog post How Do You Have So Much Time to Blog?, I went a little further than I usually do. I admitted to a wee crush on investment advisor Josh Brown.

Yes, I follow Brown (@reformedbroker) on Twitter because he has a way with 140 characters. But this post sent me over the edge because I think he nails the argument for why a financial advisor should blog, and in his inimitable style. No one should have any questions after reading this.

12. The Photo That Launched A Thousand Remixes

Online mischief-makers took every opportunity they could this year to remind us that you take your chances when you upload an image to the Web.

When the White House shared this photo of the national security team awaiting news of the Osama bin Laden raid, Photoshoppers got to work adding their own touches to the famous Situation Room photo. No one at the grave meeting actually wore Princess Beatrice’s hat, for instance.

You can see some of the alterations to this lone piece of content and additional background on the meme on this Know Your Meme page.

13. The Need For Speed

One might argue that working on a Formula One racing pit crew and working for an asset management firm are at two ends of a spectrum. Granted, the need for speed isn’t quite the same for the mutual fund/ETF marketer.

But a pit crew’s rules for creating a speed culture, as outlined in this Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG) post by Stephen Denny, are as relevant to your work as they are motivational. My favorite line: “Obstruct a view or take one unneeded step and crucial time is lost.”

14. Struggling With Conversions? What If You Could…

I couldn’t sleep the night I read this Keyword-Level Demographics post because of the possibilities it suggests. Even if you’re not into analytics, please give it a look. It’s about combining Facebook data and search referrers in Web analytics to get to demographics at the keyword level. With that information and analysis, you should be able to understand the keywords that lead to conversions for certain personas. OMG.

15. Neighborhood Crime? Home Buyers Want To Know

Home sellers don’t need any more piled on them. But this crime data mashup provided by Trulia is too good not to include.

As the FastCoDesign post explains, Trulia took available data and made something valuable to and at the same time relevant to their core business. This is a great example of content marketing.

16. But 7 Is Good, We Can Work With 7

Anticipation, risk-taking, pairing. These are three of the seven things that algorithms cannot yet do, justifying the continuing existence of human editors. This is according to Eli Pariser writing on the Harvard Business Review blog network. Why seven? Why not a nice round number like 10 or 100? Try not to think about it.

17. The Communications Evolution Of Portfolio Managers

You’ll recognize the Type One and Type Two portfolio managers described in this Interloping blog’s perspective. I mean, does this sound like anyone you work with? “They are pissed when the marketing department drags them out of their cave before they’ve finished investigating a fishy footnote in the last quarterly statement.”

That’s Type Two, the gruff non-communicative portfolio manager lovable for his commitment to his work.

I understand the point the blogger is making about the correlation between bad public speaking and strong investment performance. Still, I have to think that public communicating—whether in person or via social network participation—is going to have to be a core competency in the future. This is a period piece. The days are ending for money managers to be all about the analysis and not about the communicating.

18. Logos 2011-style

Have you ever wasted hours on the Web trying to get some sense of what’s new in logo design? Not this year, thanks to Stock Logos’ comprehensive discussion of logo trends, including color, gradients and some applied terms I never heard of. Juvi? Dandruff?

19. Taking 24/7 Seriously

Years ago when my mother couldn’t find my father she’d call the fire station and asked the firefighters to send my Dad home. Fast forward to today. If you’re ever looking for my Dad’s third daughter, you’ll probably find me here, monitoring the Internet nerve system using the Online Schools’ State of the Internet Now! data extravaganza.

It’s an ever-updating page of data counting what’s going on right now on the Web, on Google, on YouTube, on Amazon, on Twitter…you get the idea. Clicking on the image below will take you there.

Created by: Online Schools

20. Think of #Occupy As An API

Even if you didn’t experience it on the streets yourself, no doubt you read plenty about the Occupy Wall Street movement. This Atlantic article is one of the smartest pieces I saw. The writer explores the concept of #OWS not just as a physical movement but as a hypothetical API.

As an API, the components of the movement, which writer Alexis Madrigal breaks down, can be taken and applied by others in other settings. Long but excellent.

21. Tell Us How You Really Feel

And now for something completely contrary: The Social Graph Is Neither. Maciej, the author of this post, takes issue with the characterization of the connections being made and exposed today by “primitive” social networks as a social graph. And, he substantiates his views.

I Laughed Out Loud when I read these two sentences: “Imagine the U.S. Census as conducted by direct marketers–that’s the social graph. Social networks exist to sell you crap.”

22. This Guy Could Sell Anything

What seemed like just hours after Facebook announced its timeline capability (yet to be fully rolled out), enterprising technology strategist Eric Leist created a video that mashed up an actual scene from Mad Men and a fake Don Draper Facebook timeline. Brilliant—and a case study of creating content so good, so smart and so quickly that it deserves to go viral.

Click on the image below to watch the video on YouTube. I wish you could stay here and watch it but embedding has been disabled.

23. Drilling Down Into Reader Behavior

Who Are The Most Read Authors? is a fascinating analysis by bookmarking service Read It Later using anonymized data from May through October. Author popularity (as measured by the number of articles saved using Read It Later and returned to), content length (longform versus blog) and loyalty are examined as measures of content effectiveness.

Sorry, no investment companies or financial bloggers have broken into the all-top list. However, the post also looked at a more narrow set of writers–those just from the New York Times–and economist Paul Krugman towers over all other Times’ writers as the most-saved. Financial content readers are out there and they’re bookmarking.

24. Apple’s Purposeful Email

What, specifically, can marketers learn from Apple? I know it’s the second mention of Apple, but I just have to include this Flowtown infographic tracking the “trademark characteristics” of an Apple email.

25. How It All Began

Ah, Internet history. Check out this list of screenshots showing what Amazon, the New York Times and six other major Websites looked like when they launched. Note that for your far superior experience, I’m linking to the one-page view versus the slide show gallery. Nice of Mashable to give us the option.

26. …And Yours?

And, per what I learned from #1, this is where I consult you. What online content made a lasting impression on you this year? Please, please chime in below.

Twitter, the asset management industry’s favorite social network, made some sweeping changes today. While you can count on all of the usual suspect sites (and I say that with gratitude) to provide comprehensive coverage and analysis, I’ll weigh in here with a few comments for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers.

You could watch the video, too, although I got very little out of it beyond a touch of vertigo.

Limited To Users Of Twitter Properties

Twitter is significantly changing—I’d say improving—the experience on Twitter.com. The design will be rolled out to accounts over the next few weeks. One goal was to provide a consistent experience, regardless of the device being used to access Twitter. Changes have already been applied to Twitter’s iPhone, Android apps and to the mobile Twitter.com site. Twitter for iPad and TweetDeck, the desktop app that Twitter owns, also will be updated.

You have to pay attention because you want to be certain that your brand is taking advantage of what it can do now. But, remember that many millions of Twitter account users (it was the majority before Twitter acquired TweetDeck) access Twitter through third-party apps (notably, HootSuite on the desktop). They’re pretty convenient and many people rarely find a reason to go more than once to a profile page on Twitter.

In that respect, I find some of the language Twitter uses to describe these changes as a bit of a stretch. “Visitors to your home page” means one thing when we’re talking about visitors to the home page of your Website, something less when we’re talking about people landing on your Twitter profile page.

By providing additional information on Twitter profile pages, Twitter probably will succeed in driving more eyeballs. Just remember that many more eyeballs will be oblivious to whatever is happening on a Twitter property. Actually, the people who repeatedly consult your profile page may be a new segment for you: lurkers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Brand Pages

Remember when you lost all that real estate on your Twitter profile background? You will be getting it back and more with today’s introduction on Twitter’s advertising blog of “brand pages.”

The brand pages are an enhanced version of the Twitter profile page so you’ll probably have to take another swing through Compliance but the visit should be short and sweet.

Just a couple of dozen advertising partners, charities and individuals were part of the launch today, and @AmericanExpress the only financial company. Here’s what you’ll be able to do when Twitter eventually enables the capability for your page:

• Take advantage of space for a large header image for your logo, tagline and any other visuals.
• Promote the tweet you want to the top of your page’s timeline. It will appear auto-expanded so that visitors can see the photo or video content that you link to.

Twitter’s Re-design

There’s more detail and more to see about what’s been done with the design of Twitter. As suggested by the icons above, the experience has been divided into five states or tabs.

• Home—The home state can be expanded to show more information such as replies, retweets and embedded photos and videos. Great. By the way, for those of you who have blogs, Twitter now makes it possible to easily embed tweets into the blog, especially if you’re using WordPress or Posterous (are any asset managers using Posterous? Would love to hear).

• Connect—Previously, the @ sign referred to Mentions but it’s apparently being referred to now as Connect. With a few of the Connect enhancements, Twitter catches up with what the other apps have been able to do for a few years: To learn more about an account and easily follow it and to see an aggregated list of accounts that mentioned your account or re-tweeted one of your tweets.

This will be interesting. As Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group, told Computerworld, “It will kind of put Twitter into a bit of a new space, transforming it from a tool that people use to make quick informative/snarky comments to more of a home for their informative/snarky comments.”

I monitor what’s directed publicly using the @ to asset manager Twitter accounts and some of you can’t like some of what’s tweeted to you. Previously, you may have been comforted by the fact that the reach of the tweet was limited. This changes that because all of those off-the-wall (as well as the on-the-mark) tweets are going to be aggregated right here on the Connect tab.

Twitter seems to be improving the reporting on accounts that favorite a tweet or add your account to a list. Hopefully, this heightened visibility will help drive list usage. I love the ability to create public and private Twitter lists and hope you’re using them, too.

• Discover—This tab is visual and accommodates inline viewing of tweeted images and videos. Even so, it may have limited appeal for Twitter users who already rely on something else (RSS feed reading or mobile apps like Flipboard or Zite) for discovering content.“The more you use it, the better it gets,” Twitter said in a tweet about Discover. Hmm, that sounds a lot like Zite.

Discover also shows what your connections do with the accounts they follow. See who else your connections follow, their lists and what tweets they favorite, retweet or reply to most frequently. For those of you who use Twitter to learn more about your community, having this information at the ready should be very helpful when checked consistently. Lurking? Not when you’re doing it.

• The Me and Tweet tabs look mostly unchanged.

That’s it for now. I plan to keep an eye on the reception that today’s changes get. If something new surfaces or I missed something, I’ll be back to update this post. Naturally, if you have something to say, please do so below.

Inside your company, I know there’s lots of discussion about the rationale for the new social stuff. That’s good because outside, the drumbeat continues—for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers and for all marketers. The old stuff isn’t as impressive as it used to be.

I submit two pieces of content for your consideration today.

First, specific to the investment industry, is I’m Not A Financial Professional, But I Play One On TV, an I Heart Wall Street blog post published yesterday. The blogger is Scott Bell, a financial advisor who runs a California-based RIA but keeps his blogging and wealth managing separate. In aggregating six YouTube videos of celebrity commercials over time, the point of the post is to challenge the SEC’s position prohibiting the use of clients in testimonials.

Just to give you a taste, here’s one involving an introduction by Betty White to life insurance policy settlements.

“…The regulators don’t want actual clients on an Investment Adviser’s Linkedin or Facebook page saying stuff like, ‘He’s honest, OR he always takes my call, OR he took time to explain everything…’ That would constitute way too much of an endorsement. Conversely, hiring Mike Dyczko (Dtika’s real last name) to shill an annuity? Totally kosher,” writes Bell.

Uh-oh, A Dumb Marketing Idea?

When I landed on the post and saw what it was about, the first thing I did was search for “marketing.” Because we all know that a Marketing team was behind each and every one of those videos. Somebody in Marketing made the argument, secured the budget, was the staff point person in the celebrity negotiation, went to the shoot, led the celebration of its first airing, maybe drove the posting to YouTube, etc. Luckily, this post didn’t comment on Marketing’s responsibility (culpability?).

Marketing was implied, however, in this line: “And it must work, or else why would companies keep doing it?”

The success of celebrity endorsements across-the-board is an under-studied topic and I have no contribution to make here. But I will opine that for many companies, the authority and budget to execute a celebrity endorsement has represented a coming of age, almost a vote of confidence in the brand that would no doubt be enhanced.

Do the endorsements “work” against articulated goals? It’s a valid question to ask today. And, does the return on investment (ROI) calculation take into consideration the extent to which they “turn off” important constituents? I Heart Wall Street is not alone in his sentiment. Follow some financial advisors on Twitter and you’ll see plenty of snide remarks about the current crop of endorsers.

Authenticity: An Enterprise-Wide Project

Never mind the SEC (easy for me to say, right?), I believe celebrity endorsements are quickly becoming an anachronism. They reek of fakeness at a time when authenticity is what builds trust. With all due respect, did Betty White embody the vision and commitment of the insurance company she’s vouching for? Or, was she available and at the right price—as she was when she also endorsed Q-Tips and Tyco Toys?

And this is pretty much where I ended this post last night until I watched the following video this morning, which you too might find relevant.

In the almost 5-minute video, Nate Elliott, Forrester Research vice president, principal analyst, says he believes there’s a difference between the development of a “new-fashioned” brand and an “old-fashioned” brand. Listen for the different role that Elliott believes Marketing plays in the collaborative building of the new-fashioned brand—and the timing of the branding messages. Not to be a spoiler but where do you think celebrity endorsements fit into a new-fashioned brand model?

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.

How do investors typically look for financial advisors? Offline, they ask their family and friends for referrals. Online, they have probably used search engines or advisor-finder services. By introducing a search via LinkedIn, Ameriprise is acknowledging what lots of consumer research is pointing to—the increasing influence of and trust in social networks and recommendations. This may be a next-gen way of vetting an advisor.

“Find an advisor who is right for you” is the heading on the search page that offers three kinds of search: by location, advisor or team name and via LinkedIn connections.

“The advisor who is right for you is based on the consumer’s comfort and trust, the advisor’s headshot, the proximity of the advisor, whatever credentials are on the Website,” says Joe Rueckert, director of online marketing. The premise of the LinkedIn search is that the consumer whose LinkedIn connections surface an Ameriprise advisor’s name might be further along in the vetting process of finding an advisor who’s “right.”

“This is a referral business,” Rueckert says, “that’s how advisors get clients. And we’ve been saying for a while now that the Web is moving in their favor. Connections don’t just exist in the ether. They’re articulated, especially on LinkedIn.”

I think the Ameriprise site enhancement is worthy of attention for a few reasons.

First, LinkedIn Profiles

This integration is possible only as a result of some smart planning and data architecting. Rueckert and team have been encouraging Ameriprise advisors to create LinkedIn profiles (with Compliance approval and archiving in place) since 2008. Today, more than half of the firm’s 10,000 advisors are on LinkedIn.

The final mile—necessary to be included in the LinkedIn searches—is the inclusion on the LinkedIn profile of a link to the advisor’s personalized (Ameriprise branded and served) Website. Only 20% have taken that step, suggesting that behavior change tends to be more challenging than technology.

“Some advisors don’t see the value, some think that it’s going to take more time, some say their clients aren’t there,” explains Scott Allen, director of interactive marketing.

When I authorized the connection between Ameriprise search and LinkedIn, my results reflected what most mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers might see—dozens of advisors! In Ameriprise usability testing, consumers typically got five or fewer results. As you can see in the screenshot above, the results (you’re seeing just the first) are presented in an attractive display, including a modern-day headshot, a list of areas of focus, links to the LinkedIn profile and to the advisor Website. The default is by alphabetical order of the last name, although searches can be sorted by first name.

The screenshot is of the list view of the search results. In the map view, you’ll see that my first alphabetical result lives in San Francisco, which probably wouldn’t be my first choice as a Chicagoan.

ZIP code advisor searches aren’t available using the LinkedIn search. But performing a ZIP code advisor search from the Ameriprise home page provides a better look at how Ameriprise structures the data describing its advisors—note that the results can be filtered by the amount of assets to be invested and by specializations. That’s smart and truly raises the bar for broker-dealers still offering “office locators” online.

While Rueckert and Allen say they’ve been interested in LinkedIn for a few years, it was only recently that LinkedIn became sufficiently “flexible” with its API. Even then, the coding was more complex and time and cost-consuming than expected.

What About The ROI?

But the time and expense invested aren’t the only competitive barrier Ameriprise enjoys.

“We have good leadership who understands that things are moving so quickly in this space that we have to be considering how the consumers going to change,” Allen says. Lucky for them because there was no way that the Ameriprise team could build an airtight case for what this investment will do for the company or for its advisors.

Based on this example (and I have no business relationship with Ameriprise), I suspect its digital marketers have an advantage that many of you unfortunately lack. For them, an ROI wasn’t a prerequisite to the development and execution of this “experiment” (my word, not theirs).

Let’s break it down. In order to make use of the LinkedIn tie-in, a prospect needs to land on Ameriprise’s site. The likelihood of that happening? It’s probably a function of the strength of the brand. No marketing has been launched in explicit support of this yet.

Of that group, not everyone has a LinkedIn account. Of the group that does, not everyone will want to see what advisors their LinkedIn connections use.

Early Measures

Ameriprise ability’s to measure the search activity is limited. In addition to relying on Web analytics that track traffic to the search page, Rueckert says they’re studying how frequently the LinkedIn search is being used as a percentage of all searches. The percentage of searches that produce zero results should improve over time as more advisors get on board. But no data is collected.

What’s not known is whether this referral interaction will happen. Will one business connection ask another for a perspective on a financial advisor he or she is connected to?

And, the acid test—did this capability produce a lead who materialized and turned into business for an Ameriprise advisor—can’t be proven online. Advisors will have to report that to the Ameriprise team themselves.

Time will tell whether this “works” for Ameriprise. In these early days and based on what Ameriprise has been shared, I’ll offer these observations:

• This is differentiating—and only broker-dealer firms of a certain size could do it.
• Ameriprise has no doubt gained in what they know and understand about LinkedIn, possibly the most important business network for advisors.
• This innovative support for business-building is likely an effective recruiting point for prospective advisors.
• This and their stated interest in communicating via social media ranks Ameriprise as among the social media leaders in the broad investment industry space.

Check it out for yourself. What do you think?

Google+ business pages are ready, Google+ business pages are ready!

The urgency of the news Monday reached my mostly offline family, prompting two calls and a text to be sure that I’d heard. They probably recalled my response/anxiety right around our Fourth of July fishing trip when Google launched Google+. (As in, “Wait a minute, wait, Google launched a social network? This week? I need to get to the Internet.”)

These Google+ announcements have been a bit of a drill as many of us drop everything and hustle to jump through Google’s hoops—including, in my case, having the horizontal Rock The Boat Marketing logo redone to conform to the square space provided on the G+ business pages. By the way, is every brand going to be willing to do that?

I enjoy rushing around, piecing things together and experimenting. And, more to the point for you, my participation isn’t predicated upon strategy refinement, review by Compliance, revision of policies and procedures, additional support from IT, additional staff training, etcetera etcetera.

If your competitive instincts (“We have to get on Google+, everyone else is going to be there”) are making you anxious about getting Google+ on the agenda at your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm, my advice is to relax.

You’re not ready for Google+ and it’s not ready for you. It will be; there’s no way I’d bet against Google’s intent for this social network to “work” and its ability to force the issue by integrating +1 in most of its properties. (For an expansion on this, see “Can Google+ Revolutionize Business?”)

But of course, a first order of business for asset managers will be to figure out—with their solutions providers—how to archive participation on this new social network. Few if any (I just have to hedge this) mutual fund, ETF or broker-dealers will be launching a Google+ business page tomorrow.

Where Google+ Falls Short

Lots of other companies have launched their pages this week and will continue to. But even non-FINRA-regulated brands are finding Google+ inadequate for their basic needs. To be a vibrant network, let alone a “Facebook-killer,” the following are among what needs to be addressed:

• There is no support for multiple users or posting privileges. The account works off a single Gmail address.
• Business pages can’t circle anyone until they’ve been circled first. “Like us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter” campaigns are about to be taken to a different level as businesses focus on growing the number of circles they’re appearing in. It’s kinda cute right now to see marquee brands in single-digit circles. Yeah, they’re not going to be able to take that for long.
• Custom URLs are not available. For example, check out the address of Dell’s page: https://plus.google.com/117161668189080869053/posts
• Contests and promotions are not allowed. Nope, not a single mention on Starbucks Google+ page.

For more about these and other disappointments for brands, check out a few of these posts. The first, petulant post from an admitted Google+ fanboy Robert Scoble summarizes many but not all of the issues that asset managers will have:

• I Wish I Had Never Heard Of Google+’s Brand Pages
• Commentary on the Scoble post on Google+
• Google Brand Pages Are Lacking But You’ll Make One Anyway
• Why Facebook Is Better For Business Than Google
• Google+ Is Dead

Finding Like-Minded On Google+

Finally, I’ve been lightly posting to Google+ for the last few months. I’ve found and circled lots of my technology and marketing heroes, but there’s been a shortage of people closer to the business interests you and I share. No surprise but still. There are some, and more are likely to straggle in.
You’re welcome to see the people I’m adding to my Recommended Investment Types (so named to be sufficiently broad) circle on my Pat Allen page. You need to find it there because the Rock The Boat Marketing page can’t circle anyone until somebody circles it, (not to appear overly desperate). I make no representations about how active the people in this circle are but, as with any social network, each will lead you to more accounts. You might also try searching for keywords (e.g., mutual funds or ETFs) to see who’s posting.

After addressing and overcoming the archiving challenge, investment companies interested in leveraging Google+ participation will need to both find like-minded brands and people and see activity at a level that warrants ongoing participation. To date, there have been two extreme assessments of Google+: 1. That account creation has occurred at a phenomenal rate (more than 40 million by October) 2. That traffic to the site has plummeted, prompting some to declare it a graveyard.

This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed Google profiles, +1 and Google+ and it’s far from the last time we’ll be discussing Google’s take on social. I don’t know how slow things progress in your firm but for most of you, I’d say that you can walk and not run to talk about Google+ for your business. You do need to get there, just not this week.