BlackRock Explains Its Sponsored Update Success

One of the best things a company can do is show its customers how other customers are using its products. Have you ever seen the GoPro videos?

Even though Twitter, Facebook and YouTube aren’t business-to-business platforms, I wish they’d support the financial services user group, as LinkedIn does. Most social stuff does not come naturally to finserv marketers, and the world isn’t necessarily waiting for socially shared financial content. A little help can go a long way in maximizing what can be large budgets and promising careers.

While we wait for the others to step up with specialized training, LinkedIn continues on its merry way producing events (such as FinanceConnect happening this week in New York and today online), ebooks (see The Sophisticated Finance Marketer Vol. 2: Balancing Real-Time News with Planned Editorial Content) and Webinars.

The latest of the Webinars—How BlackRock Became A Sponsored Updates Superstar—was held yesterday afternoon. I've embedded the 57-minute presentation below.

This isn’t all benevolence on LinkedIn’s part, of course. In its earnings announcement last week, the firm reported that Sponsored Updates, its primary content marketing product, account for more than 40% of its overall Marketing Solutions revenue of $119 million.

That’s a big improvement for the quarter (although Marketing Solutions revenue overall was down from the fourth quarter of 2014), helped along by the growing content consumption on LinkedIn and the acquisition and integration of Bizo. Despite LinkedIn’s legacy as a job-hunters site, there’s eight times more engagement with content on the site than with jobs, according to yesterday’s Webinar moderator Senior Global Product Marketing Manager Selin Tyler.

But this slide from the LinkedIn Market Opportunity deck (this link opens a PDF) will give you an idea of how LinkedIn sizes the opportunity. There’s more to go.

Content That Serves A Purpose

In this space, LinkedIn is marketers’ top social focus, largely because that’s what the majority of financial advisors are paying attention to. Every mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm can establish a LinkedIn company page, post organic updates to it and hope to build followers and engagement. And, that will go so far. Those with a promotional budget can access LinkedIn’s sponsored updates for greater, targeted reach and visibility.

What can be expected of a sponsored update program? LinkedIn asked none other than BlackRock, one of its pioneering firms in the program since 2013, to sit for a Q&A.

I recommend this discussion to you not for its support of a LinkedIn product but for the insights provided on how to “craft” (a word used often) and manage content created for a purpose. It’s obvious that presenters Ann Hynek, managing editor of the BlackRock blog, and Lorin Suslow, social media marketing strategist in charge of the LinkedIn paid media program, have thought every detail through. Whether you’re a sponsored update advertiser or an organic update publisher, you’re likely to benefit from this discussion. My takeaways follow.

Planning

BlackRock sponsored updates are sourced from the BlackRock blog, which is by far the most prolific blog in the industry (and the most aggressive about seeking comments—see this post). Its focus is on investor education, retirement and pending market events that support BlackRock’s objective of raising retail awareness. Products are typically not mentioned.

Sometimes within firms, there can be tension between the editorial function of a blog and the needs of those in advertising. Suslow described a content planning collaboration that optimizes what’s needed for marketing. In addition to delivering on educational goals, content created needs to support the BlackRock and iShares brand themes. She looks at the available evergreen content and the planned content and performs a gap analysis, the result of which may require going back to Hynek and the blog contributors with additional requests.

Last year’s campaigns performed at four times the benchmark, Suslow said, due to the quality and variety of content offered via the sponsored updates.

Targeting

BlackRock’s best-performing sponsored update, shown below, produced 10 times the average CTR. I should say that I cobbled this screenshot together based on the organic update I found in BlackRock’s feed from November 2014. I’m not the audience BlackRock would have been targeting. What firm wouldn’t have been happy with the number of organic likes and comments shown on this update?

Such engagement is a function of reach and, to some extent, the number of followers. BlackRock uses sponsored updates to amp up both. The precision targeting available to target financial advisors and other professionals and/or people in key life stages are what drives the engagement “much higher” than on the organic updates, Suslow said.

Next up for BlackRock: Suslow said the firm soon will be using LinkedIn’s new Lead Accelerator. Lead Accelerator is a remarketing-like product using LinkedIn display and social ads, including sponsored updates, to nurture BlackRock Website visitors as they traverse the Web.

The Composition Of An Update

Pay attention to these marketers’ comments on the consideration given to each element of the update, and the continual adjustment, including A/B testing, involved. When something’s not working, they say, 90% of the time it’s the headline that needs help. It’s the content just 10% of the time, often involving updates that mention product.

Analytics

Suslow says she checks on the program’s performance twice a day. LinkedIn-provided analytics include impressions (is the target audience large enough?), engagement rate (a measure of campaign health and ad content health) and performance relative to the update benchmark. Each post is ranked as a strong performer, viral performer or poor performer.

Given that the updates all link to BlackRock’s blog, Web analytics are no doubt part of the performance analysis, although nothing was shared about that. I also would have liked to have learned about their analysis of likes, comments and shares, and the effect of influencers on virality.

Engagement Leaders And Popular Topics

Toward the end of the hour, program moderator Tyler walked through a few slides showing the best-performing sponsored updates of the quarter.

OppenheimerFunds, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were among the leaders, ranked by engagement rate.

She also shared a list of topics producing the most engagement (clicks+likes+comments+shares) among financial advisors in the first quarter of 2015.

How Social Media Is Influencing Institutional Investor Investment Decisions

If your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm markets to institutional investors, you’ll want to check out social media survey results that “astounded” the research firm and “awed” an asset management marketer. Social media, the data suggests, is making a difference not only in how institutional investors source information but in the subsequent action they take, too.

In November and December 2014, Greenwich Associates, working with LinkedIn, fielded an online survey of 256 global institutional investors including 100 in North America, 105 in Europe and 51 in the Asia Pacific. The survey targeted decision-makers and influencers of investment decisions at their institution (top three titles: chief investment officer, portfolio manager, investment analyst) who used digital platforms at least once in the past year to learn about financial topics related to their investing role.

The global cut of the results was the focus of a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Webcast last week, whose replay you can listen to below. In addition to Greenwich and LinkedIn presenters, Legg Mason’s Director and Head of Global Web Services Kerry Ryan presented best practices and results to date of some LinkedIn success using sponsored update campaigns to target institutional investors.

A report on the Europe-only survey data is due this week, with a report on the North America results scheduled to be released next month. Expect there to be some differences from the global cut, according to the presenters.  

LinkedIn, Facebook And Twitter

Most surprising to Greenwich’s Managing Director Dan Connell and Ryan was that one-third of investors surveyed said they’d taken information learned via social media to start a discussion with or choose to work with a particular asset management firm. This is the first work to document this, I'm fairly certain, and the research may open many eyes.

As he reviewed the results, Connell seemed delighted to report that LinkedIn scored as the preferred social media source, with 48% of all institutional investors using the platform. The first slide showing the usage of the social networks even grays out all but LinkedIn.

In my opinion, such parochialism—and as interesting as it was, the inclusion of a happy LinkedIn advertiser as part of the program—devalues the independence of the research. The work also includes useful insights on investors’ reliance on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and can serve a higher purpose than just to support interest in LinkedIn. The following is a screenshot of one of the slides, with annotations added by me.

One surprise not discussed, for example: Almost half of institutional investors (47%) say they use Facebook to learn about investment products/services. This is slightly higher than those who use LinkedIn for that purpose (45%). The finding is at odds, by the way, with what ShareThis reported about the finance content that gets shared on Facebook. 

Notwithstanding the cheerleading for LinkedIn, the full 56-minute presentation is worth your attention. Here are just a few highlights to pique your interest and prompt you to hit the play button. 

• Nearly all (97%) institutional investors use digital media sources for professional purposes and 79% use social media at work. That's a dramatic change in the last five years, Connell noted.
• Institutional investors are turning to social media for insights, opinions and content relevant to their investing roles. And, those insights are influencing decision-making.
• The survey provides four answers related to investors’ interest in asset management firm content and executives specifically, and other answers related to investment product and services are relevant, too. Are you working with executives who are dragging their heels about whether they need to have a social media (probably LinkedIn) presence? Data in this table, which I created to highlight the asset management questions, might be helpful.

• Legg Mason’s 22 sponsored updates have produced an overall 0.48% clickthrough rate and 0.54% engagement rate. Since the start of the year, the company page has attracted 346 new followers. 

Archive Our Emails? LinkedIn-Using Mutual Fund/ETF Employees Push Back

Mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm adoption of social media has hit a bit of a bump in the road. Maybe it was bound to happen.

Overall, employees seem to have been tickled about their firms wading into social media—it wouldn’t have been believed possible when many employees signed on.

But because Marketing has tended to the nitty-gritty of how the corporate social accounts need to be managed, few employees have had intimate knowledge of the long reach of FINRA when it comes to communicating on other domains.

It’s only now that firms are beginning to empower wholesalers and other employees to actively participate (more than the establishment of a profile) on LinkedIn, the rest of the firm is being introduced to the cold hard fact that business communications on social networks fall within the purview of Compliance.

Based on multiple conversations I’ve had with marketers over the last several weeks, some employees object to Compliance requiring them to use their business email addresses as their primary email address on LinkedIn. And, some smart at the idea that all those communications will be archived by the firm.

Perhaps it’s an overstatement to appropriate the Gartner hype cycle chart here. Employee expectations have never been inflated, and I doubt there’s deep disillusionment now. But learning the implications of participation is reportedly giving employees pause and even stopping a few in their tracks. Those who insist on total control are opting out of LinkedIn altogether.

The whole "activation" phase leading to enlightenment and productivity is not going as smoothly as hoped. 

This discussion finds firms assuming some black-and-white positions (for registered employees) and navigating a gray area for non-registered employees.

I’ve reached out to three leading social media archiving vendors to get a better feel for how firms across the board are balancing FINRA requirements, Compliance and IT issues, and employee concerns. 

Since the beginning, the archivers have embraced the need to educate the market (see this 2011 report) and their contributions here are yet another example. None of their comments can take the place of legal advice, of course. Below you’ll also see comments from Blane Warrene, a friend and someone familiar with best practices from his work as co-founder of Arkovi, since acquired by RegEd.

Hope these help.

2 Approaches To 'A Lively Conversation’

From Joanna Belbey, Social Media and Compliance Specialist, Actiance: Financial services is an industry that has regulatory requirements that require firms to capture, archive and make e-discoverable all “business” electronic communications. These requirements are called “recordkeeping” or “books and records.” 

Joanna Belbey, ActianceThe regulators make it quite clear that “content is determinative.” Therefore, it doesn’t matter if it’s a corporate email from a firm-issued device, an instant message on a personal device, an update on a collaboration tool or a post on a social media site, if it’s a business record, it’s subject to recordkeeping requirements.

Firms are challenged to create policies that define the types of business records that will be captured and to use technology to support the policy.

Fifteen to 20 years ago, all firms had to worry about was email. Now the communications landscape is much more complex. To make it even more complex, employees may “channel hop,” i.e., have a conversation that starts on the phone, and then moves to email, instant messaging or even social media. In the end, the communications stream may need to be reconstructed so that regulators or litigators may understand the conversation in context.

Recordkeeping polices are always a lively conversation at regulated firms among Legal, Compliance and Risk Departments. The goal is to retain just enough to satisfy regulators, while limiting liability. After all, the more information you retain, the greater the risk that regulators or litigators will find something, and the more expensive it is for archiving and retrieval.

Based on the culture of compliance at a firm, here are two approaches that we’ve seen for InMail within LinkedIn:

1) Some firms elect not to retain InMail. For these firms, personal emails are posted as the primary email address, and non-business-related communications are sent through LinkedIn.

Employees post a message on their profiles such as "I cannot respond to any communications or questions about the financial services industry via LinkedIn. Please use my company email address for all business-related inquiries."

The use of InMail is allowed only to make connections and InMail is not to be used as a broadcast or “blast” medium. Any InMail received that is business-related is forwarded to the company email account and replied to via corporate email only.

This approach relies on clear social media polices, training and judgment on the part of employees. To mitigate the risk of non-compliance with recordkeeping requirements, firms need to put processes in place to spot check adherence to polices. 

2) Most firms elect to retain all InMail. For these firms, company email addresses are typically posted as the primary email address on LinkedIn and all communications (both personal and professional) are sent through LinkedIn. All communications are monitored and retained, regardless of whether the communications are personal or professional. 

The advantage of this approach is that processes are clear cut, can be automated with technology and resemble existing policies around email. The downside is that employees may object to their personal communications being archived and although it meets regulatory requirements, it may increase the risk of liability for the firm.

At the end of the day, every firm is different and will need to create recordkeeping polices and processes based on their culture of compliance and risk tolerance.

Planning To Use The Account? Archive It

From Victor Gaxiola, Customer Advocacy Manager, Hearsay Social, after conferring with the firm’s Head of Legal/Compliance: If the expectation is that LinkedIn will in any way be used for business, then it is appropriate for the business email address to be listed as the primary contact.

However, if the employee plans only to have a static profile, and will not be updating or sharing content that is business-related, then they can use their personal email address. In this case, a firm may ask the employee not to associate with the firm to avoid the risk of sharing a business-related post that would make them liable.

Victor Gaxiola, Hearsay SocialEmployees who push back on the use of a work email address as a primary email address—especially if the activity is being monitored or archived—stems more from a concern that they could be looking for work or applying for jobs, and they don't want any of that activity to be captured.

Use of the work email or personal email does not make any difference in the liability of the firm as much as the content the employees are sharing does.

Regardless of whether they use a personal or a work email address as their primary address, if the registered employee is using LinkedIn for business and is sharing content related to the industry, then the firm has a responsibility to monitor, archive and retain records of the activity. 

It's similar to the use of a private vs. company-sponsored device where the content is determinative—not the medium. This is covered in FINRA Regulatory Notice 11-39 (link opens a PDF).

Client-Facing Is The Test

From Bruce Milne, executive vice president, Socialware: In our experience, employers see a significant risk in regulated employees using LinkedIn for business purposes but using an alternate email address for conducting 1:1 communications. A few not-insignificant fines and censures have been levied against firms that allowed financial advisor-to-client communications to happen through alternate email channels.

FINRA has interpreted any use of LinkedIn for registered employees as "business use," so archiving, post-review and all the other compliance rules apply. 

For non-registered employees, however, the rules become less clear. The distinction that we have typically seen is that employees who are client-facing, who have communications with clients through LinkedIn, must use a firm address and track all communications.

Bruce Milne, SocialwareNon-registered employees who use LinkedIn strictly for personal use may use a personal email, and will not likely be archived (firms don't not want the additional risk of archiving personal information from peoples' social networks unnecessarily).

The technical process of archiving is neither difficult nor particularly expensive, but archiving personal conversations may create reputational, legal or other risks. In this instance, the standard is to require them to not use the name of their employer. 

We have received a few requests now for firms to extend the same access controls and compliance features that we provide to registered employees to all corporate employees on their work desktops, but only for the duration of their workday. If they use social media at work, the firms would like to limit what activities they can do (and monitor for data leakage, etc.)

But in their off-hours, the employees—using their own social network profiles on their own personal devices—are on their own recognizance. 

Best Practice: Acquire Voluntary Attestation

Blane Warrene, co-founder of Arkovi Social Media Archiving, now financial technology speaker and advisor and editor at large of The DigitalFA: There are a couple of challenges here. 

• There is mixed precedent set in U.S. courts regarding who owns the LinkedIn profile in general, as well as contacts acquired during employment with a firm. 
• If an existing LinkedIn account was in place, it is a challenge to try and force the employee to make the business email address primary unless the person is explicitly registered and subject to FINRA supervision and attests voluntarily to use their LinkedIn account for business purposes to the benefit of their employer. You have to also watch how the National Labor Relations Board approaches this as much as any industry regulatory body.
• Blane WarreneIt does open up the need to archive InMail, and that is also a challenge as folks have wide networks beyond the office and often communicate via InMail. This can bump up against myriad state and federal laws, statutes and guidelines.

A best practice would be: 

• Focus on assuring that profiles are set up optimally and compliantly.
• Have a clear policy, legally vetted, on who owns what data on LinkedIn when accounts are being used for business purposes and then acquire voluntary attestation to that policy for all participants.
• Be certain to offer up great tips, techniques and genuine relevant brand content that participants can share to seek engagement from their networks.

What’s It Like To Work At….?

Bill Gross can’t be the only asset management firm employee who’s wondered whether the grass is greener somewhere else. Fortunately for job-seekers inside and outside the investment industry, “careers” videos are becoming prevalent both on LinkedIn Career pages (a paid service) and domains.

(By the way, do you remember when LinkedIn used to publish key statistics about employers, based on roll-ups of individual profiles? At right is a screenshot example of the beta feature in 2009. As its database has grown, this would be even more reliable now. But I digress.)

Of all the storytelling that’s being attempted by digital marketers nowadays, the careers videos are among the best work. It helps to be working with people and emotions.

Which is not to say that these are easy to produce. There are too many stakeholders and too many balancing issues (which locations, which businesses represented, how much diversity is enough) to expect to get these done in short order. Once created, however, they seem to have a fairly long shelf life.

Do you work for a smaller firm? Don’t take a pass just because you don’t do a lot of hiring. These videos are as much about conveying the culture of a firm (important to clients and prospects, too) as they are about appealing to job-seekers. And, as we’ve seen with lots of other online videos, low budget and informal videos can be powerful and effective. Maybe you already have some video that can be repurposed.

Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere? Even if the videos do present an idealized view of a workplace, I’m a sucker for these.

Forward: No To The Status Quo

“We like people who are going to step back and question how things are done,” says Forward CEO Alan Reid. Enough said, although this 2:45 video elaborates.  

Fidelity: The Longest Personal Relationship

Fidelity is a bigger employer than most, which explains why it has a Jobs subdomain and a media library of no fewer than eight videos. My favorite features long-term, blissfully happy employees at a 2013 Employee Service Recognition ceremony. I love everything about this, including the snazzy jazzy music.

Putnam: Smiling And Dialing

Smile and dial, that’s the motto of the “people” people who are on the phones at Putnam. 

They Are Franklin Templeton

Did somebody say “integrity”? Yes, they did, over and over again in this Franklin Templeton video.

AQR: Stimulating Work

On its site, AQR features videos highlighting three employees. This "Why AQR?" video shows a vice president on the global alternative multi-strategy team discussing the stimulating environment, including working side by side with her Wharton undergrad accounting teacher. The videos aren't able to be embedded, just click on the image to go to the video-serving page.

Morningstar’s The Coolest Thing

The assumption of this Morningstar video is that job-seekers are hoping to find a “cool” employer—so Morningstar delivers, along with bagels apparently. 

Baird: Teaching Underwriting

Robert W. Baird makes quite a few culture and employee benefits points in this 2011 profile focused on a single investment banking associate. It’s one of 12 video stories in the Careers section of the Baird site. 

Beach Reading For The Mutual Fund, ETF Marketer

Who cares if the pages get a little soggy? 

Life is good for the mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) digital marketer who finally gets some time on the beach this summer (or on a gently rocking boat) to catch up on the latest ebooks. For your reading pleasure, here’s a guide to the best of what I’ve been downloading lately.

Go Mobile Or Stand Still

While the take-no-prisoners tone of We Are Social’s Social Brands: The Future of Marketing amuses throughout, this ebook is especially strong and relevant on the subject of mobile. 

It elaborates on five suggestions for “better mobile marketing:” 

1. Deliver value: utility, entertainment, or social interaction.
2. Harness mobile context: tailor experiences to the different situations in which people engage.
3. Streamline the experience: adapt content for a range of different devices and connection speeds.
4. Make it portable: enable people to continue their experience across devices, especially when sharing things.
5. Offer varying depths of immersion: e.g., for people with a 30-second work break or with a 30-minute commute. 

Yes, there's a lot more to be done for mobile users by brands, including by asset management firms.

Heavily illustrated, these 127 pages are a fast, provocative read.

Hey Now, No Need To Choke Any Throats

The Marketer: “The site is too slow.”

The IT Guy: “It’s not that the site is slow...but we do have a performance issue.”

Grrr.

If you as a marketer are stumped about what to say next when the conversation heads in this direction, then Limelight Networks’ 103-page “Optimizing The Digital Experience” is for you.

The ebook itself says it’s written for IT staff and leaders, of whom expectations have evolved as more of business has become digital. While IT’s previous job may have consisted of building, managing and integrating content and Web tools, IT is increasingly expected to focus on user experience, this paper says.

“Because digital is becoming such an important part of the business, IT managers are required to think about the end user experience like never before. So when it breaks, you fix it," according to the ebook.

"But is being a firefighter putting focus on performance? Is fixing things when they break a strategy?”

Spoiler alert: No, the break/fix model is not a strategy for managing a technology ecosystem with both external-facing (e.g., Websites) and internal-facing (CRM) digital elements.

While some of the ebook will be of greater value to your IT partners, a chunk of it is a must-read for the digital marketer who realizes he or she needs to be more conversant. You will get a lot out of the first three chapters, which describe the elements of digital performance and the importance of establishing key performance indicators (KPIs). Check out the list of performance testing tools on page 47.

Bored At Work? You Won't Be For Long

KMPG’s Investing in the Future is a sweeping forecast of how the whole of the asset management industry will transform by 2030.

You can see the implications for marketers in just this statement alone: “The industry will have to capture new customers far earlier and keep them longer, by offering products tailored to a younger, less affluent and potentially less financially literate market.”

Oh and then there’s this line, too: “The industry will need to radically change its value proposition to remain relevant in 2030.”

Demographics, technology, environmental consciousness and social values, behavior and ethics all will conspire to shake things up in the coming years, according to KMPG. It takes 80 pages to make its case, and concludes with the top 10 questions for firms to consider.

A beverage with an umbrella might help the medicine go down.

Sales & Marketing 2014

Unlike some of the other ebooks, revenue + associates’ Modern Sales and Marketing Best Practices isn’t going to dazzle you with its layout and graphics. It takes an editorial approach to presenting 10 conversations with leaders including people you likely recognize: HubSpot’s Mike Volpe, MarketingProfs’ Ann Handley and ion interactive’s Scott Brinker.

It’s all relevant and useful, thanks to good questions from Louis Gudema, revenue + associates’ president.

This ebook is freshest on the subject of Sales, specifically social selling, in the interviews with Zorian Rotenberg, Jill Rowley and Nigel Edelshain. They get into some interesting detail.

How To Succeed On LinkedIn

The LinkedIn ebook factory has produced quite a few documents this year. Here are two that you don’t want to miss.

1. The 2014 Professional Content Consumption Report, which LinkedIn bills as “a deep dive into the top content-consuming members on LinkedIn and how marketers can connect with them.” Production of this piece comes at a time when LinkedIn is pedal to the metal on building out its content publishing platform. 

One factoid to bear in mind as you’re preparing your LinkedIn company page updates: The content needs to be mobile-friendly. In Q1 2014, an average of 43% of unique visiting LinkedIn members came through mobile. 

2. Way back in March, LinkedIn presented the idea of a content marketing score as a means of providing companies insight into the impact of content shared or otherwise interacted with on LinkedIn. A ranking of trending content also was introduced, and the content marketing score + trending content became the inspiration for The Dynamic Duo ebook.

As is strangely worded in the video above at 0:11, LinkedIn recognizes that “there may be questions about your content marketing. Questions surrounding your content marketing and how to make it most effective could be causing shadows over your strategy...”

The two enhancements should help brand marketers tune their efforts—or, as the video says, "eradicate uncertainty."

I’d be more enthusiastic if these analytics were made available to every company that took the time to contribute content that enriches LinkedIn’s platform. Unfortunately, both resources are available for customers with a LinkedIn account representative (advertisers with at least $25,000 to spend per quarter, in other words).

Have you downloaded any ebooks you recommend? Before you head to the beach or boat, please suggest them below.