Protected Tweets? Don't Be So Sure

The Twitter account belonging to the business combination of Columbia Management and Threadneedle, made official yesterday, provides the latest illustration of the risks involved in publishing on platforms that are beyond your control. Fortunately, the specific risk in this case is likely non-existent to minimal.

We’ve been lulled into a sense of security about the protection provided by Twitter's offer to “protect" tweets.

In fact, the ability to protect tweets was an important first step in how most mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) firms became comfortable with how Twitter worked. Still today prior to announcing an account to the world, a firm will test its processes and get familiar with the system, sending tweets never meant to be communications for the public.

Other established accounts are tweaking what they’re doing including, as Columbia and Threadneedle did, renaming and even “repurposing” existing accounts. These activities can involve temporarily sidelining accounts by turning the protection on and pivoting the account with a new name, bio and redirected scope.

I'm also aware of a few accounts whose tweets have never been public and use the stream as a sort of private reading list for analysts and other approved followers.

Define Protection

Based on something I spotted yesterday, here's a note about the extent of the protection provided by Twitter training wheels.

Curious whether there was a new Twitter account handle to go with the Columbia/Threadneedle deal, I did a Google search and found the first result: @ThreadneedleAM, with the start of a tweet about the transaction.

A click on the Twitter account name brought me to a Twitter profile that showed that @ThreadneedleAM was an account whose tweets are protected. As an aside, note that Twitter doesn't use the term "protected account," protection is extended to just tweets.

But how could that be? What source was Google’s search result pulling from?

In the screenshot below, note the tiny dropdown arrow to the right of the Twitter name and the Cached box. Clicking on the box provides access to a page showing Google’s cached tweets on the morning of the day before—when, evidently, @ThreadneedleAM was still up and running. The tweet shown in the search results, from January, can be seen on the page. (The account had been tweeting as late as March 17. To show here, I just pasted the January tweet on top of the more recent tweets.) 

The above raises questions about the extent of the protection of tweets. Twitter clearly states: "Protected tweets will not appear in Google search; protected tweets will only be searchable on Twitter by the account holder and approved followers."

What I stumbled upon involved the cached tweets of an account in transition. The transition apparently involved the deletion of @ThreadneedleAM tweets and a flipping of the status of the visibility of its tweets. While I have no first-hand knowledge of the Columbia Threadneedle strategy, I'd guess their assumption was that those tweets were gone and out of sight for good.

Back to Twitter's About public and protected tweets help page, see the last sentence here: "Unprotecting your tweets will cause any previously protected tweets to be made public."

And, the dropdown arrow and the Cached box devices lead me to believe that Google sees value in cached—even if subsequently deleted—tweets.

Know The Limits

Previously, I have thought that Google’s inclusion of real-time tweets in search results (via an agreement reached with Twitter early this year) would be only positive for the investment management industry. I’m still convinced that it will significantly help lift awareness of the keyword-conscious, timely content that you’re tweeting about.

But the combination of Twitter's qualifications on the extent of protection given to protected tweets and Google's ability to display cached tweets makes the terrain a tad more bumpy. It could be trouble for otherwise unaware asset managers, financial advisors or any brands or professionals whose communications are regulated. Proceed, of course proceed, but with additional caution. Make sure you know the limits of Twitter's protection.  

This isn't about Columbia Threadneedle, of course. It just happened to provide yesterday's example.

If I worked there, I'd be thinking, "The least you could do is mention our new Twitter account name." So, here's a tweet yesterday from the new (repurposed) Columbia Threadneedle Twitter account, @CTInvest_US, and check out the newly branded Website.

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. 

Who’s Retweeting Asset Manager Tweets?

“Whatever you do, don’t tweet anything.”

That was how every conversation with a loved one ended for me last week. I was cooped up, battling the flu/cold/creeping crud that others have been succumbing to (well, just short of dying).

The Tamiflu lady is a reasonable facsimile of what was going on in my house.I had a fever, which for me has the strange effect of making everything I come in contact with seem profound and good. It used to be that when I had to stay home sick, I’d watch a movie and proclaim it the finest film ever made. Last week, bouncing between my smartphone and iPad, I couldn’t stop bookmarking content. Everything was coming together as if by design…I was seeing patterns I hadn’t seen before…my handlers were right to counsel me not to post.

Except: That DST acquisition of kasina really happened, didn’t it? That combination is intriguing and could be truly powerful for the asset management industry. Congratulations all around.

What follows is the post I thought I’d publish last week but held off until a cooler head prevailed.

What do we really know about the retweeting of mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) content?   

According to Cerulli Associates’ data quoted here, as much as three-quarters of U.S. asset managers have seized on Twitter as a means of extending the reach of their thought leadership and market insights.

An expectation unique to social platform participation is that others, fellow users, will see value in your content and share it with their own networks. This sharing expectation is at the center of discussions about the length of the tweet, the voice used, and word, hashtag, image and soon video selection.

We set the table and we wait. We wait for the retweet, that affirmation that what’s been posted has been noticed and deemed "shareworthy." A retweet, even for the handful of asset managers swimming in retweets, never gets old.

If you’re paying attention, you know who your own firm’s Twitter account loyalists are.

But here’s what I’ve been wondering: What would we learn if we looked at all retweeting of all investment management tweets over time? Would analysis reveal a community of investment tweet fanboys and fangirls? Would it—deep breath here—surface a list of the financial advisors who make up the most enthusiastic group of retweeters?

Short answer: No, not according to my modest research project.

First, Some Qualifications

First, we need to scale back what could be done. A look at all retweeting of asset manager tweets over all time isn’t possible, given Twitter’s limits on its API.

However, I was able to use the enterprise edition of retweetrank.com to download “recent” (see below for an explanation) retweeting of 10 of the most followed asset manager accounts (BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Invesco US, iShares, JP Morgan Funds, OppenheimerFunds, PIMCO, Vanguard_Group, Vanguard_FA and WisdomTree ETFs.) This is the majority of all retweeting, I'm confident.

My analysis included whatever retweeting data that retweetrank could provide—more than 7,200 tweets in all, but over varying time periods. For example, the data for PIMCO went back to February of 2014 but to just December 2014 for JP Morgan Funds. The available data covers the third and fourth quarters of 2014 for most of the firms.

I combined all the data and then looked for accounts that retweeted the tweets from at least two firms. Most accounts tweeted three or more firms.

The result is this list of the top 20 asset management retweeters as of the start of 2015.

This is a public Google spreadsheet.

Reality Sets In Re: Retweeting

Notwithstanding all the qualifications to this compilation, here are some of my takeaways. If you have more, please comment below. 

• Retweeting today is a long tail proposition. While Twitter accounts belonging to individuals may indeed get their retweeting support from a cluster of supporters, it’s more a case of onesies and twosies for asset manager brand accounts. Which makes the high retweeting counts of a few firms (BlackRock and Invesco US) that much more impressive.
• Financial advisors are not the predominant retweeters of asset manager tweets. There are exactly two advisor accounts on this list, one belongs to a Morgan Stanley advisor and the other to an investment advisor representative. 

To pursue this some, I then also aggregated and analyzed the retweeting being done of Twitter accounts belonging to financial advisor media: Advisor Perspectives, ThinkAdvisor, Investment News, Morningstar Advisor and RIABiz. But no, advisors aren’t leading the retweeting across those accounts either.

Hmm. We know that advisors think of Twitter as a means of “cascading” thought leadership, which on the face of it implies retweeting. This was documented as recently as in the Putnam Social Media survey released in December.

However, Twitter is not advisors' most prominent social network. Not every advisor who uses Twitter is permitted by his or her firm to retweet. And, one in five advisors say they use Twitter passively.  

It was just the middle of last year when the announcement came that Morgan Stanley would begin to allow 1,300 of its 16,000 advisors to begin to write their own tweets. Time will tell whether additional permissions and retweeting interest by more participating advisors across the board will play a greater role in the circulation of more investment management content. 

• The retweeting is not coming from massively followed accounts (and definitely not the financial media Twitter accounts that asset managers seem to themselves like to retweet). Retweeting by lightly followed accounts limits the explicit value of the additional reach provided by the retweet. Remember, though, that every retweet helps in some way, even if only to prop up overall numbers.
• The list of top retweeters includes more bot accounts—accounts with sketchy profile information or lacking URLs that go to bona fide companies—than I would have hoped. It’s anybody’s guess who’s behind these accounts but let’s not jump to the conclusion that this is a bad thing. Using a dummy account for monitoring Twitter is common, accepted practice. It makes sense that bots (which you can set and forget) are prevalent. Obviously, though, “engaging” a bot is out of the question.
• #1 on the list is a Twitter account that retweeted 45 investment management tweets. It belongs to Dean T. Carson II, C.P.A., not a bot. However, it must be automated, given its average 133 daily tweets.
• The list includes an employee of J.P. Morgan Office of Inspector General in Russia, who tweeted other firms’ content as well as J.P. Morgan Funds'. We may see more of this as firms begin to authorize their employees to use Twitter, to amplify their own content but others' relevant content, too.
• Based on the number of non-U.S. retweeting accounts, Twitter is indeed extending the geographic reach of asset manager content. 

After all other considerations are exhausted, any discussion about “who’s retweeting our content and how can we get more of it?” eventually works its way ‘round to the quality of the content being posted. While you can’t control most of what drives retweeting, there’s always room to improve the appeal of what you post—here’s to your work on that in 2015!  

Your thoughts?

Asset Managers Dominate #FixedIncome Tweeting Post-Gross

After this post, I’m going on a PIMCO/Bill Gross/Twitter diet, I promise. But, I was looking at some data this week that was too rich not to share.

First, the September 26 announcement that Bill Gross was leaving PIMCO to go to Janus spiked interest in “Bill Gross” as a search term but not so much fixed income. This is according to the Google Trends U.S. data shown below (click on the image to see the data more clearly on the site).

Interest in Janus was far above average search interest while still lower than "Bill Gross."

On Twitter, where Gross' early use of the @PIMCO account influenced how other asset managers began to use Twitter to deliver timely, relevant micro-insights (see post), the news gave a healthy bump to the use of the #fixedincome hashtag.

In the period between September 29 and October 22, 189 users sent 310 tweets with the hashtag, according to Keyhole.co.

The RiteTag graph below of tweets and retweets shows a rush to #fixedincome, relative to its average volume, that has since petered out. 

Competing With Content

Here's what I was interested in. We saw some opportunistic fixed income advertising from fund companies in the days immediately following the news. And, of course, the email factories were working overtime. Did asset managers figure among those jockeying for what would be a burst of fixed income attention on Twitter?

Why yes, they did. The screenshot below from Keyhole.co shows the 32 accounts that used the #fixedincome hashtag most frequently. Twelve belong to asset managers, with @FidelityAdvisor, @NuveenInv, @WFAssetMgmt and @PutnamToday four of the top five accounts. Other firms participated at a lower level. 

In all @FidelityAdvisor sent 37 #fixedincome tweets, most in support of Fidelity Advisor Total Bond Fund. 

@BlackRock takes the honors as the account producing the top #fixedincome tweet (shown below), drawing 18 retweets and 38 favorites. @FTI_US, Putnam and @HartfordFunds were #2, #3 and #4 ahead of @SquawkBox. Sweet.

An investor's dilemma: Net worth and liquidity up, but #fixedincome market slowing down. What to do http://t.co/EnmfOdKmsk

— BlackRock® (@blackrock) September 30, 2014

Everybody Gains

What did the news do to @PIMCO’s enviable follower count? It's happy news all-around.

After a dip—there’s likely some correlation between fund flows and Twitter followers—@PIMCO is back on the rise again, according to TwitterCounter.com.

Meanwhile, @JanusCapital experienced a growth spurt in followers, although still trails @PIMCO by about 174,000.

You Got This

There are very few lightning-in-a-bottle moments for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) companies using social media. There’s been no equivalent of seizing the opportunity of a dark stadium to promote dunking an Oreo cookie and watching the Twitter account grow by thousands overnight, for example.

But communications windows open and close on Twitter, and there can be opportunities for alert and agile investment brands. 

On this single hashtag over the last four weeks, more than a dozen fund companies showed up and dominated in a way that rarely happens elsewhere online. (Unfortunately, paying for placement is the only way for many firms to get on page 1 of search rankings of key terms. Other brands got to most of the premium terms first and they’re not budging. See post.) 

For some perspective, fund companies use other hashtags and many to a greater extent. Event hashtags get lots of pick-up, as Morningstar's Leslie Marshall has documented. And, it’s not as if @BlackRock hasn’t been retweeted 18 times before—its maximum is 155 RTs. 

Still, this was a collective demonstration of the communications possibilities for asset managers:

1)using somebody else’s platform

2)and a lightweight, quick turnaround medium

3)to access an "audience" that others helped build and maintain

4)without being constrained by a frequency cap (i.e., Fidelity could have never sent 37 emails in the same time period)

5)to be relevant on a topic

6)that targeted others (financial advisors, media and other influencers) had hyper-interest in and were seeking commentary on.

For those of you in the mix, I hope something good came out of your participation. As for those of you still on the fence about Twitter, does this episode make you any more interested in chiming in?

Nobody Gets The Last Word—An Investment Content Remixing Case Study

Sometimes when you’re a big ole brand producing high-quality communications containing data and insights of the intellectual capabilities of your quants and eggheads around the globe...well, there’s the tendency for the communications to have a certain finality to them. As in, what you have to say is the last word on the subject. 

But the whole notion of having the last word is contrary to taking part in a conversation. Broad participation from everybody—global asset managers, financial advisors, the media, investors, Occupy Wall Street sympathizers—using social media platforms is what makes financial services discourse less predictable nowadays. 

Online “conversations” start when someone/anyone publishes something and somebody else notices and weighs in.

How does a piece of content spread? Just last week, an excellent post listed the several “elements that can form the catalyst for viral exposure." High viral content, according to blogger Kelsey Libert, is: 

• Original, authentic and brave
• Simple and concrete
• Remixable and easy to remix
• Validated from a few influential initial followers
• Highly visible and initially exposed to a community of similar users
• Speaks to the interests/values of the community it is shared within

The third element—remixable and easy to mix—was what gave me pause when I read the post. We don’t see a lot of remixing investment content.

But there was some remixing over the weekend. Thanks to Reformed Broker Josh Brown’s blogging about an “exchange that demonstrates the usefulness of a crowded and vibrant financial Twittersphere,” we have an instant case study.

It took place on Twitter, yes, and I agree with Brown’s points about the Twitter community. But there’s no reason to think that this couldn't happen with a blog post, a LinkedIn post or a YouTube video, assuming most of the elements are in place. 

Check the case study against Libert's list of what's required for viral exposure. 

A. Original, authentic and brave

J. Lyons Fund Management is an RIA with $10 million in AUM. It’s not unusual for the firm to comment on charts and data using its Twitter account @JLyonsFundMgmt (500 followers as of yesterday) and StockTwits account (almost 6,000 followers).

After the disappointing Q1 GDP (-2.96%) reported last week—the 17th worst in 50 years—the firm took a look at what happened to the economy after the earlier worst GDPs. A recession followed in every other instance, prompting the firm to wonder what would happen next. 

25 Worst Quarterly U.S. GDP Prints In History (see if you can spot the outlier) pic.twitter.com/T9WQsOLA3Q

— J. Lyons Fund Mgmt. (@JLyonsFundMgmt) June 28, 2014

B. Simple and concrete

J. Lyons could have published the data and insights on its blog, and tweeted a link to it. Instead, it uploaded the table itself. Smart. And, the inclusion of the last column was genius. Ordinarily, you don’t need a separate column if every entry in every row is going to be the same value (Yes). But that column, along with the copy in the tweet, stimulated the conversation.

C. Validated from a few influential initial followers
D. Highly visible and initially exposed to a community of similar users
E. Speaks to the interests/values of the community it is shared within

The tweet was published early Saturday morning, and Brown (whose 78,000 followers are both influential and concentrated in the investment community) helped it along. As of Monday evening, the tweet had 64 retweets and was favorited 45 times.

F. Remixable and easy to remix

The tweet had some loft from Saturday to Sunday. On Sunday afternoon the Twitter account @MarginalCapital directed its own tweet to J. Lyons and Brown. Brown says he’s never heard of MarginalCapital and the account bio offers no more than mystique.

MarginalCapital remixed the J. Lyons data—in other words, ran some of its own data and added a fifth column.

The conversation continued, taking a different turn. While the J. Lyons data seemed to point to a recession and the accompanying negative outcomes, Marginal Capital tweeted, “What happens next is that the S&P500 is up 79% of the time in the year after.”

(I should probably note that the original data wasn’t really easy to remix because Marginal Capital needed to recreate the table. Oh, and the copyright line was dropped.)

A general tweet followed the tweet directed to J. Lyons and Brown. As of Monday evening, this tweet had received 36 retweets and was favorited 39 times.

Here's the 1 year return of the S&P500 after the 25 worst GDP prints of all time pic.twitter.com/OUDSQuIWB9

— marginal idea (@marginalidea) June 29, 2014

By the end of Monday, at least one more RIA tweeted yet another chart it had produced in response and the original chart had inspired at least one blog post. J. Lyons and Brown passed those tweets on to their respective followers, too.

Keeping The Faith

There are a few things about this episode that just tickle me.

It’s pretty awesome that an RIA could surprise the investment community with an original report.

“Even most professionals—myself included—were probably not aware of this particular point," Brown writes.

I love the fact that the original tweet surfaced first on a Saturday morning and the response happened on a Sunday. When investment types have something new to say, there is no waiting for the work week to begin. What’s also instructive is that there were people paying attention at those times, too.

To be sure, marketers of investment content are a step removed from all this. You need somebody else to do the analysis and crunch the numbers, the results of which no doubt needs to be reviewed and approved along with the communication about it.

Process can slow us down but it doesn’t need to break our spirits. Hopefully, you always do your part to make the case for content that means enough to somebody that they’ll share it, challenge it or remix it. 

The last word? Who'd want it? No matter what its size, the firm that's willing to mix it up—including asking the community questions, taking in their input, doing their own validating—will be better off in the long term, I do believe.

Here’s to a safe and fireworks-filled Independence Day celebration with loved ones. I’ll be doing some IRL boat-rocking so please don't look for another post until the week of July 14.