And Now For A Splash Of Cold Water About Venturing Onto Other Domains

We consistently urge you to consider sharing your content and even limited functionality on other domains, primarily but not exclusively social networking sites. We’ve seen the effectiveness of content syndication and we stand by the recommendation.

But now seems like a good time to call your attention to the range of possibilities when venturing onto other domains. If you print and mail marketing pieces, if you advertise, if you send emails—heck, if you count on wholesalers to support a marketing campaign, you’re already familiar with the surprises/disappointments that can happen when you rely on others to deliver your message.

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How Are Asset Managers Using Twitter? This Might Help

One of the most common questions we get from mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers is, “What are the other firms tweeting about?” Our response has been, “That's easy—just go to the Rock The Boat Marketing Twitter list of Investment Managers and read their tweets.”

But…if you’re new to Twitter and you haven’t learned how to read the lingo, all the @s, #s and bit.lys can be off-putting.

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No Product Tweets? We Agree With Compliance

It’s spring and some asset managers are busily planning their social media debuts. Lots of attention is being focused on developing policies and procedures, the communications (including listening) tools to be used, the troops to be prepped and the analytics to be put in place.

As much as we hate to heap on, we encourage you to give some serious thought to your content. Never buy something new for something old, my mother used to say.

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Random Recommendations: A Look Back At 2009’s Must-Read Financial Services Marketing Tweets

Every year in December I review the photos I’ve taken throughout the year. Some will be the basis of gifts I give or pranks I play. Looking at them all together as a 12-month set satisfies some need to put the year in context.

I had the same instinct this week to review a quite different collection, also something I’d spent the year creating: the 1600-plus  @RockTheBoatMKTG tweets of mostly references to financial services and digital marketing-specific Web content. There was good stuff in there!

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American Century’s Use Of Social Media: A Work In Progress

American Century Investments will tell you that they’re “just experimenting” with social media. Currently, they’re adding two posts a week to their Facebook page and one to three tweets a day on Twitter.

These are not volumes that will turn the heads of anyone outside the asset management industry. But within this space, theirs is a story of pushing ahead, slowly and in lockstep with their approachable Legal and Compliance partners, even as they’re figuring things out.

Twitter and Facebook is just a start, explains Jennifer Sussman, director of eBusiness.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to learn what’s being said out there about us and how we can influence that. If you don’t know what’s being said, you can’t act on it. We want to make sure we really understand what the needs of our clients and prospects are, to ultimately get the chance to engage clients and prospects so we can have a stronger relationship with them,” she says.

“You can’t look at what’s happening in the industry and not recognize the power of being in the environment and having these conversations. We need a new kind of dialogue,” says Sussman.

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