Twitter Lists Trump Social Media Directory; Introducing Investment Managers Twitter List

There’s a certain poetry to what we’re doing today.

Six months ago we created a social media directory to track the adoption by the asset management industry (including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds [ETFs], broker-dealers, financial advisors and investment media) of social media.

Since that time, two of the listings—mutual funds and ETFs using Twitter and financial advisors using Twitter—drew significant traffic from search engines, a welcome boost for this barely one-year-old site. (Notwithstanding our post last week and all other things being equal, we’d prefer to see site traffic climb, too.)

But today we’re redirecting that traffic to other sites where we think the searchers will be better served. Because this is a digital strategy site, we thought our readers might be interested in some of the details. And maybe our rationale will give you some ideas.

Let’s take the listing of mutual funds and ETFs on Twitter first. The following investment managers have Twitter accounts (others are out there but we know these to be bona fide):

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Asset Manager Site Traffic Also On The Decline—What's Your Content Syndication Plan?

It's natural to want and expect the traffic on your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) Web site to grow. But let's take a look at three data sets that suggest that you may need to reset what constitutes success for your Web strategy.

#1 Traffic is declining on the large well-trafficked brand sites.

A couple of blog posts have been documenting this lately. Go to a Digital Buzz blog post  to see declining traffic patterns since 2007 of ESPN.com, eBay.com and Dell.com among others.

In the asset management vertical, look at traffic to Morningstar.com.

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Up Close And Personal On This Social Networking Stuff

This was one of those rare weeks when I had a blog post all queued up and ready to publish today. But I'm letting two tweets this morning trump my previously scheduled rant (it's about content development—check back next week for it?).

The resistance I see when I'm talking to people about Twitter is not what I used to see when talking about the Internet or Web-based applications. It's not a fear of technology or an ability to work it. It's more of a suspicion or a bias about a communications channel that has developed a reputation for being self-indulgent and/or narcissistic.

Maintain that position, if you will, but I fear that it could stand in the way of your understanding how people are connecting today. And of your planning for your company to take part.

To demonstrate, I've decided to review 30 minutes of my morning with you. OK, I know that sounds narcissistic. I wish you knew me well enough to know that I'm a private person and, truthfully, my tweets are pretty cut-and-dried. Not a whole lot of personal Pat. But I'm offering this walk down near-term memory lane with me to describe how Twitter connects people.

Here we go.

When the schedule allows, I extend my daily updating routine from reading the newspapers to reading my feed reader and my @RockTheBoatMKTG and @AdvisorTweets accounts via a Twitter application that sits on top of my browser. Yes, I have to limit myself time-wise or I'd be following tweets and links to content within the links all day. (This job requires me to keep current. I couldn't afford to invest this time during the workday when I was a corporate employee, either. Hmm, what's wrong with those last two sentences?)

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Introducing AdvisorTweets.com: What Financial Advisors Are Thinking, Via Twitter

It’s a big day here at Rock The Boat Marketing as we launch our first spin-off: AdvisorTweets.com. Honestly, spinning off a second enterprise was not something we expected to do. AdvisorTweets is a Web site born out of the conviction that if financial advisors are communicating, we all might want to tune in.

Since I started my first marketing communications job at Kemper Funds in the mid-1990s, I have marveled at the lengths that marketing colleagues would go to in order to understand financial advisors. Traveling with wholesalers (Cracker Barrel, anyone?), networking at financial advisor events, fielding surveys, hosting focus groups—no stone was unturned to create an artificial setting for the purpose of extrapolating what a handful of advisors would tell us. That was as good as it got back in the day.

What can be done to better understand what financial advisors want and need? Marketers, sales, customer service staffs and executive leadership of asset management companies wanted to know then and, if possible, they care even more today.

We’ve developed AdvisorTweets to serve as a listening and learning post. There’s value in:

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Read All About It: 2 More Twitter Accounts Created

Elsewhere the big news this past week was the death and burial of Michael Jackson, the king of pop. In our corner of the world, the big news was what some consider relatively small developments.

In the space of 24 hours, I'd sent three tweets:

#1 linking to a kasina blog post about Robert Reynolds, CEO of Putnam Investments, joining Twitter (@robertlreynolds).

 

#2 pointing to the launch of Putnam's PutnamToday Twitter account.

#3 linking to an Investment News article explaining that Putnam's Twitter accounts were related to an upcoming ad campaign.

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