Last Tuesday saw the launch of Advisertech a new online and social media self-help platform set up by Pete Matthew MD at Jacksons Wealth. Pete has been highly active in the social media space for around 5 years now, across a number of online channels, most notably on Twitter and Linked In which he uses to spread not only his own opinion but also the content of his financial education .tv site Meaningful Money. Meaningful Money is an online information platform delivered by video and podcast that he set up a few years ago to educate the general public about financial services and everything they needed to know about financial products.
The channel has been a huge success, increasingly driving new business for Jacksons and also landing Pete with industry accolades, including the Professional Adviser Financial Education award in 2011. After 3 years of success Pete has now made the decision to share some of the secrets of his success and believes any adviser can create the same things as he has.
Advisertech is another education platform, but this time set up to educate Pete’s adviser peers in creating a great online presence. A few months ago he posted about his social media philosophy it’s a simple personally focussed theory that seems to work incredibly well for him, but importantly it’s a philosophy that extends into the way he is offering up Advisertech. The interesting paragraph to note in Pete’s post is the following ‘Now if you’re a big corporate, with shareholders to please and lawyers to placate, you may well benefit from some of these things [social media strategy, plan and KPIs], but this is why most big companies suck at social.’ Although in many cases he’s absolutely correct in reality you don’t necessarily have to adhere to those things if you're a large corporate. After all what’s the strategy and KPIs behind a telephone? Is it that different?
While many financial services companies sit and wait on social media activation especially in the B2B space, the adviser community is happily looking after itself and supporting itself just like Pete and in the meantime the providers become more and more remote from the conversations, many of which are about them. Surely there is real danger in not communicating on social media rather than communicating.
