stephanie sammons interview with the journal of financial planning

10 QUESTIONS With Noteworthy People

14 Journal of Financial Planning | October 2014 FPAJournal.org

Questions10

During her 15-year career as a financial adviser, Stephanie Sammons always had a

penchant for marketing and business development. And as a recording artist (she’s a singer/songwriter who report-edly plays a mean acoustic guitar), she has a proficiency in software and technology. So you can imagine her enthusiasm some years ago as the planning profession began to really embrace social media. Not only did she embrace the digital revolution, she wanted to get out ahead of the curve. So much so, that she left her wealth management and corporate leadership career in 2009 to launch Wired Advisor, a coaching and training business that teaches profes-sionals how to build digital influence for business success. The Journal recently spoke to Sam-mons about the mistakes financial advisers make when blogging or interacting on LinkedIn, and how to build that digital influence without it being daunting or discouraging.

1. To run a successful financial advisory practice in a wired world, do advisers need to re-think client acquisition and client retention?

Advisers have a lot of challenges today. It’s a mature industry. There is margin compression, increased transparency, wealth transition due to an aging population, competition—new and tra-ditional—and even industry credibility and regulatory hurdles. All that in the midst of a digital revolution. The indus-try is being significantly disrupted, but there still is, and always will be, a need for financial advisers. It’s a relationship-driven business. Money is too personal and too emotional. I believe that people will always need that help, guidance, and support from advisers to make good financial decisions. The financial advisers who are going to do well in a wired world will evolve their business models to better scale their communications, marketing/busi-ness development, and client service. You can accomplish this through having

WHO: Stephanie Sammons, CFP®

WHAT: Founder/CEO of Wired Advisor

and expert on helping financial profes-

sionals build personal digital influ-

ence to attract, grow, and retain client

relationships in a wired world

WHAT’S ON HER MIND: “Like any business, if

you’re not consistently growing, you’re

dying.”

PODCAST: Listen to our podcast

with Stephanie Sammons at

www.FPAJournal.org.

Stephanie Sammons on Building Digital Influence and Succeeding in a Wired Worldby Carly Schulaka

10 QUESTIONS

October 2014 | Journal of Financial Planning 15FPAJournal.org

an actual digital strategy and leveraging technology, tools, and systems. Advisers also need to humanize their digital presence in order to build influence with prospects and clients. When you humanize your brand online, you can scale that personal connection and build trust. The advisers who become more effi-cient—by being smarter and faster—and become more visible as human beings with a compelling message are the ones who will really thrive in the digital age. Even advisers who choose to stay small, which is perfectly acceptable, will have to be wired and embrace digital, because that’s how you meet the expectations and experiences of your prospects and clients today. The way we build and manage client relationships has changed forever.

2. If there had to be one key to building your digital influence, what would it be?

Personal influence is the uncanny ability to attract, lead, and inspire your ideal clients to take action. Web-sites and corporate logos don’t build relationships, people do. Influence has been democratized. We all have access to it if we choose to leverage it. Influence is also the new market-ing. When you build digital influence, your business will grow. It’s the one key factor. For advisers to truly leverage the power of digital influence, they have to create a digital presence that fosters relationships. They need to get personally involved and engaged in their digital strategy, content develop-ment, and social media participation. Being human, personable, and accessible online is really the only differentiator. It’s the only way for a prospective client to get to know you and trust you without meeting you first. And believe me, consumers do all the research now online before

you ever meet them in person. They are 60 percent of the way through the decision-making process before they ever meet you. The tendency in the industry is to hide behind the brand and create a very corporate feel that’s not designed to develop relationships. Instead, create a personal media company where you and your team are the faces of your brand. This is a great start toward building digital influence.

3. How can advisers develop a digital strategy in a way that doesn’t seem daunt-ing or unachievable?

There is definitely a lot to learn; it can be overwhelming at first. I compare it to learning how to play golf in that there are the tools to learn, just like you learn which golf club to hit and what that club is going to do for you. You also have some etiquette to learn with digital and social, and you need to practice to improve. Digital is a process. You have to give yourself time to learn it and to understand it. I think it’s very wise to invest in education, training, and maybe some coaching. It would cost a lot less in the long run to get the help you need upfront. A successful digital strategy is a function of really understanding who you are, why you do what you do, who you help, and how you help. When you are confident with these answers, your digital strategy becomes much more clear. Once you know who you’re trying to attract and build relationships with, it’s much easier to develop the right content and be visible and valuable in the right places online. The biggest challenge isn’t the digi-tal and social media learning curve, it’s time management. Once you do learn the game and see how powerful it can be, you’re going to want to play it all the time.

4. What do you say to advisers who feel they just don’t have the time or the energy to focus on going digital?

The digital revolution is here. Whether or not you’re feeling the impact yet doesn’t change that. Eight-track tapes aren’t coming back as much as we loved them. Digital is here and it’s disrupting every industry in its path, especially mature ones like ours. Your business is already being affected—you just may not be feeling the pain yet, and you may be hoping to escape without any cuts or bruises. Be careful though—your clients are already exposed to all kinds of opportunities and alternatives through the content coming at them every day. They are being influenced by media that is created by your competi-tors, their friends, and even strangers. If you’re not out there leading them and helping them stay the course, someone else will be. I’ll also say that it’s critical to appro-priately value digital and social media. If you say you don’t have the time or energy, you are not valuing this for what it is—a massive opportunity and a major threat to your business, combined. Why not leverage the opportunity versus succumbing to the threat?

5. What are some lesser-known content formats or channels financial advisers should be aware of?

I think it’s important to choose the content format where you are strong and most comfortable. You can write, create videos, do audio podcasts, or even a combination of these things. Just be careful about creating content that’s not going to flatter you. If you’re a good writer, create written content. If you’re comfortable in front of a camera, create videos. If neither of these work for you, launch an audio podcast and have it transcribed.

10 QUESTIONS


Once you have an actual content strategy in place, you can then decide which channels are best for sharing that content. The platforms that matter most are the ones where your existing and ideal clients are spending time. These are channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even iTunes. Eventually, I think we will see smaller, more niche social networks, or even networks within networks. Sallie Krawcheck recently purchased a global women’s digital network and renamed it Ellevate Network. There are 30,000 women in that network, and my guess is that it’s pretty active. This is a great example of what I think we’ll see more of this in the future. Additional opportunities that advisers might consider are networks like Pinter-est, Google+, and SlideShare, which is owned by LinkedIn, and Instagram, owned by Facebook. Again, it depends on who you are focused on and where they spend time online. Ultimately you want all roads to lead back to your website or blog, the central hub that you own and control.

6. What is the biggest mistake you see advisers making when it comes to LinkedIn?

I see a lack of understanding of the fact that your professional online presence is being defined by LinkedIn. For example, your LinkedIn profile is typically one of the top entries in a Google search for your name. Chances are someone looks at your LinkedIn profile before they find your website. A compelling profile can also help you get found within LinkedIn search. In 2012 there were 6 billion people searches within LinkedIn. Still, many advisers neglect their LinkedIn profiles, and I think that’s because they don’t understand the power of it. Linked- In is such a rich network. Your profile is this dynamic asset that can constantly be improved, and it’s a gateway to your

business. There are various ways to enhance your LinkedIn profile that can build your influence, create meaningful dialogue with prospects, and even help you attract website visitors. Also, advisers aren’t active enough on LinkedIn in a way that brings value. There was a recent study that said if you post an update to your LinkedIn profile at least 20 times per month, you can achieve 60 percent greater visibility. However, what you share needs to be interesting and valuable. It’s the activity on LinkedIn that can lead to good things for your business. Activities should include proactively growing your network with the right people, making introductions and refer-rals, participating in discussions, sharing compelling content, engaging with your network, promoting your connec-tions, sending personalized messages, and the list goes on. You’ve got almost unlimited opportunities on LinkedIn to build influence with anyone you want, if you’re committed to building your presence there.

7. What are some common mistakes you see advisers making on their blogs?

I’ll group these into three mistakes that I see most frequently. No. 1 is the overuse of canned, industrialized financial content. I think it’s a huge disservice to consumers and we’ve been spoiled by it in this industry for years. There are no compliance hassles and all kinds of packaged products exist where the canned content can be inserted into your website, your blog posts, and your email newsletters. Maybe that was enough back when this was the only option, but it’s not enough now to simply churn out generic content. No one cares. Because of blogging, you have a powerful printing press at your fingertips where you actually can create something meaningful and differentiate yourself. Why wouldn’t you do that?

No. 2 ties into No. 1—there’s no personalization. A blog is designed to be a relationship development tool where you can communicate your insights and your perspective to help your existing and ideal clients solve their problems. This is how you build influence, and it’s how you build that scalable human con-nection. You want your ideal client to consume your content and say, “That’s exactly what I feel right now, and that’s exactly what I’ve been worried about. She gets me!” I’ve had advisers who haven’t had success with blogging say to me, “Well, my content is educational, I’m educating about IRAs.” But it’s missing that personal element, that personal perspective. I can find information about IRAs anywhere. If I come to your blog and can’t learn anything about who you are as a person and really see that you understand my situation, why am I going to trust you with my financial life? Content today has to be more than just educational. It has to make an emotional connection. And No. 3 is just a lack of consis-tency—not sticking with it or giving up too soon. That’s really a biggie. It takes time and energy to blog, but that work gets easier over time, and the rewards can be tremendous. It’s not an overnight win, it’s a brick-by-brick process for building digital leverage and equity in your business.

8. Once an adviser is blogging, what are some tips for increasing traffic?

First, what matters is not the absolute traffic numbers, it’s the quality and the growth of your traffic over time. Sharing your content thoughtfully and strategi-cally in the right places—social profiles and email inboxes, for example—is critical. You can also share that same content on social networks a few times. Chances are, many people won’t see it if you share it just once.

10 QUESTIONS With Noteworthy People

18 Journal of Financial Planning | October 2014 FPAJournal.org

Another idea is repurposing your existing content where it can be found on other sites. Create an e-book and publish that on Amazon, create a podcast for iTunes, create a video or slide presentation. That way, you’re not reinventing the wheel, and your content can be found by more people. Partner marketing is also a great strat-egy for growing traffic. This is where you might interview an expert in your community and publish it on your blog. When you showcase that expert, they’re going to share the content with their network. Or, flip that around and go get interviewed by someone influential in your market. Getting featured or quoted by the media can be accomplished simply by serving as a resource to journalists and editors, and that builds credibility. Con-

tributing your content to other websites and blogs through guest posting can help as well. It was once fairly easy to have your content seen in social networks, but amplifying your content through strategic social media ads can potentially acceler-ate the process today. It’s become more difficult to build your network organically, so you may have to pay to play. With all of these ideas, your blogging frequency and consistency do matter. Ultimately, you want to market your content more strategically to get it in front of your ideal clients. When you do this, you will increase the quality of traffic to your site.

9. What are a few things advisers should be doing on social networks, and a few things they should not be doing?

The do’s on social networking are: build personal influence, be human, help and support others, share valu-able and relevant messages with your network, share your own content as well as high-quality content from other sources, promote and engage with your connections, network with influencers across industries and organizations. Be active. Be consistent. Be accessible. Be compliant. The don’t of social networking is: don’t sit at the water cooler. It’s so easy to get sucked in. It’s tempting to get into these networks and engage in debates or conversations with peers and friends that will not grow your business. I’m guilty of it myself. When it comes to social networking, I like to use an acronym—EWIFD—engage with intent focus and discipline.

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10 QUESTIONS


More don’ts include: please don’t sell or pitch your services in social networks. Don’t go for the kill. So many financial advisers try to market so close to the sale and they completely ruin the opportunity to nurture a relationship. They’ve jumped in before building any rapport and say, “Here’s what I can do for you.” This is a long game, but an important one for building a robust network of relationships that can convert into prospects, clients, and business advocates over time. There is also a great debate about outsourcing your social media activities. Tools and apps can help you automate content sharing, but when it comes to the actual networking piece, opportunities are lost when someone else is driving for you. Figure out what you can automate with social media

and just carve out 15 minutes a day to do the networking yourself.

10. Name three people all financial advisers should be following on Twitter.

Michael Kitces (@MichaelKitces). The guy is just a machine when it comes to producing informative content for financial advisers. When you follow Michael, you’re going to stay up with everything going on in the industry. Another recommendation is Cathy Curtis (@CathyCurtis). What I know about being an adviser myself for 15 years and then coaching advisers is they listen most to their own peer group. They like to see other advisers who are doing something well and learn from them. Cathy Curtis is one of the best success stories I can think

of as an adviser who created a niche focus and built significant influence through blogging and social media. She’s focused on women; it’s the core of her strategy and it drives everything she does. The third is not actually one person, but a very well-respected and credible resource, Social Media Examiner (@smexaminer). Their instructional blog posts cover all things social media, designed to help marketers big and small. They also do some educational virtual summits throughout the year and an annual physical conference. It’s a lot to stay on top of, but it’s my go-to resource for what’s happening with social media.

Carly Schulaka is editor of the Journal. Contact her at

[email protected].























stephanie sammons interview with the journal of financial planning

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