Communications lessons from “Torn in Two” at the Boston Public Library

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What can an exhibit about the Civil War teach you about communications? I took away six lessons from “Torn in Two: 150th Anniversary of the Civil War,” which runs until Dec. 31, 2011, at the Boston Public Library’s map center.

Torn in Two, an image featured in the Boston Public Library exhibit of the same name

Lesson 1: Summarize your message for people who don’t want to delve into details.

When I visited this map-heavy exhibit, I didn’t look closely at many of the maps. Instead, I happily read the large-type wall labels that conveyed each section’s theme.

Lesson 2: Combine words with images.

Even though I’m a big reader, I wouldn’t have entered an exhibit that consisted solely of words. In fact, it was the exhibit’s signature image of two men tugging on opposite sides of a map that attracted me.

Lesson 3: Tell stories.

My favorite part of the exhibit was “Hear Our Stories,” featuring 10 fictional characters describing their lives at each stage of the Civil War.

Lesson 4: Appeal to your audience’s demographics.

The variety and specifics of the characters was compelling. To give you some flavor, they included

  • Isaiah Wilkes, seminary student, abolitionist, Roxbury, Mass., age 16
  • Rebecca Parrish, slave, South Carolina, age perhaps 20
  • Elizabeth Farnsworth, educated girl of means, Civil War nurse, Concord, Mass., age 16
  • John Tilden, non-slave-owning crop farmer, Georgia, age 35

However, I was disappointed to learn later from a brochure that these were fictional characters. The lesson for financial bloggers? Make it clear if you’re using composite characters to illustrate a story.

Lesson 5: Help your audience relate your information to themselves.

I picked up a family activity brochure about slavery at the exhibit. It started by suggesting questions for adults to ask children, such as, “Are you allowed to read?” These questions put the children at the center of the conversation, in addition to providing context for an adult-child discussion of how slaves had few choices.

Lesson 6: Write about your passions.

I suspect that the creators of this exhibit felt excited about their topic. This passion, plus adept use of Lessons 1 through 5 sparked an interesting exhibit.

Love, hate, and the CFP ad campaign

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The CFP ad campaign stirs up strong feelings. You either love it or hate it, judging from the brief public discussion during lunch at the Financial Planning Association of Massachusetts’ (FPAMA) annual conference. The following ad was shown.

There was a call for feedback on the ad.

Respondent 1: I love it. I’m happy to pay more in dues.

Respondent 2: I don’t like it. It’s too frenetic.

Love and hate. That’s what I heard.

However, the conversation at my table was more nuanced.

Pro:
• Anything that builds the brand is good. This is just the first step in a long process.
• It’s good that the CFP mark is displayed prominently.
• It may be frenetic, but it’s eye-catching.

Con:
• Planners focus too much on the process. Consumers don’t care about the process.
• The ad doesn’t speak effectively about benefits to the consumer.

Blogging idea

Bloggers with the CFP credential may be able to start a conversation simply by posting the ad to their blogs. Or try addressing the questions that the ad raises for you.

Guest post: “Blogging: why you want a better bounce rate”

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Website bounce rates puzzle me. So I read guest blogger Tom Mangan’s article with interest. It seems as if you should put the most important information up top, where people will see it. Hmm, that sounds similar to good writing, so it’s not surprising that I met Tom through a community of freelance writers.

Blogging: why you want a better bounce rate

By Tom Mangan

Ever ask yourself where people go when they end up at your website? For most of my blogging life, the answer seemed like “somewhere else, as fast as their fingers can click.” That’s because up until a couple months ago, I ignored a key statistic called “bounce rate” that was telling me my blog needed a healthy tweak.

credit: www.clker.com

Bounce rate is one of the key metrics available free from Google Analytics. It tells you how many people visit one page at your blog and bail, typically by clicking the “back” button.

Web traffic gurus know most people make snap decisions about whether your page has something they’re looking for. You’ve got maybe five to 10 seconds to reel them in.

Like way too many blogs, my hiking blog had a standard layout with a header identifying what my site was about, a headline revealing what an individual page is about, and social links like e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. People who came my site had no earthly idea it was brimming with five years worth of content painstakingly compiled to warm a hiker’s heart. Typically over three-quarters of my site’s users left almost immediately; my bounce rate was 75 to 80 percent, day in and day out.

Then I changed to a new WordPress theme that allowed me to install all these cool navigation menus across the top, identifying all the many categories inside my site:

Immediately my bounce rate plunged below 50 percent — roughly a 50 percent improvement.

The game changer: I gave my readers something other than the “Back” button to click in that crucial first five seconds. Now roughly my half of my visitors click a second time. They longer they’re there, the better my chances of making them a regular reader.

If you’re thinking, “well, I’ve got all those links in the rail down the side of my site,” guess what: hardly anybody ever clicks on those. After the top two or three on the list, most get ignored.

Interestingly (or frustratingly, depending on how you look it), the big boost in bounce numbers did not equate, as near as I could tell, to a huge increase in page views. Page views were up, but I had also added new site features, and it was springtime, prime hiking season, when my site’s traffic always rises anyway, so I can’t say conclusively that it helped my raw page count. Furthermore, it appeared that the click-through rate on my Google ads cratered about the same time I made this change, so giving people more click options could be double-edged sword if you earn a living from ad clicks.

But if you use your blog to demonstrate your expertise and connect with potential clients, you’re not fretting over the scraps that land in your Adsense account every couple months. You want to tell people who land at your blog — in that first crucial blink of an eye — that there’s gobs of content inside that they ought to check out if they don’t see anything they want right now. Mind you, site navigation is just one component of your bounce rate. These links explore it in much greater detail.

Tom Mangan is the creator of Two- Heel Drive, a Hiking Blog, and the founder of Verb Nerd Industries, his freelance editing, writing and blogging service.

WSJ video highlights plain English for financial advisors

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The Wall Street Journal continues to highlight the case for plain English. An article, “A Tip for Financial Advisers: When Possible, Use English,” expands on the ideas introduced in the video.

If you like this article-video combo, you may also enjoy former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt’s opinion essay, which I discussed in “The Levitt test for financial risk disclosures.”

Advertising makes you stupid–even if you’re smart or rich

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Highly educated and wealthy investors make dumb mistakes.

This is my oversimplified take on one section of “Mutual Funds: Advertising, Behavioral Models, and Investor Choice,” an article by John Haslem, which appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of Index Investing.

“There is a strong positive relation between advertising and investor dollar allocations,” says Haslem’s article, which appears to be a review of other authors’ literature on his topic.

Smart and rich, yet dumb

Advertising emphasizes past performance and rarely discusses fees outside the fine print, so this provides a backdrop to Haslem’s assertion that

  • Highly educated and wealthy investors underweight fund fees and give more attention to past performance.
  • Financially savvy investors underweight fund fees
    and give more attention to short-term performance.

Surprising, isn’t it? You’d think that wealthy investors would take the time to educate themselves and that highly educated investors would understand the importance of expenses to fund returns.

To dig below the surface of this finding, read the source cited by Haslem: Ronald T. Wilcox’s “Bargain Hunting or Star Gazing? Investors’ Preferences for Stock Mutual Funds,” The Journal of Business (October 2003).

Financial writer’s tips

  1. If you’re a financial blogger or newsletter writer, the provocative assertions in Haslem’s article would make a great takeoff point for an article.  For example, you could share how your experience compares.
  2. The Finance Professionals’ Post, published by New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA), is a good place to find tidbits to inspire your writing. I found Haslem’s article in the blog’s “Recent Research: Highlights from March 2011.”
  3. If you’re an NYSSA member, you can pick up more writing tips when I speak on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read” on April 28. It’s FREE for NYSSA members.

Guest post: “Personalized Risk Management Planning–A Great New Business Opportunity”

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Risk management is one of Mike Carpenter’s passions, as I quickly realized when I met him. His guest post discusses how risk management planning offers opportunities for financial advisors and others who wish to grow their businesses.

Personalized Risk Management Planning

– A Great New Business Opportunity

By Michael T. Carpenter

Financial advisors, wealth managers, and asset management firms can attract more assets and grow their business more easily by meeting the enormous unmet need for user-friendly, nontechnical, personal risk management planning.

Everyone’s Worried About Risk

“Risk” is THE word of the day. It’s on everyone’s mind. Client-centered, personalized risk management planning is a massive unmet need.  Increasing concerns about risk pervades all aspects of our lives. As we’ve recently and so tragically seen in Japan, we can’t even count on the powerful forces of the earth and oceans not to reach out and surprise us with devastating consequences.

Today the entire world seems to be an unguided missile rocketing off into the future with more speed than control. Things that aren’t supposed to happen are happening more and more frequently.  These increasing uncertainties and uncomfortable feelings of the risks controlling us rather than us controlling them, have led to increased anxieties, fears, and even more concerns about risk.  This unsettling environment presents both an enormous challenge and a wonderful opportunity for those of us in the investment business to help investors better understand and manage risk. However, capitalizing on it requires we look at our business, at risk, and risk management in a new way, and offer a more holistic, user friendly, non technical (less quantitative) and more practical solution.

Knowledge, Understanding, and Preparation Are the Solution

The key to converting investor concerns, anxieties and fears about uncertainty and risk from business frustrations and impediments into powerful business building forces is to follow through on the observation made by thought leader Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Over 150 years ago he stated,  “Knowledge is that antidote to fear.”  The power of his insight is the simple fact that risks we’ve identified, thoroughly understand, and are fully prepared for cannot harm us, and as a result carry much less anxiety. Better identification, knowledge and understanding of risks, and how to plan for and manage them more effectively, in both our clients’ minds and their portfolios is the answer. The big challenge for most investors is that the vast majority of them don’t really understand the true nature of risk or how to manage it effectively. That critical understanding is the key first step to minimizing their anxiety, fear, and emotional decision making and successfully executing risk management planning at the portfolio level.

Meet an Enormous Unmet Need

Who can individual investors seek out to help them identify, understand, more effectively plan for and manage the many risks they face in our increasingly less certain world?  Who can help them identify, prioritize and address the risks they’re most worried about and those they should be concerned with but aren’t? Who can help them determine which risks to totally avoid, which risks to accept and manage, and the risks they can accept outright, while also helping them make necessary adjustments over time?

Right now the answer to that question is “NO ONE.” Insurance providers can be very helpful in providing casualty and life insurance solutions. However insurance addresses only a few of the many risks (both financial and non financial) investors face.

A 6-Step Implementation Process

Of course many people, including your clients, have financial plans. But how many have personal risk management plans? Doesn’t living and investing successfully in the most rapidly changing period in human history require both?  The comprehensive identification and assessment of the risk faced be each client, very early in the planning process, makes risk management planning, investment policy, asset allocation, and portfolio design easier and more effective.

The heart of this change is to insert a thorough personal risk identification and analysis session into the beginning of your client fact-finding and discovery process. The steps go in this order:

1. Discussion. This is not a brief, simple risk quiz or a cursory questionnaire. This is a detailed, two-way interview and identification by investors of the risks that concern them now and in the future.

2. Follow-up. Continue the discussion of the specific risks of greatest concern of each client, as well as the risks that you know clients will likely face and should plan for, even if those risks are not mentioned initially by the client.

3. Prioritization. Help the client to prioritize those risks based on the potential personal impact, even if the likelihood of the risk(s) occurring is low. Also, agree on risk management strategies for each risk.

4. Agreement. Gain agreement about the importance of integrating those risks and risk management strategies into the financial planning & asset allocation process

5. Document. Create a written & signed personalized risk management plan

6.Monitoring. Establishing a regular, formal risk management plan review process, to be integrated into  your normal  investment or financial plan review process.

Give Yourself a Competitive Advantage

Offering comprehensive, personalized, user friendly, non-technical risk management education and planning, alongside financial and investment planning will meet a critical need.  It will also convert the uncertainties and anxieties created by the accelerating pace of worldwide change into powerful business building forces, instead of the business impediments they are now.

That enormous and growing unmet need represents a wonderful opportunity for investment sponsors, wealth managers, and financial advisors to enhance their services and their business.  Forty years ago comprehensive financial planning was in its infancy, now it’s mainstream and advisors who don’t provide it are considered unethical.  Today comprehensive risk management planning is where financial planning was in the 1970s. The only difference is that the accelerating pace of worldwide change, and the increased uncertainty, risks, and opportunities it generates insures that strategic risk management planning will become mainstream much more quickly.

Offering strategic risk management planning before it becomes mainstream will provide you an attractive and powerful competitive advantage.

Michael T. Carpenter is author of the advisor and investor book The “Risk-Wise” Investor- How To Better Understand and Manage Risk, published globally by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  ( www.RiskWiseInvestor.com ).  He consults, conducts presentations, workshops and seminars on risk management for boards, business people, investment management firms, financial advisors, and their clients, and can be reached at MikeCarpenter@MCarpenterAssoc.com.

The Levitt test for financial risk disclosures

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Do your risk disclosures pass the Levitt test?

In “A Word to Wall Street: ‘Plain English,’ Please,” former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt sets a high standard for your communications about risk.

Levitt says, “For the language of financial disclosure, we need to raise the standard from ‘potentially understandable’ to ‘impossible to be misunderstood.’ ” His article appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

Levitt speaks harshly about the quality of financial communications. “It’s not just that much of this stuff is difficult to understand; it is written not to be understood.”

If you’re used to producing what Levitt calls “an avalanche of impenetrable verbiage,” it will take time for you to learn how to write using plain English.

Improve your disclosures

Step 1. Assess the quality of your communications. Ask if you can realistically expect a non-specialist to understand what you’ve written. Next, test your assumption by asking a representative member of your audience to read and then explain your text in their own words.

Step 2. Download A Plain English Handbook: How to create clear SEC disclosure documents, published by the SEC. It’s one of the best publications for financial writers and it’s FREE.

Step 3. Write, rewrite, and rewrite again. Start your long journey toward improving your financial disclosures. For me, it’s an ongoing challenge. There’s always room for improvement.


Reader question: How can I become a freelance financial writer?

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Aspiring freelance financial writers seeking advice contact me occasionally. If you’re one of them, here’s some advice.

“Freelance financial writer” is made up of three words, each of which contains clues to the freelance financial writer’s success. I discuss them below in order of importance.

“Writer”: Polish your wordsmithing

Do whatever you can to improve your writing, including

“Financial”: Learn about the business

I took many great classes through the Boston Security Analysts Society on my way to earning my CFA (chartered financial analyst) credential. Your local society of the CFA Institute, other professional societies, or colleges may offer relevant classes in person or online.

Industry experience helps, too. I took my first job in financial services back in the 1980s.

“Freelance”: Learn how to survive

You may be a great writer with a strong command of finance. But if you can’t run a business, you’re lost.

Here are some online resources for learning more about freelancing:

“Freelance financial writing”

Here are some relevant posts from my blog. While they’re aimed at CFA charterholders, they’re relevant to others who understand investments.

If you have more suggestions for aspiring writers, please leave a comment.

If you’re in New York City, you can pick up more writing tips from me at my New York Society of Security Analysts presentation on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read” or the  annual writers conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Guest post: “Articles You Publish in Financial Trade Publications Will Impress Prospects”

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PR expert Beth Chapman has years of experience helping financial advisors. Plus, she’s a longtime friend and one of my first guest bloggers. It’s a pleasure to welcome her back to my blog in response to a comment by one of my Facebook followers.

Articles You Publish in Financial Trade Publications Will Impress Prospects:

You can post them on web sites and include them in prospecting kits

By Lisbeth Wiley Chapman

Contacting trade publications with good story ideas can be a straight path to great clips that enhance your reputation and increase good referrals.

Yes, trade publications speak to your competitors.  Understood.  Stay open to the idea that the result of contributing an article to a trade publication gives you a better opportunity to impress clients, prospects and your centers of influence than a one-paragraph quote in a national publication, as ego-boosting as that can be.

Many advisors are disappointed when rebuffed by their local newspapers.  The usual explanation for not taking original material is that they would have to do it for all your competitors.  This has some truth to it, as the local newspapers need the advertising of you and your competitors.  Also, local papers use syndicated columnists regularly.  It is far better use of your time to contact syndicated columnists, whose work appears in your local newspapers, and convince them to use you as a source on a story idea you are providing.

Contribute an Article and Bask in the Glow

There are numbers of trade publications that want your input

You will find many articles in your financial trade publications, both print and online, that have been written by a peer or colleague.  The publications themselves are always looking for the thoughts of those people in the field who are dealing with the issues of financial planning every day.

Editors are particularly interested if you are doing something differently and it is working. Some topics that have appeared recently in the trade pubs that were authored by advisors, have included the following:

·  How to manage ethics training for the entire firm.

·  The financial issues faced by senior couples who choose to marry

·  The hidden fees in group annuity/401(k) plans.

In each case, the advisor, after receiving proper reprint permission, was able to use this information by posting it on their web site, sending it via an e-mail campaign, printing it and including it in prospecting kits, and using it as a handout at a seminar.

The challenge, of course, is to find a topic that the publications have identified as important to their readers.  Your persuasive cover e-mail to the editor will specifically state why this issue is of interest to their readers and why you are an expert on this issue.

In addition to the financial advisory trades, don’t forget that all of your best clients have earned their wealth in an industry or profession.  If you have a wealthy contractor, search for publications that speak to other contractors.  If you have a large percentage of doctors, look for publications that are read by the doctors in multiple-physician practices who need help with employee benefits, 401(k) plans, and insurance.

Articles in Prospecting Packages Create Trust

Articles that you have written get attention from prospects

Think about handing a prospect a marketing package that has numerous articles that you have written.  Prospects are not likely to notice that the article has appeared in a financial trade such as Investment Advisor.  What they notice is that not only were you smart enough to write it, but you also were perceived as expert by the publication, or they would not have published it.

You are aware that most clients will now stealthily cruise through your web site before talking with you.  A web site that has your authored articles posted or linked back to the publication adds an extra amount of shine to your reputation.  You are using the third-party credibility that comes when a publication deems you to be an expert.

Your clients want to trust you.  They want to be able to turn to you for advice, but first they have to be convinced.  There is no better way than offering your prospects articles you have written.  They go a long way in convincing a prospect to trust you.

Use Your Articles as Requests for Referral

Send your clients, your prospects and those professionals who are positioned to send you referrals copies of the articles you have had published.

A cover letter can go something like the following:

Dear Client:  Recently, I was quoted in (name of publication), a publication that goes to XXX,XXX financial professionals, on the topic of (give the title of the article and explain its premise.  If it is an online publication, give them the topic title and the entire URL.  Consider sending this by e-mail so accessing the article is just one click.)

You have already made the decision that working with a financial advisor is important to you by becoming a client of this firm.  Please pass the attached copy of the article to your friends who may be struggling with the difficult decision about whom to trust with their financial affairs.    If you need additional copies, please call our the office (phone number.) We would be happy to speak with your friends and colleagues about any financial issues, whether a single pressing question, or a need for comprehensive financial planning.

Thank you for your business and enjoy the article.

Requesting referrals and at the same time offering important information that educates your clients as well as their friends who may become clients, is an important strategy for your firm.

Blog comment guidelines for financial advisors: Russell Investments example

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Financial advisors, investment managers, and wealth managers worry about allowing comments on their corporate blogs. The wrong comment could land the blogging firm in trouble with the SEC or FINRA. Russell Investments offers a good example of how to handle this issue.

I imagine that Russell’s solution has three components, although only two are visible on its Helping Advisors blog.

If you allow comments on your financial or investment blog, are you using the three tactics I describe below?

1. Moderate comments.

When you enable comment moderation on your blog, no comments are visible to the general public until someone at your company approves them. This lets you vet problematic comments.

2. Provide “comment guidelines” for readers.

Transparency pays. You set more realistic expectations when you tell people that you won’t publish all comments and you share your guidelines. Russell does this nicely in “Comment Guidelines.” Their main points include the following:

  • Russell may not respond.
  • Stay on topic.
  • Avoid investment advice.
  • Be respectful.
  • We respect your privacy.

I also like that Russell gives readers the phone number to call with client service issues.

3. Establish internal guidelines and procedures.

I’m guessing that Russell Investments has set up internal guidelines for deciding the kind of comment to squash. The firm can’t anticipate every situation, so it needs to have a process for referring questions to the appropriate decisionmaker.

The firm also needs procedures to ensure that comments are moderated in a timely and consistent manner. This may be a drag on resources. I noticed on the blog’s “Don’t let the scarcity mentality hold you back,” that a reader commented on Feb. 23, but the firm did not reply until March 1, six days later. I can’t tell if the reader’s comment was also held for six days.

What else should advisors consider if they allow blog readers to leave comments?