How Soon Will Asset Managers Be Texting Advisors?

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If financial advisors are planning to communicate with their clients via text in the next five years—as reported in recent InvestmentNews research—will they also be expecting to text with fund companies?

Here’s the survey data that prompts the question. InvestmentNews also reports that 20% of surveyed investors under the age of 45 expect to be communicating with their advisors via text in five years. 

Note that direct, personal communicating via text is practically swapping places with communicating via U.S. postal mail.

In a May post, BlueLeaf made the argument for the convenience of advisor/client texting:  

“You have a very busy day on the road, but need to contact your client about something quick. You don’t want to call and leave a voicemail in the chance that they won’t listen to it in time (or at all). Email’s no good either, as they could potentially miss important information about your upcoming meeting. You need a tool that will help you to make immediate contact to leave your brief message.”

All of the above could apply to wholesaler-to-financial advisor communicating. Texting provides for a direct, time-sensitive communication that other means don't.

And, I dare say (and the reason for the mention of SMS messaging here), Marketing might well tiptoe into permission-based texting.

But in five years? Five years in this industry is like tomorrow in others. Is it on your firms’ roadmap?

I’m aware of firms that offer text messaging capability related to: 

  • Shareholder accounts (see T. Rowe Price)
  • Retirement accounts (see Vanguard)
  • Retirement account enrollment via text (see The Principal)
  • The availability of market and economic commentary (see Northern Trust)
  • A whole host of commentary and reports and fund event options (see Fidelity) 

This is almost the same list of automated content pushes that I offered in my 2012 blog post on the topic. I haven’t heard a peep yet about firms adding SMS to their call center support, enabling wholesaler-to-advisor texting or organizing for opt-in marketing communications by text.

Not A Regulatory Concern

Evidently, texting does not break new regulatory ground.

“We haven't talked about text messaging in a while,” says Theresa Hamacher, president of NICSA. “It doesn't seem to present any new areas of concern from a regulatory standpoint. My sense is that texts and emails are lumped together and handled similarly. Social media is a much bigger issue, since it's more public and harder to capture.”

How would a regulated enterprise support one-to-one (as opposed to automated) texting? I found this 2011 video about a SalesForce app that will help you visualize how a CRM might enable the communication, in the same way that a CRM supports Sales' emails. This is just for illustration, note. I know nothing about SMS Magic and have no idea whether this developer's storage of the outgoing and incoming text messages would meet FINRA recordkeeping requirements.

For Wholesalers' Best Clients

In fact, wholesalers today are using text but “only for their best clients with whom they have a relationship,” according to Rob Shore, founder of Wholesaler Masterminds.

"The great wholesaler understands the various methods of effectively communicating with their advisors and, today, texting is one of those options. That said, if wholesalers launch into a texting dialogue without knowing that this form of outreach is welcomed by the advisor it will backfire. Spam texts are more invasive than spam emails," Shore says.

True that, Rob.

(I appreciated being able to create the images above on iPhoneTextGenerator.com, but future asset manager texting will almost certainly take place on 4G-plus devices.)  

Cross-Functional And Complex

Mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers are well aware of 1)the high reliance of advisors and investors on their phones and 2)the immediacy and impact that text messages have. In fact, these SMS messaging stats have been cited so frequently that the date and the source have long since been shed: Reportedly, 98% of text messages are read and responded to within 1.5 minutes versus 2.5 days for email.

Texting offers the potential to improve the relevance, timeliness and even usefulness of what's being communicated. At the same time, preparations for texting will need to be cross-functional and will be complex. My assumption is that these are in the works at least a few firms.

Do you work for the rare firm that has established an SMS capability already? If so, please let us all know below. Others' thoughts are welcome, too.

Nobody Gets The Last Word—An Investment Content Remixing Case Study

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Sometimes when you’re a big ole brand producing high-quality communications containing data and insights of the intellectual capabilities of your quants and eggheads around the globe...well, there’s the tendency for the communications to have a certain finality to them. As in, what you have to say is the last word on the subject. 

But the whole notion of having the last word is contrary to taking part in a conversation. Broad participation from everybody—global asset managers, financial advisors, the media, investors, Occupy Wall Street sympathizers—using social media platforms is what makes financial services discourse less predictable nowadays. 

Online “conversations” start when someone/anyone publishes something and somebody else notices and weighs in.

How does a piece of content spread? Just last week, an excellent post listed the several “elements that can form the catalyst for viral exposure." High viral content, according to blogger Kelsey Libert, is: 

  • Original, authentic and brave
  • Simple and concrete
  • Remixable and easy to remix
  • Validated from a few influential initial followers
  • Highly visible and initially exposed to a community of similar users
  • Speaks to the interests/values of the community it is shared within

The third element—remixable and easy to mix—was what gave me pause when I read the post. We don’t see a lot of remixing investment content.

But there was some remixing over the weekend. Thanks to Reformed Broker Josh Brown’s blogging about an “exchange that demonstrates the usefulness of a crowded and vibrant financial Twittersphere,” we have an instant case study.

It took place on Twitter, yes, and I agree with Brown’s points about the Twitter community. But there’s no reason to think that this couldn't happen with a blog post, a LinkedIn post or a YouTube video, assuming most of the elements are in place. 

Check the case study against Libert's list of what's required for viral exposure. 

A. Original, authentic and brave

J. Lyons Fund Management is an RIA with $10 million in AUM. It’s not unusual for the firm to comment on charts and data using its Twitter account @JLyonsFundMgmt (500 followers as of yesterday) and StockTwits account (almost 6,000 followers).

After the disappointing Q1 GDP (-2.96%) reported last week—the 17th worst in 50 years—the firm took a look at what happened to the economy after the earlier worst GDPs. A recession followed in every other instance, prompting the firm to wonder what would happen next. 

 

B. Simple and concrete

J. Lyons could have published the data and insights on its blog, and tweeted a link to it. Instead, it uploaded the table itself. Smart. And, the inclusion of the last column was genius. Ordinarily, you don’t need a separate column if every entry in every row is going to be the same value (Yes). But that column, along with the copy in the tweet, stimulated the conversation.


C. Validated from a few influential initial followers
D. Highly visible and initially exposed to a community of similar users
E. Speaks to the interests/values of the community it is shared within

The tweet was published early Saturday morning, and Brown (whose 78,000 followers are both influential and concentrated in the investment community) helped it along. As of Monday evening, the tweet had 64 retweets and was favorited 45 times.

F. Remixable and easy to remix

The tweet had some loft from Saturday to Sunday. On Sunday afternoon the Twitter account @MarginalCapital directed its own tweet to J. Lyons and Brown. Brown says he’s never heard of MarginalCapital and the account bio offers no more than mystique.

MarginalCapital remixed the J. Lyons data—in other words, ran some of its own data and added a fifth column.

The conversation continued, taking a different turn. While the J. Lyons data seemed to point to a recession and the accompanying negative outcomes, Marginal Capital tweeted, “What happens next is that the S&P500 is up 79% of the time in the year after.”

(I should probably note that the original data wasn’t really easy to remix because Marginal Capital needed to recreate the table. Oh, and the copyright line was dropped.)

A general tweet followed the tweet directed to J. Lyons and Brown. As of Monday evening, this tweet had received 36 retweets and was favorited 39 times.

By the end of Monday, at least one more RIA tweeted yet another chart it had produced in response and the original chart had inspired at least one blog post. J. Lyons and Brown passed those tweets on to their respective followers, too.

Keeping The Faith

There are a few things about this episode that just tickle me.

It’s pretty awesome that an RIA could surprise the investment community with an original report.

“Even most professionals—myself included—were probably not aware of this particular point," Brown writes.

I love the fact that the original tweet surfaced first on a Saturday morning and the response happened on a Sunday. When investment types have something new to say, there is no waiting for the work week to begin. What’s also instructive is that there were people paying attention at those times, too.

To be sure, marketers of investment content are a step removed from all this. You need somebody else to do the analysis and crunch the numbers, the results of which no doubt needs to be reviewed and approved along with the communication about it.

Process can slow us down but it doesn’t need to break our spirits. Hopefully, you always do your part to make the case for content that means enough to somebody that they’ll share it, challenge it or remix it. 

The last word? Who'd want it? No matter what its size, the firm that's willing to mix it up—including asking the community questions, taking in their input, doing their own validating—will be better off in the long term, I do believe.

Here’s to a safe and fireworks-filled Independence Day celebration with loved ones. I’ll be doing some IRL boat-rocking so please don't look for another post until the week of July 14.

Marketing At The Morningstar Conference: Finserv Goes Funserv

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Instead of publishing a blog post related to asset management marketing last Thursday, I headed over to the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago (my hometown) to see what I could see in action. I didn’t expect to meet up with many marketers onsite, and didn’t, but I certainly saw a lot of your work.

What follows are a few random, ragged observations. The overall event itself was packed with information and opportunity. Congratulations to Morningstar's Leslie Marshall, Director – Events, Magazine and Social Media, and the entire conference team, and my thanks for having me as a guest.

MainStay: In It To Win It

MainStay Investments was at the conference to win it. The firm has had a great couple of years, and it’s a reasonable assumption that advisors would have more than a little interest in the MainStay booth. Why not test some cool tech to drive engagement?

In this video, Frank Ranu, Senior Associate, Social Media Digital and Creative Services, explains an innovative Morningstar-focused campaign that involves a box of Cracker Jack, a smartphone app (Taggar) and a woman who walks out from around the box of Cracker Jack to greet Morningstar attendees and encourage them to enter a contest.

This was a campaign with more than a few pieces, and Frank’s analytics suggest it was positively received.

A Slice Of Life

Over at the William Blair booth, my friend, former colleague and, I should say, current client John Jackson, Intermediary Marketing Manager, was leading with content—two-minute-ish video clips that are at the core of the firm’s Watch and learn alternatives campaign.

A single image doesn’t quite capture the effect of dynamic portfolio manager Brian Singer mid-delivery so I took a few rapid shots on my Android phone and let the Google+ Auto Awesome feature do the rest.

The result shows a slice of life in a fund company booth—Marketing does its job while the Sales guy does his.

WilliamBlairAlternatives.gif

Natty Marketer

After having been named the #1 fund family for 2013 performance in the annual Barron’s/Lipper Fund Family Ranking, Natixis took a victory lap by serving as principal sponsor of the conference. Natixis was everywhere, sponsoring the mobile app, the complimentary charging station, the beverage cups and the chewing gum.

We might have talked about all of that but when John Refford, Natixis Vice President, Strategic Marketing Technology, and I met up for the first time, I was drawn to his Pebble. The Pebble is a watch he helped fund on its first day on Kickstarter in 2012. John received it about a year later.

If wearable tech truly takes off in 2014, John has a headstart in familiarizing himself and thinking about its value for this space. Way to stay sharp, John.

Our Very Own Meme!

In opening the conference, Morningstar’s Kunal Kapoor, Head of Information Products and Client Solutions, promised an upbeat get-together. And, with the exception of some comments from selected portfolio managers, the conference delivered. At one point, Refford even invoked the term “funserv” in the #MICUS tweet stream.

Ironically (given the recent $50 billion outflows from PIMCO Total Return Fund), from the general session dais it was PIMCO’s Bill Gross who introduced levity. As Carlos Santana-esque music played, Gross took the stage wearing sunglasses and he even paused to check his cool factor out on the big screens.

It prompted some entertaining tweets, and finserv social media hit a new high when Michael Kitces posted this meme-worthy image. Animated gifs and selfies (see more below) followed. 

Asset Managers And Social Media?

When meeting up with like-minded people in the Social Media Lounge in the middle of the Exhibit Hall, the conversation naturally turned to the state of social media in the asset management industry. These are my latest thoughts, colored by what I saw at the conference.

Kudos To Morningstar For Leading The Way

I sincerely believe that Morningstar itself, led by Leslie Marshall, is to be credited with helping accelerate the awareness of and adoption of social media in the investment industry.

The origin of Morningstar’s business was in the compilation, standardization and distribution of fund data and analysis—basically making it easier for investors to understand and follow funds. Then Morningstar was easily the first investment industry publisher to seize on using social platforms to advance the exchange of insights using the new content formats.

Onsite during the event, it’s not just Leslie who works the #MICUS hashtag. It’s also the business leaders whose full-on participation gives the social channel added editorial cachet. This assures that the stream isn’t overrun by tweets promoting booth numbers and giveaways, and that’s important.

The level of engagement this year rounded out the content planners’ on-stage personas while also demonstrating their interest in how the audience is reacting to the content, accessible via the Twitter backchannel.  

Scott Burns, director of manager research and apparent master of ceremonies, had sent more than 30 tweets—some his own thoughts but many retweets of others’—in the first hour of the event. Then he sent this tweet, which made me smile. It's pretty obvious he's taken on tweeting as part of his job, too.

Just Half Of Presenting Asset Managers Have A Twitter Account…

By now, most of the largest asset management firms do something in social, even if it’s just a LinkedIn company page or YouTube channel with a video or two. But across-the-board adoption, best practices and accompanying gains in relevance and engagement? No, we’re not close yet.

Most of the presenters at the conference work for asset managers, and yet asset managers had little to say about their participation or their commentary on Twitter.

By my count, only half of the 27 presenters from asset management firms—and these firms were those selected by Morningstar analysts as being the most program-worthy in 2014, remember—hail from firms with Twitter accounts.

…And Most Of Those That Did Used Them For #MICUS Promotions

A few of the firms that have Twitter accounts used them and the #MICUS hashtag, but not always to the best effect.

If you’ve ever watched the tweet stream closely during an event, particularly during a general session event where most are focused on this one piece of content, it’s a bit jarring to see a promotional message (i.e., a notice about the swag available at a booth). Too many of those off-topic tweets were from firms that have much more to say but didn't.

Why were asset managers’ contributions to the conversation so marginalized?

For starters, let's consider why asset managers with Twitter accounts were mostly silent about what their presenters were sharing in Chicago.

Compliance issues would be my first guess. It does take some doing, including some of it in real-time, to use Twitter to share event content in addition to marketing updates. The possibility of being on the receiving end of tweets responding to the content has to be anticipated and planned for, too (even if the decision is to not respond). 

Below is a tweet that J.P. Morgan Funds had queued up and ready to go in support of its presenter. Note how the use of an image enables more to be said than can fit in 140 characters. There are ways to participate, as this example shows.

A second factor might be the siloed manner in which event participation is divvied up as opposed to coordinated. Marketing’s role is usually limited to the booth, any related social (in the physical world) events, maybe pre-event emails. The content to be presented is the province of the Investments professionals, who may be oblivious to Marketing's interest in it.

A third consideration may have to do with “ownership," internal governance of the account and how narrow and/or deep the owners feel is appropriate to go with tweets emanating from a single, mostly B-to-B conference.  

At the same time, there are also opportunities for non-presenters to take part in content conversations. By tracking the #MICUS hashtag, firms both in the Exhibit Hall and outside it could have weighed in with their own content contributions.

This business may be too genteel to expect any bond managers to have had Twitter fun with Bill Gross' sunglasses-wearing but maybe there was an exhibitor that could have offered him branded croakies, if that's still a thing. The dreamer in me wishes that Gross, no stranger to Twitter, would have commented on some of the post-keynote tweets. But none of that happened this year.

Morningstar delivered a vibrant, highly tracked backchannel. We'll have to wait for next year (that's just something we do in Chicago) to see whether more asset managers will find a way to capitalize on the natural opportunities that accrue from taking part in relevant conversations.

I’m not saying anything that most marketers don’t understand and agree with. It’s just another measure of where we are, and the extent to which the benefits of being social have yet to be inculcated within the industry.

Meet Some Of The Tribe

Finally, much of the energy at any conference has to do with people coming together, to learn and exchange ideas but also to see one another, for the first time or again.

So, let me go personal here and say how much fun it was to meet up with people who are active in finserv topics online. Since I’ve mentioned everyone in this photo on the blog at one point or another, I thought you might want to see an update to their avatars. More? Blane's animated gif is here.

Shown in the snapshot with me are:

MorningstarFinservSelfie.png

There's More To A Social Media Landing Page Than Disclosure

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Firms whose every public communication needs to be evaluated in terms of its compliance with regulations can sometimes inadvertently mistake who the customer is. The customer isn’t the regulator. There’s more to do, more to be communicated once the regulations have been satisfied.

A case in point: What’s being linked to from many investment firms’ social profiles.

Let's review: 

  • Establishing a presence on social networks is no cakewalk for mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketers. It’s a cross-functional tightrope, and the operating guidelines can take months to pull together. Even after all that, Legal and Compliance may have reservations, and there can be the veiled threat that it could all be undone at any time.

To prevail and move forward, marketers pledge to be on their very best behavior. There's no appetite for revisiting what's already been approved, and working well enough. 

  • And yet, there's an opportunity to consider: The establishment of an account on a social network gives that account the potential for visibility that far exceeds any other unpaid opportunity on an Internet presence with highly engaged traffic. 

Specifically, the ability to link from the home state of the social account—the bio of the Twitter profile or the About pages on Facebook or YouTube (where more space is available)—provides a near priceless chance to move people interested in what you say on a social platform to your own domain. 

The opportunity here is different from online advertising in at least three ways: It has no expiration date, your potential reach is limitless and yet no minimum number of impressions is assured, and there's no charge. 

As with advertising, the page you link to needs to be well considered. The best practice for online ads is to direct traffic to a landing page customized to anticipate just that traffic.

However, many firms don't offer a link to a social-audience landing page to visitors to their social profile pages. There are plenty of instances where social profiles link to landing pages that are no more than the firm’s home page—you know, those kitchen sinks dressed up as extravaganzas in sight, animation and hyperlinks. Where's a newcomer supposed to go?

Worse, some bios link to a fund company’s prospectus page or Legal disclosure or documents. And that sound you hear is the sound of someone back-back-backing up and out. Too serious too soon.

While links to those pages may satisfy Compliance, they fall short of what your bio-clickers might be looking for. They need additional attention if you have any expectations to convert that traffic.

A Few Deviations On The Landing Page Theme

What are your options, while still meeting all of Compliance's requirements? A spot-check of the pages that FINRA-regulated firms link to from their Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages show more variety than you might expect. While none of these pages is visually arresting in the way that advertising landing pages strive to be, you’ll see an effort to 1)communicate more than what’s required 2)be visitor-centric and even 3)seek to convert. 

Excerpts are shown below, which means that you may not see the required disclosures in the screenshot. Follow the links or click on the images to see the full pages.

BlackRock and Franklin Templeton (shown below) use their pages to pass on some participation guidelines.

As one of the few firms that allows commenting, U.S. Global Investors explains its YouTube guidelines. This is the rare investment firm landing page that's unique to just one social network.

It’s conceivable that that some client/prospect visitors will discover the existence of social accounts not from participating on the networks themselves but while on your site. The UBS (by including a Twitter feed in addition to lots of other options in the left- and right-hand columns) and Vanguard (by including the tweeters’ bios) pages make room for that possibility. These pages could convert Website visitors to Twitter account followers.

Yay—MainStay’s “legal notice page” includes an attempt to convert visitors to email subscribers. A sample of what to expect might also help drive signups.

This T. Rowe Price page can be arrived at from the firm’s Twitter or YouTube channel account. "Conversion" from this page would involve a gain in followers for other social accounts.

Finally, Natixis and Well Fargo Asset Management (shown below) include their own blogs in their landing pages’ social account listings. 

   

When thinking about re-opening your own kettle of worms, review your Web analytics to see how your current “landing page” performs. That should tell you all you need to know about traffic sourced from social sites.

For additional perspectives on social media landing pages, also check out these posts from other sources: 

How Does Your Content Look In Flipboard?

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This post isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s a tad technical and requires you to get your hands dirty by popping the hood and at least exploring how your Web pages are made.

You may be tempted to bounce now.

On the other hand, as marketers, we’re known for sweating the details. The color of the firm logo has to be exactly right when printed on a four-color press. Some of us insist on using the full product name in all instances, even when those names do go on and on. Banners on booths have been ripped down because a comma was out of place.

If you care about all of the above, you may be willing to hang in here to consider some issues affecting how some investment management content appears on Flipboard, one of the most popular news reading apps available for iOS (iPad and iPhone) and Android smartphones and tablets.

Some Background

More than 100 million people use Flipboard, and it's regularly included among the top 10 apps recommended for financial advisors. If you’re not familiar with it, this Putnam wholesaler’s explanation will bring you up to speed.

Essentially, Flipboard provides the equivalent of a magazine reading experience by extracting content from user-specified sources, including blogs and social network accounts, and presenting them in an attractive layout. It's a personal magazine, I love it.

Here’s how Marcos Weskamp, Flipboard’s head of design, described its inspiration to Mashable in 2012: “If there is one element I've always admired from what [magazines] do, it's how every element placed in the page has a specific purpose. I just love how each story flows into the other one, how your eye can surf each page by jumping from headline to headline to photo, to pull quote and into an article. In the magazine world, each page is a small composition of a larger piece, and everything is in a way trying to pull you in to read the story. You can easily scan a magazine, and the moment something interests you, just dive in.”

Flipboard makes subscribed-to content more inviting to read. Theoretically, content that someone chooses to read through Flipboard should get a lift from the enhanced display, often including a related image, headline and a text excerpt. It’s a rich opportunity for content providers to draw more readers in.

The screenshot below is of a Flipboard page, illustrating how Flipboard can showcase content linked to in a tweet. 


Due Diligence On Distributed Content

A few years ago we only dreamt that our content would grow wings and fly to distant places. Today broad distribution on platforms other than investment firms' own domains is effectively extending the reach of what you all have to say. And, kudos to you for originating and sharing content that attracts a following.  

But with this extended distribution comes the need to be ever-diligent that others’ publication of your content is working as expected. Unfortunately, the Flipboard experience isn't ideal for all content. The presentation of some mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) content is disadvantaged in Flipboard, primarily because of what’s being extracted from the HTML and displayed. 

This post isn’t meant to call anyone out. It’s impossible to describe what’s going on without showing a few examples of issues that are occurring regularly and keeping people from exploring the content. We all need to look out for one another.

Oh, and I should say, if there's an adjustment that needs to be made to the way your content is displaying, it's not going to be Flipboard that makes the change.

Some Specifics

I regularly use Flipboard to keep up with tweets from asset managers. You could do it, too—all that’s required is a one-time add of the Rock The Boat Marketing Investment Managers Twitter list or any select Twitter accounts or other social media accounts you’re interested in.

Obviously, my view is of 100% investment management content and may/may not be the way most advisors or investors see your content on Flipboard. They may view your tweets as part of an everything feed. That raises the level of competition for attention. Also, the page layouts are dynamic. An excerpt that takes up almost all of a page one time may be reduced in size the next time you open Flipboard.

However, the reading experience itself is always the same—the composition of each page to be flipped includes multiple entries of varying sizes and accompanying images, all pulled by Flipboard’s algorithm. More about the algorithm later.

The most appealing content is what gets attention within Flipboard and when you’re in the habit of flipping through, the typical user is unlikely to notice let alone dwell on anything sub-optimal. There’s too much interesting stuff "flowing" on any given page, the reader will move on.

What prompted this post is something that I happened to notice about a J.P. Morgan Funds item in Flipboard.

Campaign? Why would J.P. Morgan use campaign in a headline?

Clicking through the excerpt to the page on J.P. Morgan’s site confirmed that “campaign” wasn’t used in the headline. But a check of the HTML shows that “campaign” is in the metadata of this page and many other pages.

Noticing this about a month ago has made me hyperaware of how investment manager content is being displayed in the Flipboard app. Most of it looks great. Firms that are sharing images and graphics should be attracting lots of eyeballs, especially. But upon closer review, it's dismaying to see how widespread some issues are: Headings and text that firms don’t intend or expect to be published are often showing.

The problems seem limited to links to content on firms’ own Website pages and sometimes just sections of sites as opposed to links to posts on blogs. Links to other publishers’ content seem to be displaying just fine.  

Sometimes—in the instances of the Legg Mason and UBS examples below—the extract is simply underleveraging the value of what’s being shared. The most common issue is that Flipboard is extracting a navigational heading referring to a type of content (e.g., Insights, Press Releases, Education and News Center) as opposed to the unique title of the work.

More people will be drawn to a headline like, “Who’s Afraid of Rising Rates?” than Global Thought Leadership Document Gateway. And note that the content extracted in the Legg Mason example is the Website user agreement.


But certain USAA and Eaton Vance extracts show Website messages instead of content, and it’s apparent that something is not working as it should be. This is a lost opportunity, and then some.

Most of the examples shown here are from the iPad app. The Flipboard smartphone apps use the same algorithm so the result is the same but mitigated by the fact that the content of the tweet is more prominent. Still, if you know that someone is taking the time to catch up with his or her news and you have a screen to yourself with which to engage the reader, it’s a shame to fritter the opportunity as is happening in this @BlackRockUSDC example below.

Addressing The Issues

The issues involving the titles may be able to be easily addressed, probably depending on your content management system. (And just a general word of warning to be careful about the words included in your metadata. A few years ago, the FDA ruled that the same rules that govern pharmaceutical companies’ advertising, labeling and promotion also apply to metadata. I wouldn’t rule out this industry’s regulators coming to a similar conclusion.)  

I’ve sent a few of these other examples to Flipboard, hoping they could provide some guidance, but after a month they haven’t had much to say.

Flipboard extracts are based on their algorithms, which they don’t share information about.  

One commenter on Quora speculated, “The parsing and extraction can be done by looking for relevant HTML tags (e.g. <p>) which contain the more textual content than usual; they also analyze other aspects of the HTML such as relative position (main content tends to be more centrally located), tag affinity (article text tends not to be mixed with lots of other types of non-text tags). Some algorithms use more sophisticated techniques which require it to be trained on sample data.” 

To view how Flipboard is extracting your social updates, look for your social account using the Search capability in the upper right-hand corner of the app. 

If Flipboard is publishing “the wrong” content, you have three obvious choices: 

  • You and your IT support will need to troubleshoot and ideally address the page-specific issues.
  • If you fail to identify a way to address these, you may want to take your limitations into consideration when selecting what to tweet or otherwise share.
  • You could choose to not be bothered by how Flipboard is displaying the content. 

Lots of attention right now is being paid to the Twitter profile changes, the deadline for which is May 28.

But remember that it’s a minority of Twitter users who read your tweets on your Twitter profile page. Much more likely is that they’re consuming the content you share in the app or news reader of their choice. As important as it is to make sure that the Twitter profile aligns with your brand, my recommendation is that you take care to also check out your content where and how your firm's followers are experiencing it.