What Does Wikipedia Say About You?

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After not thinking about Wikipedia much for at least a year, the massive Web encyclopedia returned to my consciousness a few weeks ago in a roundabout way.

While fact-checking "the new normal," I instinctively went to Wikipedia fully expecting there to be an entry tracking the origin of the phrase. But, there was nothing.

That's a shame because "the new normal"—whose ubiquity eventually earned it the dubious distinction of being Bloomberg's most overused phrase of 2009—is historically significant. History (and Wikipedia as the 21st century version of the history book) should credit PIMCO's thought leaders for popularizing the expression used to describe the post-2008 economic environment. It is no less than "green shoots" and may be on par with "irrational exuberance," both of which are memorialized on Wikipedia.
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Do Investors Have Different Expectations Of Mutual Fund And ETF Firms On Twitter?

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Do retail investors think of Twitter and interact with mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) Twitter accounts in a way that’s different from how they use Twitter to interact with other brands?

I first wondered this last year when there was no sign that investors (or asset managers) took to Twitter to explain what was going on during the May 6 flash crash. That surprised me, as Twitter has established itself as a channel for real-time news and information, especially during crises when information is streaming in from multiple sources.
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Mutual Fund, ETF 'Marketer Of The Year' Nominees Link 2010 Strategies To Results

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You work all day every day and many days into the evening. Once in a while you’re asked to summarize what you do, your accomplishments, the ways in which you’ve contributed to the success of your mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) firm. What do you point to?
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2010 Predictions For Mutual Fund/ETF Digital Marketing

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In addition to tracking marketing predictions (see our 2010 Marketing Predictions, Part 1 post for a round-up and see this article for 100 more), we’ve been keeping an eye on business predictions for 2010. And, the short version is that asset-gathering isn’t going to be any easier.

If you’re a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) marketer, you can expect competition to heat up as your marketing counterparts do what they can to encourage investors to return to equity funds, evaluate their Roth IRA conversion prospects and use new, improved tools and expert advice for investment portfolio-building and re-building.
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American Century’s Use Of Social Media: A Work In Progress

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American Century Investments will tell you that they’re “just experimenting” with social media. Currently, they’re adding two posts a week to their Facebook page and one to three tweets a day on Twitter.

These are not volumes that will turn the heads of anyone outside the asset management industry. But within this space, theirs is a story of pushing ahead, slowly and in lockstep with their approachable Legal and Compliance partners, even as they’re figuring things out.

Twitter and Facebook is just a start, explains Jennifer Sussman, director of eBusiness.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to learn what’s being said out there about us and how we can influence that. If you don’t know what’s being said, you can’t act on it. We want to make sure we really understand what the needs of our clients and prospects are, to ultimately get the chance to engage clients and prospects so we can have a stronger relationship with them,” she says.

“You can’t look at what’s happening in the industry and not recognize the power of being in the environment and having these conversations. We need a new kind of dialogue,” says Sussman.

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