By D. Bruce Johnston

During Huntington Asset Services’ recent social media webinar event, I mentioned the new “ABCs” of financial social media.

Social media helps small advisors and managers stand out

In addition to the ABCs of wholesaling — “Always Be Closing” – today’s investment marketers are learning a new alphabet:  the ABCs of financial social media, “Always Be Connecting.”

The world of social media rewards those who are able to connect and engage their customers.  This benefits small asset managers and advisors because they not only can Always Be Connecting, they can also:

• Always Be Experimenting. Developing a social media strategy and presence is not a one-size fits all or one social media application fits all proposition. Small advisors can afford to experiment by testing concepts and approaches until they find those that work best. This ability to experiment and modify strategy while building relationships during the experimentation phase of your strategy advantages the small asset manager and advisor.

• Always Be Moving Forward – Just Do It. I’ve heard it hundreds of times from executives at large corporations: “We’ve formed a committee to evaluate social media and whether it’s for us or not.” While the larger organizations are in paralysis you should be moving forward with your social media strategy.  There isn’t a lot of testing that needs to be done.  Social media applications are being introduced at warp speed and are being fine-tuned at the same speed.  Advice and guidance are readily available.

• Always Be Touching Your Followers. Small asset managers and advisors hold a distinct advantage to their larger competitors when it comes to understanding their client and what they want. Large organizations pride themselves on the size of their customer base versus the quality.

• Always Be Engaging. If you’ve been in business for a while you probably have an established customer base.  With millions of people on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn it’s a safe bet to think that you may find your customers already online.   If asked they may be interested in joining your professional network.

One thing you can bet on, if your customers are not there now they will be in the near future.  Or, stated another way, why wouldn’t you want to have a presence where your customers are?

Perhaps you have made decisions about adjusting your staffing and business model to the challenges of the current environment. Social media programs provide a way for you to deploy more resources and effort into your distribution and marketing efforts without assuming a lot more cost.

Even in uncertain recovery, many smaller businesses like yours are committed to expanding their presence, yet have little appetite for going back to business as usual.

The pattern that characterized the emergence from similar market environments in the past is not being repeated. The cycle of down-sizing and staffing up has been altered as decision-makers look to boost production and distribution through technological innovations.

The new paradigm is simple: Always Be Connecting.