Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Jay Palter
Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild and on this week’s show Steve and I are joined by Jay Palter, who’s the CEO of Jay Palter Social Advisory.
The work that Jay does includes digital media consulting, both for businesses and for their leaders, with a focus on the finance and technology industries. He helps his clients understand how to leverage social networks to build brand visibility, authority, and influence. And to that end, he provides content marketing and curation, coupled with strategic outreach and engagement of key industry influencers.
Steve and I talked to Jay about the very important differentiators between digital and traditional marketing, and dive deep into a really fascinating discussion on influencer marketing. We asked Jay to shed a little light on why and how advisors can use this strategy, and we talk about the future of digital marketing in the industry. And as always, tie all of that right back to how it can make advisors immediately more referable. And with that, let’s get into the conversation.
So Jay, welcome. Great to have you here today.
Jay Palter:
It’s great to be here.
Julie Littlechild:
Jay, I have known you for many years … and I should say, just to begin, it’s Jay’s fault that I do a blog every week. Entirely Jay’s fault. He harassed me for long enough to get that going and look at me now, so thank you for that. I appreciate it.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, all of us dedicated readers thank you for that.
Julie Littlechild:
Look Jay, I wondered if you could just start by telling us a little bit about the work that you do just to give listeners some context.
Jay Palter:
Yeah. I focus on digital media social networks, really. And I specifically focus on using influencer networks to increase your visibility in the online world. It’s really a two-way street. I help people understand how social networks are important for them to learn things about the markets they’re working in, the business they’re working in. It’s really a two-way street that’s what you’re putting out, as well as what you’re learning and bringing into your business.
So, yeah, strategies around that. More public relations, but related to marketing. If that helps at all.
Julie Littlechild:
Okay, okay. Yeah, absolutely. And so, I want to really dig in on the influencer marketing because I think that’s just such an interesting topic and you’re the guy that knows about that. As we lead into that, could you just talk a little bit about, if we look at digital marketing as a general concept, how is that stacking up today against what we’d think of as more traditional forms of marketing? And, maybe even, just drawing a distinction between those two because I imagine the line’s getting a little bit blurry these days.
Jay Palter:
I think it is. It’s hard to see… everything is becoming digital, in terms of marketing these days. But the fact that I like to point out is; the consumption of digital media has been growing for the last number of years and if you imagine that line of a graph moving upwards, the consumption of traditional media is a line on the graph moving downwards. They’re about intersecting at this point, where they’re about equal.
People are consuming the same amount of content online as they are offline. You know traditional, I guess, television, radio, printed newspapers versus online. It’s really important that you have, I think, both elements. In many businesses, you really need to have both elements, digital and traditional marketing, working together in a collaborative way. You really can’t avoid and ignore digital anymore and you really can’t afford, in certain businesses, to avoid traditional media still. There’s still a role for that.
Julie Littlechild:
It feels like, with the onset of digital it’s even changing how we define marketing. Right? I know when I was growing up in this industry, marketing was really- it was salesy. It was all about just getting your product information out there and that is, I mean, it’s really changed so substantially. I know I don’t think about marketing in even close to the same way I did back then. Is that the case for you as well?
Jay Palter:
It’s funny because I talk about what I do, often, more in a public relations perspective than a marketing perspective. Everything that I do and I advocate people do online has implicit marketing implications and benefits and yet, you don’t conduct yourself in an explicit marketing way. They say, “Teaching and helping is the new selling.” And much of what we do online when we’re engaging in social networks, what we should be doing, certainly as individuals, is helping, is engaging, is helping, is sharing, is interacting.
Sometimes the most effective ways – and we can talk about this in more detail – The most effective ways to promote yourself in a marketing way is, in fact, to promote other people and support a community of common interests online.
Steve Wershing:
I just wanted to dig into this a little bit, just because, it’s always been my impression for smaller advisory firms, well for advisory firms, as distinguished from national brands, traditional marketing really wasn’t open or wasn’t a viable option because you could never achieve the scale. And so, it seems like with the social world, like you were saying, it’s a little more akin to PR and it seems like advisors actually need to develop new skills around this that they didn’t have to before. Because it’s really not like selling. It still is marketing, but that they have to start developing these muscles that they didn’t have before. What are your thoughts about that and if you see some agreement there, what kinds of skills should advisors be picking up to exploit this new medium?
Jay Palter:
That’s a great question and I think you’re suggesting exactly the right point, which is; I see a lot of engagement activities that advisors and really any business owner or business leader should be doing is more akin to networking than it is to corporate brand-based marketing. I think there’s room for both to happen in any business and both should be happening in any business, but in most cases the individual led networking activities – which are really only expanded by online digital networks, social networks – are not being done adequately. That the business leaders, who might- I mean, in this case advisors may be going to networking meetings in person. They may be going to breakfast meetings and they may be meeting people and having interactions. And that’s precisely the model that I would encourage advisors to look at social networks as a networking forum for them to, not just meet new prospects but in fact meet peers and broaden their networks, and meet smarter people than they are who can bring them knowledge.
But through all of those relationships that you’re seeking to build, rather than transactional interactions, you’re looking to build relationships with people and there’s all kinds of value in those relationships. That’s the same way as we have value in all of our networks. Right? I mean, we all know people. Those relationships are valuable to us in all kinds of ways. And social networks should be seen more in that light than in a marketing light. Most advisors would need to work on those muscles 100%, especially in a digital sense. They may understand them in a traditional sense, but they don’t know how to translate networking into a social networking environment … digital networking environment.
Julie Littlechild:
And is that what you refer to as influencer marketing? Is that all part and parcel? Maybe you can define that term for us.
Jay Palter:
Yeah, so unpacking a term is very important because influencer marketing in a B to C consumer business environment these days means finding some kind of celebrity and then, paying them to tweet some advertisement of your product, or mention of your product, or share something on Instagram. That’s what people see as influencer marketing. It’s really not the case when you’re in more business-to-business services. Even though advisors clearly that are doing retail services to retail clients, there’s still an extent to which … I mean, the referral aspect of business implies kind of a B2B relationship you have with other centers of influence who might be referring people to you in addition to your clients.
But, yeah. I think, influencers marketing, in an advisor’s context means; going into social networks, finding people who are influential in your market space, and building real substantive relationships with those people online. And investing time and energy in that, the way you would any other relationship building activity. Overtime, there’s a collection of social capital, if you will, that comes, positive social capital that comes from those relationships and that can help you and your business in infinite numbers of ways we could talk about.
Julie Littlechild:
How do you identify those people? I mean, some are going to be obvious. I mean, granted, but not all.
Jay Palter:
No. I mean, you can do homework. There’re some shortcuts that you can use online tools to find, to do some social analytics. There are some very powerful tools today. Because virtually everything that happens in social media is trackable and measurable. There are some very sophisticated tools on who is sharing information in a topic area that you’re interested in and who’s getting the most traction in that area. It’s not even only about the most followers, but who has the most followers who themselves have influence in large networks.
I have a variety of tools that I use and that’s often the first step when I’m working with someone, is to help them identify … Here’s 100 key people that we need to be paying attention to on social networks and I can usually do that a lot quicker than people can. But it’s all accessible information. The internet, as you know, is just rich with that kind of analysis these days. And then you filter that with your own instincts.
Influence is a funny term because there’s no really objective influencers out there. There’s people that you find influential and there’s people that you’re particularly interested in. And there’s people that have audience, they may have the audience that you want access to. So that defines them as relatively influential to you because you’re interested in their audience too, so you pay attention to that.
Steve Wershing:
And Jay, can you elaborate on that a little bit? Because the internet, of course, is worldwide and I’m worried that if we say something like that about influencers that advisors will try to be a Barry Ritholtz or will try to be somebody huge like that, when really their clients are coming from … for most advisors, they’re coming from a local area. So can you talk a little bit more about how to identify influencers that are both connected with consumers that they’d like to be connected with, connected via particular interests, but also, to the extent that there is, how you control the geographic component to it?
Jay Palter:
Yeah. For sure, I would agree that you need to have some limits. I think influence is a relative term, again, geographically. The beauty of the internet and the democratization of communications, in a way, is that celebrity itself, that notion of celebrity and visibility and being known, is a relative term as well. It’s a spectrum of celebrity. You don’t have to be a Hollywood star to have notoriety or visibility in a specific business sector, for instance.
While guys like Barry Ritholtz and sort of these uber influencers in financial services are … They’re good models in some ways. Geographically, they become global influencers. The nature of the influencer community online is global. I wouldn’t dismiss the fact that it’s global, meaning that it doesn’t have an impact directly on someone’s more local business because we all want to do business with someone who’s recognized as a leader in their space. Right? And this is really what influencer outreach and engagement can really give you, is a sense that you’re recognized by other global influencers as somebody who knows a specific subject area, has a particular specialty and expertise, and is a thought leader. Even if you’re not on the list of the top 50 financial advisors or advisor bloggers in the world, if you’re interacting with those folks and building relationships with them; you get some influence and you get some visibility and authority from those relationships.
And so, I wouldn’t dismiss them because they’re global but you can translate the authority you get from those relationships into something that’s more locally focused around your business. If that makes any sense.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Sure.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely. Can you give us some examples of those … in particularly, advisors … who you think are really doing this well?
Jay Palter:
Well, you mentioned Ritholtz. What I tend to do … Michael Kitces has a great list of top bloggers for advisors. Some of them are advisors, some of them are analysts that aren’t really serving clients but many of them are advisors. I think they’re all doing … They would clearly be, all doing an excellent job at articulating their view, building an audience, building their authority.
They’re from a wide range. I mean, some of them have exclusive practices. Some of them are RIA’s, some of them are financial planners. My sense is that you can start there. And at the same time, I don’t know that you have to only hold … I mean, it takes a long time and a lot of writing, as you would know very well, Julie, to launch yourself into this space. Right? And to be on the top of that list.
I don’t know that for any advisor that being on that list- I mean, it certainly wouldn’t hurt your business. None of these people would be hurt in any way by being on these lists, but I don’t think you have to be the top 50 or 100 in the industry to still be influential and to still build your authority. This is really a strategy in a business where authority matters. It’s really a strategy of trying to articulate your perspective and your unique point of view. And to do it as part of a community of people who are recognized as some sort of authority in these spaces.
The authority is partly granted by a community of people that are reading these folks and sharing their content, and it’s also granted by association with the group. You literally identify your group and insinuate yourself into it as a member. And by building real relationships, you become a member. You become somebody who may not be on that top tier in terms of the lists but you have those folks sharing your content.
Anybody on this list, on Michael’s list of top financial advisor bloggers, if they share your content then there’s a way in which you’re getting some credit and some authority from their influence. That’s really what the strategy is about is, not necessarily being at the top of the list but being among the community of folks that are on these lists.
Julie Littlechild:
Right. You make a good point. There is a point in this at which an actual human connection is made, even if it’s digital. I mean, if you’re doing it digitally. And so often, it’s easy to think of social media as just throwing stuff out into the ether but this really does come down to making quite meaningful connections. If an advisor is thinking about, “How can I go through this process,” is there a set of questions he or she needs to ask themselves? Or kind of a step-by-step to move forward?
Jay Palter:
Yeah. That’s a very important point to make because I would argue this strategy is not really suitable to lots of people. There’s lots of people who don’t have the personality for it, they don’t enjoy this kind of activity, they don’t love meeting lots of new people, they don’t love investing time in building relationships that they don’t know what they’re going to produce in the short term. And there’s other people that just, they thrive on that. And that’s what they love the most about their business; they’re meeting people all the time, they’re curious about new people, they’re curious about their own ideas, they love writing them down, they like engaging in conversation and discussion and debate about these things, lively debate with people.
There’s a certain personality profile, if you will, of people that would do well in this space. I would say, you’re outgoing in the sense of being a networker but not necessarily an extrovert. There are a lot of introverts that are active in social networks because it’s not like being in a room with a bunch of strangers and walking around, and meeting people. And so, introverts have a nicer experience online. Often, they can be extroverted in a way without being the extrovert in a real situation.
Anybody who’s really engaged in social … I mean, both of you, I think are active. You’ve had these experiences. You really can meet new people who really enrich your life because you never would have otherwise met them. You wouldn’t have gone to an event and met them. You can meet these complete strangers, you can become friends with people, you can build friendships and relationships. And then, those relationships can be really valuable to you. Genuinely meaningful opportunities can come out of those relationships.
It’s a real thing and I think you just have to have a lot of … You have to have some of the open-mindedness and passion about people and connecting, in order to make it work. That’s a bit of a soft answer too. For sure, I think a lot of the listeners … There’s a lot of folks in here who will self-select, who are listening to this program and say, “That’s really not for me.” And I think that’s appropriate because there’s a lot of people it’s not appropriate for and there’s other people who it would be a perfect fit and they just haven’t figured out how to do it, how to leverage.
Again, Julie, I was bugging you to write because you’re a natural writer. You’re a natural engager with your content. I mean, intellectually. It’s something you just had to do, at some point, and you’ve clearly proven me right.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, right.
Steve Wershing:
I just love the characterization of this process as like, networking for introverts. So how does an introvert … I’m joking about that. How does someone get started in it? How they would start off on it?
Jay Palter:
Well you know, the easiest thing to do, really, in social networks and the core or the oxygen of social networks is sharing content. Right? The easiest thing to do and really useful thing to do – and I do this for clients and I do a ton of it for myself, on my own, anyways – is just dedicating time to reading what people are sharing and then, picking the best material from that and sharing it. Sharing things is the coin of the realm in social media.
I mean, you can share your opinions, you can share your marketing material … You can do that once in a while. If you do it too much, people start getting bored of hearing your opinion all the time and reading your marketing material all the time. If you want to be engaging and build relationships, you have to be channeling information that’s relevant to your audience. My gut instincts around that is just, pay attention to what you’re interested in, in your business. If you use your own filters and if you externalize what you’re filtering for yourself and share content, that’s one of the best ways, both, to become visible to influencers and start building relationships with them, as well as start to create content that’s usable and interesting to an audience you’re trying to attract for your own business purposes, your own practice.
Steve Wershing:
And Jay, you mentioned … I picked up two things in what you just said that I think are really important to emphasize. First is that it doesn’t all have to be created. I mean, you can go out there and find content that you can then share. One of the resistances I hear from advisors is, “Oh, when am I going to find the time to create all this content?” But you don’t have to create it all. The other thing that I’m picking up from it is, if you’re looking to develop those relationships with people who are in your target market, it doesn’t even necessarily have to be financial in nature if it relates to the nature of your tribe, if it relates to the sort of people that you want to attract, then you can be sharing that too.
In fact, in some ways it may be better than sharing market data or economic data, or those kinds of things. Am I hearing that correctly? Or how do you feel about that?
Jay Palter:
You’re absolutely right on, 100%. Right on. I’ll take the last point first, which is, you’re absolutely right. If you think of yourself as a networker instead of a marketer in these networks, then yeah. You’re meeting people in a real-world situation. You’re not talking about your business and the market all the time, every conversation. At some point, you’re talking about sports, at some point you’re talking about what happened with your kids or your family. At some point, you’re talking about the vacation you went on or the newest gadget that you got. So if those things are important and relevant to you, by all means share them.
You have to be balanced and make sure you don’t become the guy that just talks about hockey or football because people think you’re in that business. You have to balance it. Certainly from a compliance point of view, it becomes way better to be sharing content about life and life interests and passions you have than it does about market stuff where it gets very thorny. That’s a huge point.
The fact is, you’re right. I would say to somebody, “If you can squeeze out 4 to 6 really great articles a year, and that’s not very much from the content point of view. But if you can do that, in the meantime just create this really rich stream of the best stuff you’re reading that’s relevant to your audience that you find engaging and interesting. I think you’re better served by that than you are trying to write a blog post a week that becomes, kind of, boiler plate stuff. There’s a lot of boiler plate content out there. It’s noise and it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. A lot of it’s written by marketers trying to market, and people get tired of that. They’re not interested in being marketed to, they’re interested in exploring, engaging in content.
And it doesn’t have to be topical to your business, it can be something else that gets somebody … it gets into their space and they say, “This is an interesting person. I’d be interested in doing business with them because we connect on some personal level.” At the end of the day, that’s what social networking is. It’s social. Social. We have to stop thinking about it as this platform for spewing our marketing stuff at people. I mean, it’s not just a pipe to dump your marketing stuff in.
Julie Littlechild:
It is interesting because … Of course, what we’re seeing is if you’re just a bit more genuine. Communication is so much more personal now, so much more … I don’t know, it’s just you. And that makes it easier. It shouldn’t make it harder. Right? To think in those terms.
I mean, as you’re talking Jay, its got me thinking about this process. Because if we go back to some of the days of traditional marketing, we’d run a campaign. Right? We’d put all of our energy into thinking about; what’s the email sequence and what’s a … you know, and on, and on and on. And what you’re talking about is something that just doesn’t end. It’s almost like a way of being or doing business.
Jay Palter:
That’s exactly correct. It really does require a mind shift. It’s not to say that you can’t do marketing online and you can. And you shouldn’t do campaigns online around your marketing, which you can. What it says is that: you should also be building your network and your community, and you should be doing that in a 24/7 way and always on way. It’s not a campaign. I have people all the time that come to me and say, “We’re having this conference. Can you help us promote the conference?” Okay. I can generate buzz, I can share things, I can get people but if you really want to promote an event and it’s 12 months away, you should start now so that when the time comes to actually promote the event; you’ve built an audience, you’ve built goodwill, you’ve built reciprocity, people are willing to share your content.
If you show up, 30, 60 days before the event and all sudden, start shaking the trees and saying … People get tired and bored of that. They want you to go pay for it.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, sure.
Jay Palter:
It’s absolutely a way of people doing business. I firmly believe that you need to work into your schedule, if you’re a serious business leader – an executive, a business owner, an advisor in 2018 – you need to figure out how you put time in your schedule, every week, to build and nurture and grow your online relationships. Because the offline world of relationship building is still valid and important, but it’s not the only game in town. And there’s a whole other universe of networking that you need to be doing to sustain and grow and nurture your business.
If you’re not figuring out how you can do that and your team can support you in that, then I think you’re leaving value on the table. You’re missing opportunities to not just promote your business, but to learn what’s changing in your business environment. I mean, that’s the way I- How do I figure out what’s going on in the world these days? Well, I mean, I read a few books but not as many as I should. I read a ton of articles and I pay attention to what people in my social networks are sharing. That’s how I stay up to date.
If you’re not doing that, I think you’re missing something about what’s going on in this rapidly changing world.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I tend to think of that whole platform-building side as a completely separate process and it gives me the right to ask people if they’re interested in our services, every now and then. It makes that possible in a very real sort of way. You mentioned something there about doing this yourself and having your team. And I know that a lot of our mindset goes to, how much time does this take? I’d also love your view on whether this … what pieces of this can and cannot be delegated?
Jay Palter:
First of all, I think it’s a team activity. I think if you’re a business leader, there’s all kinds of things. I mean, you sit in front of … As an advisor, you sit in front of a client. That’s a very high value opportunity to do what you do and get paid for what value you’re offering. I think there’s similar moments in social networking where you need to be present and it needs to be your voice. But those can be minimized to the absolute minimum and you can build around you a support team that finds content for you to share, puts that content in your social feeds in a human way, not in a machine automated way.
I mean, you can buy those services today. You can buy content curation services. Personally, I get nervous about those kinds of services. I find while they’re cost effective, I see sharing content … To Steve’s question earlier, that’s really how you have relationships with people these days. That’s how you compliment people and show people that you’re paying attention to them. And so, you really don’t want to outsource that to some algorithm. As smart as the algorithms are getting, they’re not smart enough yet to understand what you want to be sharing and with who.
You can work with your team and you have people in your team who read stuff every day. I mean, people could help find content for you. They can help manage it for you. You can have a team that helps with your content creation, even. You have a blog. If you write once every two weeks, once a month, once every two months … you could have people in your team. You can hire writers to help you develop content.
I really think you need to say to yourself, “We want to do this and this is something we want our business to be doing. We want to be putting information out, we want to be engaging with people, we want to be talking information in. We’re going to structure our time a certain way and we’re going to get those services whether they’re hiring external consultants or writers, or just repurposing some of our administrative resources in house.” Because there’s no reason why smart folks that work for you today, can’t be helping find 10 things a week to share. I mean, chances are they’re coming across them anyways. Right? They’re reading … “Oh, I heard this article. I saw that article.”
I always have a great time when clients. I curate for them. I share stuff, I suggest things they should be sharing. And then, they come back and say, “What about this article?” I’m like, “That’s great. That’s a great article.” People see, every day they see articles that they love and they don’t do anything with it. And that’s 80% of the job. If you’ve read the article, you said it’s great, you know why it’s great, you can dump something in an email in five seconds about why it’s such a great article; that is a very valuable, shareable piece of content and you need to learn how to operationalize that in your day to day business.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.
Jay Palter:
It’s doable, but obviously, it takes planning and the right attitude. It’s a team activity.
Steve Wershing:
And so we’ve been talking about developing relationships and using this as a networking opportunity and getting closer to your audience, by doing it can we make the link over into referrals? Can you tell us a little bit about your perspective on how these kinds of activities then tie into how referable you are?
Jay Palter:
I practice what I preach. I started doing this business, probably, 7 or 8 years ago and I had a background in social media and I had a background in financial services. And I set about to put myself out there as a guy who was an expert in social media and social networking for financial professionals and financial businesses. Everything I advocate, I’ve done. I’m not saying that I’ve achieved everything, but I have met so many people online. I have attracted referrals, partnerships, new business opportunities. Some of them are clients who find me. Most of the time it’s other professionals who say, “I have a client that needs exactly what you’re offering,” and that’s where it comes from.
To me, it’s very important to go into these activities with a very broad sense of what ROI is, what your return on investment is, and to have a very broad sense of what referrals are. It’s not just end clients who are going to come to you because they see you on Twitter. In fact, it’s going to be somebody who you’ve built a relationship with over a couple of years, who’s another influencer in a different area, in a different space, you’ve built up a rapport, gotten to know them. That person happens to know someone in your city and that person is looking for an advisor. And so, the influencer you’ve built a relationship with tells that person they should call you because you’ve built the relationship with the influencer.
I mean, this is the entire point of the conversation that, the target market when you go online is not, in fact, your end clients in many cases, it’s these folks who who give you authority, who give you visibility and access to markets, and who will make referrals to you because of the relationship with them, with the influencer and not having anything to do with the client.
Is it the only channel? No. There’s lots of things you should be doing. I think it’s one of those hygiene things in the 21st century and approaching 2020. I think if you’re not doing this in a habitual way in your business and if you’re not figuring out how to empower other individuals, that also work in your business that are customer facing and community facing, to do this systematically, then you’re missing opportunities that are going to come to people who are visible in those spaces.
Julie Littlechild:
Well, that was well said. I feel like I need to just stop it, right there.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah. I couldn’t think of a better conclusion than that.
Julie Littlechild:
That wraps it up. But look, we are just hitting over time a little. It’s a different way of thinking. And as I said, I’ve known Jay for a while and I listen and it’s changing the way I think I behave. But it does take some time to really let it sink in, try some things and I just love what you’ve had to say here. Jay, if people want to find you, find out more about what you do, where can they look?
Jay Palter:
Well, Google is the place we all go to find me. So, Jay Palter on Google. You’ll find everything. I’m on Twitter, JayPalter, very actively there and I’m on LinkedIn, so between those you should have no trouble finding me and finding my website and I’m happy to engage and have conversations. It’s all about sharing value that way. I look forward to those kinds of opportunities.
Julie Littlechild:
That’s wonderful. Well, thank you again for taking the time today. I really appreciate that.
Jay Palter:
It was great conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, thanks Jay.
Hey, folks. Steve, again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really helps. You can get all the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes at BecomingReferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth, and connect with our blog and other resources. So, until next time, so long.