Wealth Management Technology Musings

Just an FYI

For anyone who stumbles across this or sees it via FriendFeed or Feedburner:

First - thanks for reading! Second - I have kept this Typepad blog open and active as the historical posts continue to get meaningful use and discovery - and I also have my Delicious bookmarks stream into the Feedburner feed for this blog.

I also hope to continue sharing my thoughts here - however - most of my time is consumed with Arkovi and QuonWarrene - two delightful ventures in financial services that have pulled me from my former life as a broker dealer CIO (and buyer of technology) to a service provider role interacting with financial services buyers.

I hope you enjoy the eclectic but useful Delicious links and the occasional posts here as well.

The Forrester Blog For Business Process & Applications Professionals

The Forrester Blog For Business Process & Applications Professionals

This is a critical intersection in CRM - expanding the communications component, both incoming and outgoing.

Seth Godin - "Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers"

Many brands and idea promoters are in a hurry to rack up as many Facebook fans and Twitter followers as they possibly can. Hundreds of thousands if possible.

A lot of these fans and followers are faux. Sunny day friends. In one experiment I did, 200,000 followers led to 25 clickthroughs. Ouch.

Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That's yellow on the graph. Pretty soon, it dies out.

On the other hand, if you start with 100 people (99% less!) and the idea is twice as good (1.5 net passalong) it doesn't take long before you overtake the other plan.  (the green). That's not even including the compounding of new people getting you people.

But wait! If your idea is just a little more viral, a 1.7 passalong, wow, huge results. Infinity, here we come. That's the purple (of course.)

A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time.

The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux) followers.

via feedproxy.google.com

I absolutely agree with this theory. It has been a longer curve to develop connections on social media - but those connections have largely come due to real conversations, mutual sharing of information and/or common links to business. By organically developing a following on Twitter, not only does your content sometimes make it further but perhaps equally important - you have access to a treasure trove of information by those sharing with you.

Posted via web from Wealth Management Technology Musings

A Roundup of Advisor CRM Solutions

If you are in or around wealth management then CRM is a critical component to what you do. If it is not - you should stop by a CRM roundup webinar this Friday, February 12, 2010, presented by Andrew Gluck and Advisors4Advisors.com. I am presenting with Neal Quon and we will review the leading CRM providers for wealth managers.  

Neal and I will cover the differences between hosted and non-hosted solutions, as well as why CRM should be important to you and how to embed it into your daily business operations. Vendors being discussed include:

• EBIX Smart Office
• Junxure
• Redtail
• Salesforce

We will review how these CRM systems match up with the business lines of wealth management practices, key features and key integration partners.

Posted via email from Wealth Management Technology Musings

Paid vs. Free Content, Publishing Pains, Apple Tablets and All That ... via @knowledgwharton

Paid vs. Free Content, Publishing Pains, Apple Tablets and All That ... - Knowledge@Wharton.

"Two recent events have rocked the publishing world. First, The New York Times, which many regard as the newspaper of record in the U.S., said it would abandon the practice of providing free online content and start charging regular readers beginning in 2011. And second, Apple's much-hyped tablet -- the iPad -- made its appearance. What implications will the Times' decision have for newspaper publishers and other providers of free online content? How will the iPad re-define what a book means, as well as how it is produced, marketed and delivered? Peter S. Fader, a marketing professor at Wharton and co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, and Stephen J. Kobrin, a management professor at Wharton and editor of Wharton School Publishing, weigh in on how these developments could reshape publishing."

I have always followed these discussions and quite honestly continue to have conflicting views as I have a foot in the world of paper and ink as much as a foot in the digital world.

One telling nod though - I was able to give up my paper version of the Wall Street Journal and switch and pay for the WSJ online - and remain happy.

Remember the Blogging Fundamentals via @denisewakeman

"When I do one on one business blog reviews, I almost always find the same problems. On Sunday I'll be doing blogging hot seat reviews at the Niche Affiliate Marketing System workshop. Here's a list of a few things I'll be looking for when I do the reviews. Study the list and then take a look at your blog. Are you making these mistakes?"

via www.buildabetterblog.com

We all run across many top ten lists, best practices and the like - however - not all offer relevant solutions or action steps with context around them. I thought this was well done and reminded me that I need to regularly review these practices when I am writing or tweaking my sites.

The Internet 2009 in Numbers - Social Media Graphics

Data sources: Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Email stats from Radicati Group. Spam stats from McAfee. Malware stats from Symantec (and here) and McAfee. Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube. Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook. Social media stats from BlogPulse, Pingdom (here and here), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.

via socialmediagraphics.posterous.com

Great review of the amazing volume, momentum and trends of Internet usage. Some stats that caught my eye include email, photo and social media usage.

Do You Have an Online Visibility Action Plan? This Sample Schedule Could Help You - Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

In my daily conversations and email exchanges with clients and potential clients, the issue of time always crops up (as I've noted in many previous posts). I'll spare you the "make time!" rant. If you want to watch the video, it's here.

via www.buildabetterblog.com

An excellent way to get started with your online marketing and communications is to build out an achievable routine. This template schedule may help!

Arkovi.com - a video intro to social media archiving

A debut video on Arkovi.com's YouTube channel - a screencast introduction to the service and interface.

How Business Decision Makers Use Social Media?

An interesting tool developed by Forrester based on research and analysis that went into their book, Groundswell, an introduction for business to leverage social media tools. They have two versions, one for B2B marketers (embedded below) and one for consumer habits on social media.