While most of the social media attention is on Facebook and Twitter, some companies are having a lot of success using other social media channels like YouTube.
One of the companies is VitaVie Financial Planning which is run by Kristin Harad, a Certified Financial Planner in San Francisco. I recently had a chance to learn more about Kristin’s business and how she is using video to grow her business.
Q: Kristin, you run a Financial Planning company VitaVie Financial Planning. Can you tell me a little bit about your company?
A: VitaVie Financial Planning is a fee-only financial planning firm focused on new parents and growing families in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Q: Are you seeing a lot of Financial Planners embrace the Internet, and specifically social media marketing?
While nearly every financial planner has a Web presence, there is unfortunately little creativity in our industry. Many Web sites are uninformative brochure-ware, without much to say.
Social media is a hot topic in our industry. A few planners are quite innovative, but the majority is sitting on the sidelines. Parts of our industry are regulated, and our primary regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has been slow in issuing clear cut social media guidelines. As a result, many planners avoid absolutely all social media out of fear of running afoul of their compliance department. While there are still some issues to be resolved, I think this is an ultra-conservative stance, but sometimes we are an ultra-conservative industry.
Part 2: How VitaVie Financial is using social media tactics
Q: One of your social media tactics has been the use of video. Why did you decide to focus on that tactic?
We are in a highly personal business. In the very first meeting with new clients, I learn every facet of their financial picture as well as their life goals and anxieties. Financial planning is about much more than just numbers and I think that giving a peek at my philosophies and personality via video enables prospects to get a much better picture of what it is like to work with me (as well as our other planners, who each have their own videos too).
Q: In addition to YouTube, what other video sites do your videos appear on?
We embed the YouTube videos in a number of places, including our own Web site and our profiles on Linked In (via Google Docs).
Q: Financial Planning is a topic that many people are undereducated on. How do you plan out the content so that the lay person can understand the topic on the video?
Many people don’t understand where financial planners fit in the world of financial advisors. We provide clients with a comprehensive view of their finances, helping them use their finances to achieve their goals. We’re also a fee-only firm, which means we charge for our advice but don’t sell any products like securities or insurance. This can get confusing, so our videos are an effective way to illustrate the services – and value – that we provide.
Many people can be intimidated by financial professionals, as they feel that money is an area that they shouldn’t need to get outside help with. So not only to our videos paint a clear picture of what we do, they also answer key questions that some prospects are reluctant to ask.
Q: One of the things that seems to stump people who want to do video is the technical piece – how do I shoot, edit it, etc. What do you advise?
This was a big hurdle for us, too, so we finally decided to just jump in and learn as we go. We have a $200 Kodak Zi8 camera, a $25 microphone and a tripod and edit everything on iMovie, which is free Mac software. Our video quality could certainly be better, but I think they look professional and are very well received. We recently started outsourcing our editing to a $20/hour editor, as that is a very time consuming process. My main advice is to just get started – don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough!
Q: What are some of your key learning’s in developing video?
- We now try to avoid using scripts whenever possible. Making a good video with a script is very challenging. Now, we mostly just film conversations or ask questions of the person featured in the video and then edit them together to make a nice presentation.
- We use video much more often. For example, we host monthly events and now create video invitations for each of them, which has substantially boosted conversion rates.
- We invested in a $25 lavaliere microphone. The built-in microphones on most video cameras deliver really poor sound quality, and it is incredible what a difference this has made!
Q: Have you seen any direct link from your video’s in generating new clients?
I don’t know that video has brought in new clients on its own, but we have countless prospects that tell us how much our videos help them decide that they’d like to meet with us for a consultation.
We also have a very easy time getting our videos to rank well in the search engines. For example, we were able to earn a sustainable top Google ranking for a video profile of our Marin financial planner just two days after posting the video!
Q: What other social media tactics are you having success with?
We are active on Twitter (@vitavie) and have developed some very solid relationships there. We frequently provide guest blog posts to a number of blogs, and then use social media to help promote them. Our personal Linked In pages is a steady source of traffic to our Web site.