Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, draws leadership lessons from her presidential subjects. Best known for the bestseller Team of Rivals focused on Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet and her Pulitzer-prize winning No Ordinary Time about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years, Kearns Goodwin has spent her life studying these and other leaders. Buried in [...]
All social media platforms are not created equal. To increase engagement rates and the odds of connecting with your ideal audience, tailor your social media content uniquely for each platform. It’s helpful to take a step back and look at the demographics, audience reach and purpose of each platform, and then identify how they relate to your firm’s overarching [...]
Change is often the crux of any communications campaign—new executive leadership, a new product or branding, or an acquisition or divestiture—all entail sharing a vision of a new status quo. At a recent panel discussion hosted by the Financial Communications Society (FCS), a group of veteran communicators shared their perspectives on “Change Management: Best Practices for Communicating Significant Changes [...]
A recent study of 69 asset management firms’ websites concluded that 98.5% did not meet basic readability levels. The study, conducted by VisibleThread, looked at four key metrics: Long Sentences – How many sentences are too long? Readability – How clear is the content? Passive Language – How many sentences are passive? Word Complexity Density – How many complex, [...]
I once received an email from an awards organization letting me know a client had won an award titled “Best Asset Manager in Wisconsin.” The award-giver apparently overlooked the fact that this client is based in Massachusetts. But not to worry! The awards program simply changed the title of the award to “Best Asset Manager in Massachusetts.” If I’d [...]
You may receive occasional emails from LinkedIn notifying you that you or one of your connections was mentioned in the news. These notifications are the result of LinkedIn’s automated “Mentioned in the News” feature, in which an algorithm searches for online news articles, and matches names in these articles to LinkedIn members or organizations. Consider how this feature relates [...]
We encourage our clients to have a thought leadership program to connect with existing customers, engage new leads, and to share with media. Successful thought leadership programs engage audiences with interesting content that can be posted to a company blog or website, social media and in relevant publications that speak to the right audiences. Thought leadership can also help with [...]
In the financial services context, what sets apart those subject matter experts who succeed in becoming regular resources to the media? In our experience, it isn’t just the size of the firm and the renown of its brand. While those factors may help, our observation is that the reputation for expertise derives from a few key factors: Original content, [...]
I have been lamenting recent changes to the print edition of the Wall Street Journal. In November, the paper eliminated the Personal Journal section, and now the paper is down to just two sections on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. This isn’t the first time. I’ve been reading the Wall Street Journal in print daily since joining the financial services [...]
We read with interest a recent piece in the advisor publication RIABiz about the launch of Barron’s NEXT, an effort by the venerable investment tome to reach out to Millennial readers. Whether Barron’s can successfully connect with this generation seemed to be a side note to a very interesting conversation about sponsored content and native advertising. The article, “How [...]
