In one video, a small boy runs back and forth near a rushing stream. In another, the boy is seen celebrating his birthday. In yet another, a girl is fishing with her father.

These are not the videos you would expect to find on a financial advisor's Web site. But advisors are becoming more adept at using video to promote themselves and build their businesses, and a variety of subject matter is popping up in their online videos, not just information.

Mark Slattery and Shannon Case have made such videos a regular feature at their firm, CaseSlattery Wealth Partners in Omaha, Neb. Though the pair also do more traditional information videos, the personal ones featuring their children and grandchildren often get the most hits.

"We are a boutique firm, and we see ourselves as family-oriented. We are concerned about our clients' families, and we think they are concerned about ours," says Slattery, which is why they added the personal videos.

But their main goal, like that of many financial advisors who use Web video as a marketing tool, is to be informative.

Though this is a relatively new marketing tool, some advisors have embraced it hoping potential clients can get to know them before they make initial contact. It's also a way to keep existing clients informed about current issues.

There are as many different ways to approach a video as there are advisors trying their hands at it.

For informational videos, Slattery and Case simply sit at a table. They recently used the forum to discuss changes in the laws for employer-sponsored retirement plans. The video is short at two minutes, 46 seconds and gives a brief overview of the subject. Anyone wanting additional information is asked to call the pair or seek educational material elsewhere. In other videos, they have covered topics such as estate planning and discussed how to find missing beneficiaries.

"We do not target any particular group or use the videos for mass marketing," Slattery says. "We get most of our clients from referrals because we want them to be a good fit for us."

Each video gets a few hundred hits, and Slattery says there is no way to measure quantitatively what it does for the practice.

"We get good comments from people about the videos," says Slattery. "We use it as another means of communication."

There are a number of approaches. Jon Ten Haagen of Ten Haagen Financial Group in Huntington, N.Y., appears regularly on financial television news shows and then puts the videos on his Web site.

"I am working with the television station to make educational pieces they can use more than once and I can put on my Web site," Ten Haagen says. "I think it gives you an edge over the competition, but only if you can back up what you say in the video."

Because he's working with the television crew, the final product has professional polish. Ten Haagen wants to become known as a retirement income specialist, and the videos help him accomplish that.

The use of videos is becoming more widespread and is a necessity for any financial advisor, according to Matt Ackermann, the executive vice president at Jennifer Connelly Interactive Productions.

Video "is a must-have for effective communications and marketing," he says.

YouTube, which is where some of the financial advisors post their videos, is watched by 179 million Americans a month, according to Google, and about 21% of those who invest frequently visit the site.

But advisors should not expect immediate results, according to an LPL Financial study.

"Social media strategies fail when businesses view them as a side effort instead of incorporating them into their overall marketing efforts," the firm says. "The more you give, without regard for immediate payoff, the more you are likely to get."

Jeff Rose, founder of Alliance Wealth Management in Carbondale, Ill., agreed it is difficult to judge the return on investment for his videos, which appear on a variety of networking sites, including his Web site.

Rose, who got 20,000 hits on his first video, says he hopes to get to 1 million by the end of the year. He first has a welcome video in which he introduces himself and following that are a variety of educational clips on topics such as pensions, mutual funds and credit cards.

But Rose is far from the stereotypical staid and serious financial planner, and it shows in his videos. His video "The Roth IRA Movement" includes some pretty crazy dance moves to illustrate his point and get viewers' attention. Most of the videos accompany his blog, "Good Financial Cents."

"I have always been more comfortable talking rather than writing," he says.

He had to jump through hoops to get the necessary permissions to air the videos, and it was a steep learning curve, he says. But now he has done more than 100 videos and feels comfortable doing them.

He covers topics that he commonly gets questions about and invites those who want more information to contact him by telephone or through social media forums. He has gotten referrals from people who have seen his videos and has some prospects in the works.

"In this day and age of social media, you have to be out there," Rose says. "You do not have to be on every kind of social media, like I am, but you have to be represented."

Some advisors have professionals film and edit the videos, but many, like Rodney Loesch, a financial advisor with Waddell & Reed Inc. in Columbia, Mo., write and produce the videos themselves. Loesch uses a teleprompter computer program and reads the material looking directly into the camera. So far, he has done two: a welcome video and one that features his divorce planning expertise. He keeps them short, feeling that anything over a minute and a half threatens to lose the audience.

"The hard part is remembering that we speak differently than we write. I have to write it in a conversational tone," Loesch says.

Waddell & Reed requires every kind of advertising to be cleared by its compliance department, and videos are no exception, though Loesch says he has had no problem obtaining approvals. He posts his video on his Web site and avoids using any social networking site where the video can be downloaded and altered by a viewer.

Most of the advisors report that the videos do not take much time or money to produce. Bradford M. Pine, a financial planner in New York City who works with broker-dealer Cantello & Co. Inc., is the exception. He hired professionals to film and edit his material, which cost him between $1,500 and $2,000, plus the time he invested.

But he also tallied up more than 38,000 hits for his video.  Opening with a professional-looking blue stock market screen, the video moves to a New York City street scene with a woman doing a voice-over describing Pine. Then in a talking head segment, Pine himself explains why he thinks people come to him for advice. At three minutes, 44 seconds it is longer than most advisor videos.

"A video is very time consuming to get it right, but I think it tells people what you are about," Pine says. "Everything I talk about in the video are my own words. I want to be very transparent and want people to know my vision and my ethics."

He thinks the exposure is priceless for the referrals he has gotten.

Like Slattery and Case, Pine also believes in adding something personal about himself to the videos. He has one that encourages people to be bone marrow donors because it is something he feels passionate about.

"People Google me and they have watched my video and read my articles even before they call me, so they know something about me," he says.