Webinar. GoToWebinar.com is a great tool that all RIAs should be using. If you are a registered rep and your broker-dealer refuses to let you blog for "compliance reasons," ask them whether they will allow you to use GoToWebinar.com. This extremely powerful platform lets you conduct as many Webinars as you want in a year with as many as 1,000 participants-including all phone costs. Webinars are basically phone calls, which do not currently require monitoring by your compliance department, so your B/D may let you run them. And if your broker-dealer really does want to know what you are saying, you can record them. The GoToWebinar platform includes automated tools to manage these events, automatically reminding people beforehand, surveying them afterward for their reactions and allowing you to send a follow-up e-mail to thank them for coming and to tell them about other events. You can also automatically e-mail people who registered but didn't show up and give them a link to a recording of the event and presentation materials that you place on your blog. (For an example of a campaign I recently ran, see my blog about crisis communications at http://gluck.advisorblogcentral.com.)
GoToWebinar, which is offered by the same company that sells GoToMeeting, costs $99 a month or $948 a year if paid up front. If you cannot write a blog because it requires too much effort or if you feel more confident about speaking publicly instead of writing, then Webinars are great. Once you get the hang of it, you can run a Webinar weekly-or daily on very bad or very good days-to sum up breaking news and market statistics with a group of clients. Better still, invite prospects! Recordings can be made available on your Web site. You can also choose to take questions from participants or questions can be typed in by participants and only you see them. You can cherry-pick these questioners, too, giving them permission to speak to the full group only if you choose.
Press Your Case. The local press needs to hear from you. Write an op-ed piece or letter to the editor explaining what you are doing for your clients now, how independent advisors are different from brokers at Wall Street firms, or some other topic related to the crisis that you feel strongly about.
Call reporters and offer to be a source. Chances are you'll get the reporter's voice mail. Leave a message saying you want to be interviewed about what you are telling your clients now.
One good way of getting into your local paper is to offer a new client a free financial plan if he'll let you cooperate with the press on a story. Newspapers love to publish "financial makeover" stories. If you do a case study about remaking the portfolio and financial plan of a new client who quit his broker to come to you, it will get published. Often the client's name can be kept out of the story, though most newspapers will want to get the client's name and photo.
And if a reporter calls you, stop what you're doing to take the call. If you don't, reporters will look elsewhere for information. Reporters call sources who make themselves available whenever needed because they're almost always on a tight deadline.
Andrew Gluck, a longtime writer and journalist, is CEO of Advisor Products Inc. (www.advisorproducts.com), a Westbury, N.Y., marketing company serving 1,800 advisory firms.