FMG, a digital marketing firm for financial advisors, announced a new enhancement to its platform that will allow advisors to post content on social media sites that sounds as if it were written by the advisors themselves—when in reality the content will be crafted by an artificial intelligence tool.
The “one click” AI-powered social media content engine will use the abilities of ChatGPT, the AI chatbot launched in November, to create realistic content on social media websites.
“We are integrating ChatGPT in a way that an advisor can create their own personal voice print profile,” said Susan Theder, the chief marketing and experience officer at the San Diego-based FMG (and also a Financial Advisor magazine contributor). “We apply that digital voice print to the content in our library, which makes every piece of content in our library personal and unique for each advisor.”
When the firm talks about a “digital voice print,” it is referring to written text that, although it seems to be written by the advisor, is actually being created by ChatGPT. To generate the “voice,” ChatGPT will use data it collects about the speaking manner of the advisor.
Through a series of questions, an advisor can say whether they use a more casual or professional tone when they talk with clients, as well as convey other quirks about their speech patterns, including the ways they address people and certain phrases they like to use, Theder said. They can also say how frequently they use emojis, if at all.
The new tool, which rolls out this month, combines ChatGPT’s AI capabilities with FMG’s proprietary service tool called Curator. That service scours the internet to find articles relevant to an advisor’s interest or a topic they wish to discuss with clients. Clients can access this service through either a mobile app or a web portal.
Before now, if an advisor wanted to share an article on social media, they would have to write their own caption. But advisors have been reluctant to do that out of fear or time constraints. The new tool will do it for them, said Dave Christensen, FMG’s chief product officer. The “one click” tool will generate a caption that summarizes the article, provides potential insights and engages the audience with a question.
“We trained the engine to read the content of the text, and now we have a proprietary prompt that will write and caption that based on marketing best practices,” Christensen said.
Once the system generates the caption, the advisor will have final say over it. They can make changes to it if they wish or keep it as is and post it. They can even ask the system to regenerate another caption if they don’t like the one they get, Theder said.
If advisors are consistently disappointed with the “voice” the AI generates, they will be able to tweak it later this month, Christensen said. The firm will introduce an additional tool allowing advisors to modify the tone of the language to suit their preference—or to make other changes such as reducing or increasing the number of emojis, Christensen said.
Samantha Russell, whose title at FMG is “chief evangelist,” said the program will use things like hashtags and solicit engagement from the audience with questions, as well as use emojis and bullet points to break up the text. Russell believes that by using this new tool, advisors can grow their presence online and attract more clients.
The content creation will also adhere to the communications rules laid down by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. FMG will keep the system updated to any new changes that occur in the future, Theder said.
“As we come across any new best practices or a shift in what we think advisors should be doing, we are going to be training [ChatGPT] to do this,” she said.
Struggling To Write Content?
FMG says the new tool should help those advisors who are struggling to write their own content and are thus frustrated in their attempts to attract customers through social media.
“People don’t post as consistently as they should in order to grow, and they don’t post things that generate community and conversation,” Russell said. “The whole point [of social media] is to create this social interaction.”
Since the tool speaks in an advisor’s “voice,” they will be able to post more often and in a more engaging style, Russell added.
The latest enhancement is available to clients who use the mobile app at no additional cost. It will also be available on an upcoming software upgrade. Later this month, FMG will make the tool available to those who access their content through the web.
The social media content tool is the first step in a series of new enhancements FMG will be rolling out in the coming year. In the third quarter, the firm will unveil a new upgrade that will allow customers to use the tool to generate content for emails. Then by the end of the year, it will be able generate content for websites and other long-form content, according to Christensen.
“For us to apply ChatGPT to all of our library of content to create this personalization so that every piece of that content from our firm is unique is extraordinarily remarkable,” Theder said.
FMG has been operating since 2011 and has more than 40,000 financial advisor clients. The firm hopes the latest tool will help advisors through their reluctance to post and give them more opportunities to communicate with clients and potential clients, Christensen said.
“We know advisors should be doing more marketing, and traditionally they don’t because they are scared of the effort it takes to do it,” he said. “This will allow us to take all that content and put their voices on it and personalize it at scale.”