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.