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April 18, 2018 at 01:06 PM
Last month, I saw a social media post from a well-established RIA firm soliciting help for a video series it was creating. The poster, the lead advisor at the firm, asked if any of his connections could recommend a college-age student to assume the project as an intern at the firm.
To me, this request was unfortunate, since it showed that the advisor clearly thought a non-professional could handle this task for his firm. So I asked Robert Sofia, CEO and co-founder of the advisor marketing technology firm Snappy Kraken, if this was a common occurrence among advisors.
“Not specifically for video, but I’ve heard of advisors using college interns for a lot of different things, since the perception is that if someone is in that age group” then they automatically are “really good at technology which, of course, is not true.”
So is that why Snappy Kraken announced a new service under which it will provide “an affordable, professional video production service for financial advisors,” making its video production team “available for on-location shoots at financial services conferences and/or advisory firm office locations”?
“That’s exactly why we did it,” responded Sofia, because advisors “need different videos for different reasons to show at different times in different locations.” So Snappy Kraken is making the professional video production services available outside its studio in Ormond Beach, Florida, shooting advisors in their natural habitat—at their offices—or at advisor conferences.
Different types of videos can be produced for different purposes or to achieve different objectives, says Sofia. “Advisors know that videos are so important, so they’ve fallen into the trap of producing video for the sake of video.” Some advisors will say “’I need to do more videos, let me use whatever video this website company gives me. Now I have video.”
Sofia says that there may be a place for a video that explains a specific investing concept, for instance, but “generally speaking that’s not the kind of video you need to build credibility or to put up on your website. That’s not showcasing your firm, your people, your capabilities, your expertise—it won’t build your business.”
An advisor might, for instance, record a straightforward, solemn video in the wake of a market correction to reassure clients and prospects, Sofia says, but the same advisor might want to shoot lighter videos that display “more of your personality or that you have hobbies or that you have a family that could go on your website’s bio page.”
