Morgan Stanley wealth advisor Mark Scribner’s Twitter seems to have mastered a social media strategy with nearly 10,000 followers @scribnergroupMS. How does he do it? We dove in for details.
The Stats:
Followers: 9,567
Following: 2,050
Tweets: 796
Launched: Early 2011
Platform: Socialware for compliance controls and archiving plus retention of correspondence. Tweets approved internally at Morgan Stanley
The Strategy:
Follow Formula: When I first started, I restricted who I followed. I was concerned when I first started. I wanted to close my network and not have people see it for fear of competition. But now, generally, I’m open it up to everyone and share.
Canned vs. Conversation: I rely heavily on pre-designed information. About 90% is pre-approved and 10% I originate and customize.
Time Devoted to Twitter: About 20 minutes [a day] just looking at content and scheduling. And then at least a good hour to see who is following. I focus on who has viewed my profile, direct messaged, and emailed. Sometimes I’m checking at night because information flows to my cell phone and iPhone. As we’re sitting here I got a message from an executive that started on Twitter, migrated on Linked In to talk about sitting down and having a quick cup of coffee.
Best Time of Day: Most of my marketing is done in the morning because it’s when I’m the most fresh, I believe. I’m experimenting with different times. My experience is that time between 7:30 am and 9 am, almost when they go to work or are on their tablets and not quite involved with their day, reading the paper, or checking email. Sometimes around lunch, after work around 4 pm or 5 pm and then Saturdays and Sundays in the later part of the day. People don’t have a lot of time during the week and the executive who we work with, wants to do this stuff on the weekend, so it’s pretty effective to put it up then.
Key Lead Generator: Without a doubt. It just takes a while for the whole environment to get productive. But now it’s growing every single day. I’m getting referrals to executives, getting extensive new business, uncovering new assets and new clients. We just acquired a new advisor in January of this year, and we are exposing his clients to this tool. They’re starting to follow, and they’re educating themselves and referring new clients, sending our profile around. So that’s new business coming through our door.
The Hook: At Morgan Stanley, Twitter and Linked In kind of go together. Sometimes they’ll follow on Twitter and then migrate over to Linked In. It starts with an initial courting and then moves to more conversational. Twitter right now is a migration to a deeper conversation. In my opinion, the technology and the character limitations doesn’t really get into a dialogue.
Future plans: I’m bringing in new people and plan to hand this off to some able body. That’s the longer-term goal, to have someone else organize what I do.
