A Closer Look At Financial Advisors Who Use Twitter
We’ve learned a lot in the six weeks since AdvisorTweets.com was launched–and that was the point! (See our introduction post on RockTheBoatMarketing.com.)
What follows is an analysis of the AdvisorTweets universe, insights into traffic to the site and a look at advisors’ tweeting patterns. We’ll revisit all at the end of the year.
The AdvisorTweets Universe
We launched on September 16 with 203 advisors; the universe now includes 286. We’re aware of about 80 other advisors using Twitter for personal commentary. For perspective, Dan Miller of the Discovery Database estimates that there are 380,000 financial representatives actively selling mutual funds.
Although there are some registered representatives taking part, the vast majority of advisors using Twitter are independent financial advisors, including certified financial planners (CFPs), registered investment advisers (RIAs) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary® (AIFs). Compliance reasons cited by internal Compliance officers lacking guidelines from FINRA are believed to be keeping others away from Twitter. However, FINRA has formed a task force and scheduled a Dec. 16 Webinar at which some guidance is expected. See our post and comments on the subject.
Represented are advisors from 41 states, with more than 10 advisors tweeting from the following states. (For a listing of Twitter accounts, see the By State widget in the right-hand column of the AdvisorTweets pages.)
- California (45)
- Texas (18)
- Florida (17)
- Illinois (14)
- Georgia (13)
- New Jersey (12)
- Colorado (11)
- Michigan (11)
- New York (11)
- Ohio (10)
States yet to be represented are:
- Alaska
- Hawaii
- Mississippi
- Montana
- Nebraska
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Vermont
- Wyoming
Tweets
See AdvisorTweets’ Trending Topics, Trending Tags and Links to get a sense of what financial advisors tweet about. AdvisorTweets is a curated site, meaning that the advisor universe includes only advisors who are using their accounts for business purposes. As you’ll see below, advisors are tweeting on investment and personal finance topics throughout the workweek and weekends. However, we’ve seen that the stream can get diluted with football-related tweets Friday nights, Sundays and Monday evenings. We’re thinking that they just can’t help themselves.
As of Nov. 1, the most prolific advisors, in terms of tweets sent, are:
- jessefelder (account created March 2007) 7,981
- MoneyClarity (account created December 2008) 6,982
- KristineMcK (account created September 2007 but no tweets since July) 5,610
- rwohlner (account created April 2009) 4,360
- curtisfinancial (account created September 2008) 3,518
Financial Advisors With At Least 3,000 Followers
A Twitter account’s follower count may/may not be a reflection of the quality of tweets. Just in case it’s significant, here’s a look at the top financial advisors by follower count as of Nov. 2.
- Domsitowski (but no posts since 9/16) (18,509)
- MatthewSapaula (17, 709)
- gregskidmore (11,876)
- jessefelder (10,203)
- MoneyClarity (9,213)
- PhilanthropyCFP (4,516)
- dennistubbergen (3,986)
- StandSure (3,736)
- KirkKinder (3,514)
- Marcus_Grooms (3,258)
- Growthguy2 (3,097)
Web Analytics Insights
Visitors to AdvisorTweets spend an average 6:30 minutes on the site, viewing an average 5.2 pages.
Top 5 Viewed State Listings
Top 10 Viewed Advisor Profiles
- kporeilly
- rwohlner
- sage_cupo
- MoneyClarity
- BlankenshipFP
- NealFrankle
- LifeDesignFin
- jessefelder
- MatthewSapaula
- Marcus_Grooms
Tweeting Patterns
Subscribing to the full AdvisorTweets RSS feed with Google Reader enables us to look at when financial advisors send tweets.
The 30-day high was 151 tweets on October 15, compared to the 30-day daily average of 129 tweets.
Over the last 30 days, Mondays were advisors’ favorite day to tweet, followed by Sundays.
While 7 p.m. is the peak tweeting time, automated Twitter publishing applications enable advisors to tweet all day and all night.
Interested in learning more about the AdvisorTweets universe? Please see our re-designed Profiles page.



November 3, 2009 - 12:54 pm
Oh, how Twitter Lists changes things!
For example, look at the top 10 most followed advisors in AdvisorTweets’ list. Go to a random profile on Twitter and then click the “listed” count.
Some of these advisors with 10,000+ followers have minimal list counts (e.g. 2 or 3).
Then examine how other Twitter users categorize the advisors in Lists. Are they known by just geography (Portland local), for social media marketing, or for being the most lovable on Twitter?
I want to follow advisors who are ranked by others as influential in the financial planning and wealth management space.
The independent categorization of Lists makes follower counts practically obsolete.
Bill
FPPad.com
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