Why #FinancialServices needs to pay attention to the latest @TakenMovies LinkedIn disruption

Written by: Sheryl Brown / @BIONICsocialite

How many times have people said to you, “Financial advisors have no reason to be on Twitter…you won’t meet anyone there.” or “Financial advisors don’t need to learn about Instagram…it’s a complete waste of time.” I’m here to tell you, phooey on those people! You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life!!

Recently, Mashable wrote about a very different kind of disruption on LinkedIn. ‘TAK3N’ with Liam Neeson is a movie running a promotion through LinkedIn and it’s really nothing short of brilliant: You simply go to their LinkedIn page, follow their page by Dec 23 (2014) and you will be entered into a contest to have your skills endorsed by the movie character, Brian Mills, as well as having a video recorded that you can put on your LinkedIn profile.

Crazy? Absolutely! Irrelevant? Absolutely not!

For many in financial services you might not be able to add the endorsement due to compliance, I get it. I’m talking about the disruption part of this social media promotion; that part you might be able to get around.

All too often broker-dealers and compliance officers are talking to advisors about all these approvals that are needed on financial articles to make sure they are consumer-approved. I also get this too, but what if you could post non-financial related matter in real-time without approval? What if you disrupted your own postings to be more human-like and shared content on occasion that disrupted the norm?

That’s all this movie promotion is about and you can do the same thing. This is completely scale-able to your unique audience, offering and value proposition. What if you put a video on your LinkedIn page of you going crazy at your favorite football team’s game? That isn’t what someoneexpects to see on a profile – and that’s the whole point of disruption!

How could you be different (and still be compliant)? Maybe it’s changing your LinkedIn profile picture every month with a different hat or background that featured a prominent holiday? Seems silly – but probably very memorable. What if you started sending video messages to your clients instead of a regular email? Why not be different?

Different is a good thing. Disruption is an exceptional thing.