Boomers and Financial Planning

NSON Opinion Research recently conducted a telephone omnibus survey in conjunction with Dr. Les Harris, president of Mature Marketing and Research, and author of two books on baby boomers: After Fifty and After Sixty.

NSON asked 570 people who were 40 years old or older what type of financial planning assistance, if any, they used. Over 60 percent of respondents said they do not use stockbrokers, accountants or other financial consultants to assist them with their financial planning activities.

However, people aged 55 to 64, the age bracket immediately prior to retirement, are using financial consultants more than younger and older groups. The study also showed that women are more likely than men to use financial planners.

Listening to Your Customers Can Provide Big Dividends

Do you know what your customers or bloggers are saying about your company and your products? Marketers used to be able to assess the perception of their company or their products by simply monitoring the media and reading any letters of complaint that came by mail, but that was pre-Internet and social networking.

Now there are more than 80 million blogs, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, video aggregators like YouTube and EveryZing and thousands of other social media sites on the web where customers talk with each other and make all kinds of comments, good and bad about your firm, your competitors, and your industry.

In his new book, The Art of Strategic Listening, Finding Market Intelligence through Blogs and Other Social Media, information specialist Robert Berkman explores what you can gain from listening in to blogs and other social media, the ethics of such listening, and gives step-by-step guidance for setting up different kinds of monitoring systems such as alerts and RSS feeds, among others. Drawing on his training as a journalist and researcher, he also provides tips on assessing the credibility of the sources you are monitoring.

And what about information overload? If you are listening to hundreds or perhaps thousands of different conversations, how can you organize them and make sense of it all? Berkman also attacks the overload problem, saying that while you must simply accept the fact that you can’t follow it all, you can make strategic decisions about how and where to find what he calls the “key conversations” and “influentials” that truly impact your firm and industry—and how to filter out the less relevant and trivial discussions.

An interactive pdf of the book with links to all websites mentioned as well as numerous onlinetools and tutorials to help you set up strategic listening systems is available exclusively from the books publisher at www.paramountbooks.com. The pdf allows you to search the book as well as to easily access the sources mentioned in it.

Whether your job is to actually set up systems for strategic listening or to manage those who will do so, The Art of Strategic Listening, will help you better understand the systems and how to manage the information you acquire.

Robert Berkman is the editor of The Information Advisor, an international monthly journal for business researchers that he founded in 1988. He has authored several books on research, technology, the media, and the Internet. He serves as Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies & Film at the New School in New York City where his focus is on emerging media technologies.

The Art of Strategic Listening, Finding Market Intelligence through Blogs and Other Social Media by Robert Berkman (Ithaca, NY: Paramount Market Publishing, Inc., 2008) is available at www.paramountbooks.com or by calling toll-free, 888-787-8100. You can reach Robert Berkman at robertberkman@gmail.com