Recent years have seen the rise of digital influencers, people who use their online reach to change opinions and behaviours across their target audiences.
Although digital influencers are most prominent in Instagram and YouTube marketing aimed at millennials, they have now found their way into the investment landscape. Australian financial advisors and experts are tapping into the potential of digital channels such as social media to accumulate followers and attract customers.
One such business digital influencer is Roger Montgomery. He is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Montgomery Investment Management, a fund which currently has over $1.4 billion in domestic and global equities under its management.
In a recent interview, Montgomery said that he realised he had become a digital influencer when he discovered one of his blog posts had five or six hundred comments awaiting moderation.
“I had to go home and work the entire night to approve the comments,” he told Lelde Smits. “I realised then that we were saying some things that people were genuinely interested in. That was inspiring; it was also motivating.”
Montgomery also gave some advice to anyone hoping to become a digital influencer.
“If you’re successful at what you do, people want to understand how you do it”, he said. What prevents people from doing it I think is the fear that the competitors will find something out. But really, if you’re clever, you don’t need to give away all of the intellectual property. The way I describe it is: we take people all to the river we fish in, but we don’t take them to our fishing hole.”
When asked about who he looks to for inspiration, Montgomery points out that his team are interested in thought leaders rather than commentators. Aside from his own site, Montgomery recommended American investors, Howard Marks and Ray Dalio.
“I think Howard Marks in his monthly memo does a really good job,” Montgomery said. “And he is so successful he doesn’t actually need to promote it himself. He releases the memo, and then everyone else on their blogs and on their Twitter accounts forwards it on to the rest of the world.”
Montgomery is not alone when it comes to being a business digital influencer in Australia. Here are five more investors that are effectively using digital channels to give out investment advice:
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Alan Kohler has over 45 years of experience as a financial journalist. He has recently started a website called The Constant Investor which includes CEO interviews, weekly analysis of investment markets, investment ideas and real-time updates of investment news via Facebook.
Twitter @AlanKohler – 92.5k followers | Website: www.theconstantinvestor.com
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Peter Switzer is a business and financial commentator, radio and television presenter and current host of ‘Switzer’ on Sky Business News. He also founded Switzer Daily, a business, finance and political commentary website aimed at investors and industry professionals.
Twitter @peterswitzer – 9.3k followers | Website: www.switzer.com.au
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Shane Oliver is AMP Capital’s Head of Investment Strategy and Chief Economist. On his website, Oliver’s Insights, he writes about key market issues and investment trends. He is also a regular media commentator appearing across major Australian outlets.
Twitter @ShaneOliverAMP – 12.3k followers | Website: www.ampcapital.com.au
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Scott Pape has been voted “Australia’s most trusted finance expert.” He’s worked as a financial commentator on Channel 7 and Triple M and has a website called The Barefoot Investor where he outlines a path for investors to attain financial independence.
Twitter @scottpape – 19.2k followers | Website: www.barefootinvestor.com
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Assad Tannous is the head trader and founder of Asenna Capital, one of the largest communities of active traders in Australia. Asenna is acclaimed for its real-time trading strategies, and Assad is known for tweeting a lot of his trades and explaining his rationale.
Twitter @AsennaWealth – 30.3k followers | Website: www.asenna.com.au
For Australians who are looking to invest in the digital influencer phenomenon, mobile technology company Crowd Mobile (ASX:CM8) is the only ASX-listed company giving investors access to this growing space.
“We see digital influencers as the new TV commercial, particularly for millennials,” CEO Domenic Carosa told Tech Invest. “Traditionally, influencers might have had 50 or 100 thousand followers, but we are finding that a more important metric is engagement.
You can have someone with 2 million followers with very low engagement, which isn’t as good as someone with 100,000 followers who has very high engagement.”
Montgomery touched on a similar point when asked why he shared information for free.
“So it is about driving traffic,” Montgomery said. “It’s about audience participation, and a crowd draws a crowd. So if there’s lots of people coming to your content, then there must be a reason people are coming for your content.”
Montgomery concluded by advising investors to look beyond the really huge names such as Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. “Get past that, because everyone is following those and then look for the Howard Markses of the world and the Ray Dalios of the world and your investing knowledge will increase exponentially,” he said.
