Publicize your financial goals on social media to let friends and relatives know what you’re saving for. Then, they can give you a gift via the site.

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At first, I was put off by the idea of raising money for personal goals this way, but it’ actually not a bad idea.
 

A young couple that is trying to buy a house can publicize their financial goals using GoalMine on Fabebook. When a soon-to-be-married couple registers at a department store or online, they’re doing the same thing.
 

The big difference is they are likely to register household items and not a house! In other words, GoalMine allows a young couple to focus on longer term goals rather than small items. That’s a good thing.
 

The problem with GoalMine is that the advisory firm behind it, Gratio Capital, launched a couple of mutual funds in which the gifts gets invested, and the funds are not inexpensive. The bond fund carries a 1.15% expense ratio, while the stock fund has a 1.4% expense ratio, and that’s after a waiver of the manager’s fee. That’s about 1% a year more than you would need to pay for index funds.
 

But the idea of allowing young savers to announce their goals via social media and get friends and relatives to fund them is a good one.
 

What do you think?

According to the newly released data, 58% of adults ages 65-73 and 30% of adults age 74 and older go online.

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While most generations have internet adoption rates of at least 70%, internet use drops off significantly for adults over age 65. But the number of older Americans online is signficant to advisors. 

You can download the full report but here are some highlights of interest to advisors:

• While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%. 
• Only 44% of adults ages 65-73 and 20% of adults over the age of 74 have broadband at home versus 66% across all age groups.
• Older generations are more likely to go online for financial information, although here the Silent Generation leads with 44% of users ages 65-73 turning to the internet for financial information such as stock quotes or mortgage interest rates.
• 58% of those 46 to 55 bank online, while 56% of those 56 to 64 do so and 44% of those 65 to 73 bank, while 35% of those 73 and older do so.
• The fastest rate of growth was seen among the oldest generation of internet users, as the percentage of adults age 74 and older who use social network sites quadrupled from 4% in December 2008 to 16% in May 2010.

One of the most authoritative sites on the Internet yesterday released this list of its most popular organic SEO columns of 2010. It's a great resource for advisors who want to learn about SEO.

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Read the full list and implement some of these ideas and you are almost certain to improve your SEO results enormously.

If you've ever Googled yourself--and let's face it, everyone does--then you know that one of the first search results likely to appear is your LinkedIn profile page. Your LinkedIn profile is important. Have you made the most of your LinkedIn profile?

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This post on Mashable offers a number of really good tips about how to post content on your LinkedIn Page.

While a lot of the information is obvious to anyone who spends the time to examine the tools available on LinkedIn, it's a great summary. And the post will cetainly help any social media novices.

One of the apps tha advisors should use on LinkedIn is the Questions & Answers platorm, which enables members to demonstrate their business acumen by answering questions from other members. Another great way to post content is using SlideShare. Using these apps will help boost your search engine rankings. Be sure to link back to your website or blog with relevant information.  

Another post to PC World yesterday offered some LinkedIn proifle tips, but it was more focused on search engine optimization and using key words in your profile to boost its search ranking.