The Facebook IPO Is More Than A Social Media Investment: It Can Help You Build Your Business And Enhance Client Relationships

LinkedIn, Zynga, Pandora, Groupon, and Yelp—all are now public companies.

So why Facebook? What makes it a better business building choice than say, LinkedIn?

That’s easy. Nothing is as big as Facebook.

Who knows if that statement really has shelf life. But that doesn’t matter, either.

The Facebook website is one of the top two sites in almost every country across the globe (China is the only exception). Right now, there are close to 1 billion people globally who have a Facebook account.

Fifty percent or more are over age 26. The fastest growing age segment of Facebook users is those over 55. And women are the predominant users in every age group.

Facebook has hitshare (online visits) of 9%. That’s out of all online visits. People spend an average of 20 minutes each time they’re there.

ETFs and mutual funds will eventually own Facebook shares. Two ETFs have announced they will buy Facebook shares late in the first week after it comes to market.

Facebook will likely become a member of the Nasdaq 100 index. It took only 19 months for Google to be added to the S&P 500.

Now for the education part.

Just think about this. Here, you have a wildly popular IPO hitting the market. It’s something everybody knows about and the majority of people are involved in on a daily basis.

You can:

Do an educational session on investing built around the Facebook IPO
Get your clients’ children involved in researching investments and presenting investment ideas to the family
Partner with your clients in educating the next generation to save and to manage their own money.
Help the family create a junior board with other family members, even with those outside your client’s immediate family unit. (You may want to bring in an external professional to help you do this.)

A clean-energy fund in Switzerland offers these types of services to their clients’ teenage and young adult children because its biggest client asked them to do so.

Educational sessions with siblings, cousins, and their families automatically link you to multiple generations of the family and to multiple adult members across family branches.

They get you right to the heart of what high net worth investors want: the chance to form family bonds, pass on family values—especially about wealth, and equip the next generation to be responsible wealth owners.

Giving clients what they want is a powerful step in relationship building. Giving it to them the way they want it—instead of the way that excites you the most—confirms that you are sitting on their side of the table with them.

Could a little innovative thinking get them to reserve that seat for you permanently?

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