The above headline would have certainly been more in line with the informative story by Davis Janowski that appeared today in InvestmentNews. The article featured a number of financial advisors who use electronic media to better communicate and educate their clients. In the interview, I noted that a secondary benefit of being “high tech” to serve clients is that the number of new clients KFG receives from the Internet is second to word of mouth. It was the only comment in the entire article that pertained to marketing in any sense, yet the headline writer chose “Advisers enter blogosphere to lure prospects.”
“Lure” was a poor choice of words, in my opinion. The word means to entice, a come-on (qualities that attract by seeming to promise some kind of reward), to hook, a sweetener (anything that serves as an enticement). In South Dakota, lures are artificial bait (empty promises) used to catch unsuspecting fish and fry them up for dinner. Maybe the Bernie Madoffs of the world do that. Maybe even the average reader of InvestmentNews does that…….but most advisors I know don’t.
As a columnist for various newspapers for over 18 years, I understand that writers rarely write the headline of an article or story. In this case, the headline says more about the money script of the copy writer than the content of the article, which was well written. To read the article, click here.