Time management is a challenge for all advisors, and especially those who manage their own firms. There is just never enough time to get it all done. But one industry segment—younger independent advisors—is increasingly harnessing electronic communications and marketing tools to enhance client contact and leverage their time, as I discovered while attending a recent National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) breakfast.

Young or otherwise, how would a financial planner manage to create his own models, do his own research, create financial plans, write a weekly column for the newspaper, and stay on top of client communications in a small firm?

There is one specific advisor I would like to highlight for putting on a veritable clinic in terms of cutting edge communication: Tom Taylor, CPA, principal and portfolio manager of Thoma Capital Management. I think others in this field could learn from his example. For Taylor, the importance of this is clear: "Without technology, we couldn't do what we do," he says. Along with his Thoma partner and college roommate, Tim Mudd, Taylor manages assets for 85 families.

Well-versed in the tools of Web 2.0, Taylor is a hands-on planner who manages his clients' fee-based stock and bond portfolios through nine individual models he created for a range of client profiles and risk tolerances. A CPA by training, Taylor began his career as an Ernst & Young auditor before becoming an investment banker. From there, he ventured out to create his own financial planning firm in 1998, became a CPA and joined NAPFA.

Thoma Capital Management maintains a blog on its web site called "What We've Heard," which is quite popular with clients. Taylor and his firm provides analysis on issues such as the causes of the credit crisis to how much longer the Dow could fall. Taylor uses the blog to comment on current developments and financial events. For instance, during the devastating drop and hectic days of October, the blog allowed his clients to reach out for his take on things sooner than he or Mudd could have reached clients by phone. Web statistics confirm the blog's popularity during active periods in the equity markets.

Quarterly client letters are sent "snail mail," but even here technology allows Thoma to customize such communications. "Each quarterly letter offers our perspective on the markets, and we select from two- or three-paragraph templates to comment on each client's account," Taylor explains. The letter comes off as one-to-one communication with a personal tone that clients appreciate.

Phone calls and emails are important too, says the avowed Blackberry user. The firm uses email to transmit a monthly newsletter, prepared with some of Taylor's own content, by an email service provider he found on the Schwab platform. For $300 per year, the vendor provides a portion of the content and transmits to Thoma clients a Thoma-branded newsletter. "Roughly one-half to two-thirds of our recipients open and read the e-newsletter," Taylor says. "We print and mail the newsletter to the few clients who are not yet wired."

Other advisors are using video and Web-conferencing tools where new technology can connect advisors to clients several states away for periodic meetings.

While time management is an ongoing challenge, it may be time to take a page from the play book of these advisors. The bottom line: Revisit Web 2.0 tools for marketing, networking, distributing investment perspectives and videoconferencing clients.

Gerri Leder is an industry marketing consultant and can be reached at leder@ledermark.com.