The good news is that this is the right first step. And if you are FINRA regulated, 10-06 explicitly points out that having a policy in place is required if you are going to adopt social media for business. By not employing a policy, businesses are leaving themselves open to unnecessary risk. Research shows that firms are behind here. 43% of respondents from a recent survey said their firms either did not have a social media policy in place or were unclear if one existed.

To help kick-start this process Socialware has extended our Insights offering by creating a Social Media Policy Accelerator Kit (read the press release here). The kit provides in-depth analysis and guidance on the key areas your policy should address. In addition to the sample policy language, the kit provides an overview of the corresponding procedures your firm should address. Also included is a policy checklist to help guide you through the process and ensure all steps are addressed before activating your employees on social networks.

Every firm still needs to work through the process of defining their business needs, possible risks and the appropriate ways to leverage social media. What you no longer have to do is repeat the hundreds or hours of research required to pull together best practices and answers around creating a formal policy.

Wade Wilkinson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Securities Service Network, Inc. (SSN) summed it up well. “The guiding principle for our early adoption of social media is to support the growth of our affiliated registered representatives and obviously, we have to use social media in a manner that complies with the rules of our industry. The Social Media Policy Accelerator Kit from Socialware helped us write policies that ensure compliance and afford SSN registered representatives the best opportunity to succeed in their social media endeavors. This guidance has been key to our progress and will continue to provide direction moving forward.”

In addition to the Social Media Policy Accelerator Kit please join Steve Selby (LIMRA, Director of Regulatory Services) and I this Thursday at noon CST for a webinar where we will discuss moving through the Policy Stage of the Social Media Adoption Lifecycle. If you miss the live session you can register and view the recording at any time. In addition, head over to SocialTurns to continue the discussion on this topic.

If you are in the financial industry and are not able to leverage social networks, like LinkedIn, for recruiting you are put at a distinct disadvantage. The competition for great talent goes on as companies as doing more with less so finding a way to reach your next great producer is more valuable than ever.

Getting access to social networks is just the beginning. This story also illustrates how companies can get from social networking tools if they activate their entire employee base. For recruiting – as well as for client acquisition and retention – increasing your reach by tapping the collective networks of your employees helps exponentially grow your enterprise social graph.

For example, many recruiters use LinkedIn extensively to find candidates for open positions. They search for specific job titles, by geography, or for types of industries, which gives them a list of potential candidates. After narrowing this list down, they then look for possible connections they may have with these candidates.

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, users must request “connections” with other users, creating a direct connection. Once a recruiter finds a prospective candidate on LinkedIn, she can see if they have any connections in common – called second-degree connections.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see how having more employees connected within your organization can exponentially increase these second-degree connections. If a candidate is linked to someone at the recruiter’s company, the recruiter can get first-hand information about the candidate, then ask to be introduced or connected to the potential candidate.

And it doesn’t end there. Once a candidate submits his or her resume, the recruiter can cross-reference the resume with their LinkedIn profile and find other connections they share to get more information about the candidate. In addition, your employees connected to the candidate can help “sell” them on the idea of moving to your firm.

In short, the more connected your employees are, the more connections your firm has beyond its four walls. And this will impact the growth of your firm – measured by clients as well as recruits.

Social media has so much to offer the financial services industry yet education, awareness and questions are holding it back. Our hope is that by bringing together industry experts, passionate users and those standing on the sidelines that we will be able to accelerate the adoption of social media.

To help foster and grow the community we’ve created the SocialTurns Council. The Council is made up of compliance, marketing, technology and financial services professionals who are pioneering social media adoption in the financial services industry. Please join me in thanking all of our Council members:

• Pat Allen, Principal, Rock The Boat Marketing
• Debbi Corej, VP of Compliance, Prudential
• Julie Gebert, AVP of Compliance, Cambridge
• Kip Gregory, Principal, The Gregory Group
• Bruce Johnston, President & CEO, Advisolicity
• Kristen Luke, Principal, Wealth Management Marketing
• Christina L. Nelson, Senior Editor, Financial Planning Association
• Stephanie Sammons, CEO, WiredAdvisor
• Stephen Selby, Director of Regulatory Services, LIMRA
• Jennifer Sussman, Director of Online Marketing and Experience, American Century Investments
• Pete Chiccino, EVP and CIO, The Bancorp Bank

In the last few weeks we’ve invited users to sign-up for the preview and the reaction has been tremendous. To date we’ve had almost 500 users join SocialTurns from 13 different countries and the discussions are off and running ranging from enterprise social media adoption, to FourSquare, to employee guidelines.

We invite marketing, technology, compliance and financial services professionals to join the conversation. As you navigate the social media waters this community is here to help you make the right turns to get the most out of social media for your brand, your employees and your customers.

And don’t forget to let us know what you think or how we can improve. Here is one review from David Rosen at The B2B Formula.

See you on SocialTurns.

PS: After you join please add a badge to your website, blog or Twitter profile to help grow the awareness of SocialTurns and help fuel the discussion.

Ask for referrals. All firms preach this, but the survey of wealthy investors found that 75% of them haven’t been asked to refer their colleagues to their advisor. In the era of LinkedIn and Facebook this is the low hanging fruit that everyone should be reaching for. Consider too that nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions. If you aren’t building your networks online and leveraging those relationships you are leaving money on the table.

Actively keep in touch. Only 38% of investors say their advisors proactively reach out to them when market changes could impact their portfolios – and it’s hurting client retention. One third of investors have changed advisors since 2008, and 25% of the rest of wealthy advisors are dissatisfied with or neutral towards their current advisor. Again social networks can help. Look at the advisors on AdvisorTweets.com. Over 400 advisors are tweeting to clients and prospects about the market. If you aren’t tweeting, who are your clients following? Or even worse who WILL THEY be following?

Stop shouting, start engaging. We used to think about marketing as a chest-thumping activity that ensured we were always top of mind with prospects. Guess what. The old way doesn’t work anymore. Marketing today is about active engagement. Social networks are a key part of this change, allowing you to come out from behind the megaphone.

Think your clients aren’t using social networks? Think again. Another recent post revealed research showing those who use social networks are very interested in hearing from advisors: 63% of Twitter users would pay attention to investment tweets; 46% of YouTube users and 41% of Facebook users would seek investment information from these communities.

The question you should ask yourself right now is this: If you’re not engaging with your clients and prospects, who is?

At this point you are probably as shocked as I was. You may also be scratching your head as to how 1,700 people could like his update. What happens on LinkedIn is that when someone in your network “likes” a comment or status update it is automatically shared with that person’s network – instantly multiplying the reach each message has.

For employees who are looking to build their personal networks and for companies looking to build their brand within their business communities, this simple experiment shows how quickly a compelling message can spread throughout a network.  Unlike Facebook updates, where you need to be directly connected to someone, the majority of commenters and fans of Joss’ update have never met Joss face to face.

As a follow up message, Blair posted “Blair Joss is hunting for a professional in the oil and gas industry with experience in Reservoir Engineering and has a network in Norway.”  LinkedIn has clearly given him a platform to meet prospects, colleagues, and customers who may have never been connected to him otherwise, but given that he has a great message and a network that can spread it, he has truly taken advantage of the tools available to him.  How are you helping your employees spread their message?

1. LinkedIn Groups Overhaul

Groups are a great way to connect with the broader LinkedIn network, to find new contacts through shared interests and to discuss specific topics. And now this great resource has gotten better. Last month LinkedIn rolled out an improved look and feel with the goal of replicating face-to-face conversations. The new design also makes it easier to use. With a new voting system, content that is valued by the group will rise to the top and will be surfaced for all to see. Combined with the new following capability, LinkedIn has made it easier than ever to stay up to date on group discussions.

2. LinkedIn Inbox Updates

Speaking of email, LinkedIn has completed an overhaul of their built-in email system. Like Groups it all starts with an improved look and feel that you will notice right away on the home page. In addition, they’ve made it easier to manage emails through bulk actions, something we are all used to in our traditional email clients. And although it sounds strange you can finally delete messages in LinkedIn. This is great from a user’s perspective but compliance officers should take note that real-time archiving should be the goal if you are going to open up access to LinkedIn in a compliant fashion (as it relates to FINRA 10-06).

3. Improved Twitter and LinkedIn integration

I’ve shared before my belief that you get the most value from your social networking investment when you integrate your activities together. LinkedIn just made this process easier. They’ve updated their Twitter application to follow LinkedIn Connections directly from LinkedIn.com. Once you’ve installed the application, access it using the “More” menu and start following your connections.

4. LinkedIn “Likes” Addition

We are all familiar with this concept. You read a status update on Facebook, see a picture, watch a video and you click that little “Like” button letting your network know what you are reading or watching and the fact that you appreciated the content. Well this functionality is now available on LinkedIn. Liking a piece of content in LinkedIn will trigger a news feed update so your network can see what you are reading. On Groups, members who consistently contribute to discussions, and have a large number of followers, will be marked as “Top influencers”, making their ‘Like’ worth more than others. Keep this in mind as you work to grow you reach and influence across the 70 million LinkedIn users.

5. LinkedIn Compliance Guide

With all the opportunity LinkedIn provides many regulated firms have been grappling with the compliance issues and trying to balance those with the business benefit. To help jump-start your efforts we’ve outlined almost 30 LinkedIn features, explaining each in detail, associated it with a content type (based on FINRA 10-06), classified it according to the FINRA/SEC guidelines, offered a set of compliance considerations, and provided a specific recommendation to help jump-start the creation of your social networking policy and plan. If you haven’t downloaded this free guide, get yours today.

6. LinkedIn Best Practices (Webinar)

Like many people we talk to, the conversation quickly turns from “how can we open up access” to “how do we get the most out of our investment.” Thanks to Kip Gregory, Principle of The Gregory Group, and Mike Williams of Socialware, you will get answers to this question and so much more. They share their expertise on how advisors and agents can use this great resource to help drive their business. While the webinar took place in June you can watch a recorded version here.

6.5 Upcoming webinar on LinkedIn Social Networking Compliance

If you are looking for more information on understanding the compliance issues with LinkedIn be sure to register for our upcoming webinar taking place on July 13th. Learn more and register here.

I hope you find these resources helpful. Stay tuned for more great content and updates. And don’t forget to check out our newly revamped site for Socialware Insights – all of our Guides, Resources, Webinars and more now live under one roof.

1. What percentage of advisors use social media for business purposes?
2. Are firms taking the necessary steps to support this activity and remain compliant?
3. Are financial advisors getting value from their investment in social media?
4. Are the myths around social media true? For example, the sites are only used by the younger generation, it takes too much time, advisors comply with their firm’s policies and many more.

The survey results answered these questions and many more. Before getting into the results here are a few statistics that describe the pool of respondents:

• The survey was completed by 196 advisors.
• Over 53% of the respondents have over 100 clients.
• Over 40% of respondents are 46 years of age or older.
• Over 21% are part of firms with over 100 financial advisors.
• Over 44% of respondents have an average account size of $300K or more.

The first thing that stood out with this survey is the fact that advisors have flocked to social networks. 60% of financial advisors currently use social media for business purposes and another 11% have plans to use social media in the future. Of the 29% with no plans to use social media in the future, 85% of those respondents are currently prohibited by their firm.

In addition to usage it was clear that investments in social networks are paying off by delivering real results. 47% of respondents reported having identified one or more referrals (new leads/prospects) from their social media activity. 36% said they acquired new customers through social media and 10% stated they identified over 21 new referrals!

It was also clear that firms are lagging behind their reps in this area. 57% of respondents were aware that their company had a policy and 11% of the respondents were unsure if one existed. Unfortunately, the 32% operating without a policy are in direct violation of FINRA’s recent guidance on social network usage.

And if that wasn’t bad enough firms are also at risk due to a lack of social media archiving – a very clear requirement from FINRA Notice 10-06. Only 12% of the respondents archive their data with an automated system. 22% of the respondents manually archive data through screenshots or a copy and paste activity. Not only is this time consuming it is also very error prone. The remaining 66% of respondents are in direct violation of FINRA/SEC guidelines by not archiving this information.

There is no doubt that this is a hot topic in the industry. In fact, the survey results were already picked up by the following outlets:

• Wall Street Journal
• ComplianceWeek
• Broker Dealer Week
• TechTarget
• InvestmentNews

If you are looking for more information please check out the official press release and also be sure to register for our upcoming webinar where we will be reviewing the results of the survey in more detail.

Recently LinkedIn upgraded its Twitter functionality so now it’s easy to find relevant people to “follow” on Twitter, and track their tweets (and yours) all on LinkedIn.

This is important for two key reasons. First, it obviously helps you find the right people to “follow.” Even better, though, as you follow more people, it enables their followers to discover you on Twitter, which will increase your own number of followers.

Build your image to those who matter most

This functionality also helps you add some “personality” to the place where most people in business will find you. Have you ever wanted to infuse what you’re really like into your resume, for example? This functionality helps you do this, by showing potential employers or clients your Twitter feed, which will be written a bit more in your natural language.

And it’s important to know who is really using LinkedIn. A 2008 Anderson Analytics poll of more than 50,000 users found that 66% of LinkedIn users are decision-makers and tend to be more senior in their companies.

In short, LinkedIn has made it easy for you to build both your Twitter and LinkedIn networks, all on LinkedIn (where you are already spending most of your time).

And, once you follow someone on Twitter, you can now see more of their information on LinkedIn. This is a huge step forward, since Twitter only allows users to write a very brief bio – the real heart of a person’s background and interests show up on LinkedIn. It also lets your Twitter followers easily find more information about you, if they integrate their Twitter feed with LinkedIn.

Sure, it sounds a little confusing. But take a look at LinkedIn’s blog post about their updates to their Tweets application, and give it a try. I think you’ll find it helps you really stay connected.

Yet another study of financial professionals – this one by American Century Investments – finds that advisors are using and benefiting from social media for their business.

• 44% of advisors who use social media for business or business and personal use agree that social media is an emerging trend with significant potential for businesses like theirs.
• 73% of the participants have a profile or account with one or more of the social media types mentioned.
• Facebook was in the top position with 55% and LinkedIn was next with 46%.
• Of those who use social media for business purposes, almost one-fifth (19%) do so daily – either once a day or multiple times a day.
• Respondents reported their top three business uses of social media as: A) researching people (e.g. prospects, contacts and current clients); B) monitoring industry and market news; and C) reading expert commentary and insights.
• 71% reported they have one or more future business uses planned for social media, primarily monitoring industry and market news, followed by reading expert commentary and insights and researching people.

So what keeps them up at night?

Nearly half (47%) of respondents named regulatory or compliance issues as their single biggest concern with using social media for business purposes.

“Understanding how to better navigate compliance guidelines and industry regulations on social media use could bring peace of mind to financial professionals and spur adoption of its use,” Jennifer Sussman, director, Online Marketing and Experience for American Century Investments, said.

The rest of the study continues to show that financial services representatives are ready – or already using – social media, and their concerns about compliance are holding them back. Of course, the firms that figure out – and efficiently execute – their compliance plans will enjoy the competitive advantages of being first to market with this invaluable channel.

If you are looking to educate yourself on the compliance issues raised by social media sites you can start with a few of the resources below. In addition, check back in about a week for details on our own study of Financial Advisors use of social media.

• The Companion Guide to FINRA/SEC Social Networking Compliance
• The Guide to Twitter Social Networking Compliance
• Previously recorded and upcoming webinars on issues of compliance to social media best practices

We hope these resources help you navigate the compliance risks and opportunity in the waters of social media.

If I’m an advisor with a choice of firms, I’m looking for a place that is going to help me achieve not just success, but overwhelming success – for my clients, the firm, and myself. Sure… reputation of the firm will be important, cultural fit, and the portfolio of products available. However, at the end of the day, the advisory business is about building relationships, acquiring clients, and delivering value. What is step one?  Networking.  And you can argue that steps two through five are the same: Networking.

Advisors and agents now have an unprecedented ability to access, grow, and build networks. Social Networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter provide innovative and revolutionary capabilities for enabling success.

Why are social networks important?
There are many, many ways that social networking can help an advisor be more productive – with greater efficiency. Here are four key elements: Visibility, Speed, Assistance, and Information.

Visibility
Never before have financial advisors had the capability to connect actively with their “first degree” network that social networks allow. Have you noticed the “People You May Know” recommendations that LinkedIn provides on your homepage? How do they know that I could be connected with Leslie, a person that I met ten years ago when we were working on a critical project – but we were working at different companies? And, who knew that through 203 contacts on LinkedIn, a person can have 70,400+ friends of friends connections?

Speed
It’s one thing to try and list out on a spreadsheet all the people you have ever met, and then try to find their phone numbers or their email addresses. How long will it take to contact even half of that list? How about this? Start by connecting with ten contacts on LinkedIn or Facebook and see how quickly your ten connections turn into 20, into 50, into 100. You get the picture. Unprecedented. Tip: LinkedIn also makes it easy to download contact information should you have misplaced that business card from 5 years ago.

Assistance
I’m going to attend a week-long conference in San Francisco. Who do I know in San Francisco? That works in high-tech? I can find that with a few clicks. Who have I always wanted to meet? A few more clicks and I am getting introduced by a friend. The value of my trip has just multiplied.

Information
When I make a new connection or research a prospect, I now have more background than ever before. Not only do I know that my new contact, Joe, used to play poker with the friend that introduced us, but now I can see that he belongs to a local triathlon club – and I now have an instant opportunity for a personal connection.

Back to the recruiting pitch… what is your message? Are you demonstrating the firm’s willingness to invest and support advisor success? Or, are you going to wait and see what shakes out with these “personal” tools? The first movers will have an advantage. Don’t be surprised to start hearing stories about losing reps to a firm that has embraced and supported social networking.

Join us on June 22 for a complimentary webinar where we will be sharing Best Practices on how advisors and agents can leverage LinkedIn to drive productivity.