Social Media Archiving « Socialware Blog | Social Middleware Discussion

Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Archiving’

State DOTs are paving more than roads

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) just published a report looking into the use of social media across the country’s state departments of transportation (DOT). In total 32 states participated in the study. You wouldn’t think that your state DOT would be a leader in social media but then you would be wrong.

State DOT Social Media Usage:
- 91% use Twitter
- 45% have an active Facebook page
- 64% have a YouTube channel
- 33% offer podcasts
- 45% participate as a member of LinkedIn

The study points out that state DOTs find social media a more efficient way to reach the public with time sensitive traffic and travel information. Survey respondents found Twitter, RSS Feeds, Podcasts and Facebook to be the most effective in reaching their audience.

The Texas Department of Transportation has been one of the DOTs paving the way with social media. Scanning their Twitter feed (@TxDOT) you can see everything from general news to time sensitive data such as road closures. For example, here is a post they made after the terrible incident with the plane crash in North Austin:

Posted on Twitter:
A small plane crashed into the Echelon Building on Mopac and US 183 around 10 am today. Emergency crews are on the scene. Expect delays. 10:56 AM Feb 18th

One area the report did not focus on was the ability for customers to connect and communicate with their DOT. Most of us would not think to send an email or call our state DOT but commenting on a Facebook status update, retweeting a post or asking a question over this media is very powerful. Here is a great example from TxDOT’s Facebook page.

The other area not touched on is the requirement to comply with public information laws. There is a lot of discussion as to whether or not social media falls under the guidelines of public information. Most compliance officials say it does, as long as the information created is used to conduct of state business. In fact, Wisconsin Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen recently issued an opinion in which he states that electronic communications made by elected officials are public records, even when they are posted on social networking sites. Van Hollen states that the Wisconsin Public Records laws applies whenever the content is connected to the official’s purpose or function.

If you are a government or state agency engaging in social media I would encourage you to investigate this issue more closely. At a minimum start taking advantage of tools available to automate the capture and archival of your social media content.

Tags: AASHTO, Compliance, Facebook, Government, LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Media Archiving, Social Media Liability, Twitter
Posted in Compliance, Government, Marketing, News | No Comments »

Helping State and Local Government Agencies Get Social

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Our very own Chris Richter was recently interviewed on Federal News Radio 1500. The topic was social networking use at state and local government agencies, how to protect the agencies infrastructure and how to ensure compliance with laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the questions answered in the interview are:

- What is Social Middleware?
- How does it enable or help the Open Government directive?
- Is this something that empowers agencies to adopt Social Networks?
- Is this something that makes these tools more useful?

For answers to these questions and more click the play button below or listen to the interview on the Federal News Radio 1500 site.

Interview description
“As state and local governments move forward using Twitter and Facebook, questions are looming as to how to best use these new social media tools to reach private citizens. Social middleware is being used to help ward off the potential IT risks and compliance issues associated with using social media tools.”

Tags: Compliance, eDiscovery, Facebook, Government, Social Media, Social Media Archiving, Social Media Policy, Social Middleware, Social Networks, Socialware, Twitter
Posted in Compliance, News, Social Middleware, Social Networking News | No Comments »

Social Networking: Going Online Without Crossing the Line (Research Magazine Cover Story)

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

In the March edition of Research Magazine they take a detailed look at the challenges financial advisors face in dealing with social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. As they point out “Some have blocked access to networking websites from advisor workstations. At least one broker-dealer requires new hires to delete their LinkedIn profile as a condition of employment.”

The challenges are very real in these highly regulated environments. Kip Gregory sums it up well “Who could blame any firm operating in a regulated industry for taking a cautious approach in the face of all that? Especially in financial services, which is at its core an industry built around the management of risk. The question is: How do you, as a competitor in this business, choose to respond to a clearly shifting landscape?”

Of course the latest move by FINRA helps ease some of the concerns of these financial firms. With the release of Notice 10-06 they address some of the big questions firms are asking. In addition to this Notice you can also download the Companion Guide to FINRA Social Networking Compliance. And if you are still hungry for more information be sure to check out the play-by-play summary of the February 3^rd FINRA webinar on this topic.

The article then moves on to discuss the “techno-solutions” to solving the social networking compliance problem. They highlight our Risk Manager solution for it’s ability to turn on or off any part of a social network that could cause a compliance issue. In addition, there is discussion around our ability to moderate content before it hits the social sphere as well as providing full capabilities to do a post-review after the fact.

I don’t want to give the entire article away so let me just leave you with a few final thoughts:
- Social networks are here to stay and the firms that find ways of adopting them first will have a big advantage. In fact the article points out that “100 percent of the 48 firms surveyed thought social media was here to stay and 84 percent thought it would have a lasting impact on financial services.”
- You do have to create a social media policy (don’t skip this step) – here is a good place to start (first paragraph)
- Look for ways to institutionalize your policy through social networking compliance solutions.
- Plan for change – the sites change, compliance issues change and the way advisors use these tools will change.

Read the full Research Magazine article here

Tags: Compliance, eDiscovery, Facebook, Financial Services, FINRA, Kip Gregory, LinkedIn, Research Magazine, Risk Manager, SEC, Social Media, Social Media Archiving, Social Media Liability, Social Media Policy, Social Networks, Socialware, Twitter
Posted in Compliance, News, eDiscovery | No Comments »

Real world advice for independent advisors, an interview with Kristen Luke

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Kristen Luke, from Wealth Management Marketing, was gracious enough to spend some time talking through her work with independent investment advisors and financial planners. We specifically discussed social networking, what’s holding her clients back and how they are dealing with SEC and FINRA compliance issues.

1. Tell me a little about your background and Wealth Management Marketing
“Prior to starting Wealth Management Marketing in October of 2008, I headed up the marketing department of a boutique wealth management firm in San Diego for 3 years. It was a natural transition from working at my previous job to starting WMM since I performed similar tasks, but now I do it for a variety of firms instead of just one. I have a BA in Business Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MBA with an emphasis in Marketing from San Diego State University. WMM develops marketing plans for independent advisors and also provides the back office support required to implement the strategies. Basically, we are an in-house marketing department outsourced.”

2. Can you profile the clients you typically work with?
“I primarily work with independent investment advisors and financial planners. The majority of my clients are RIAs which can range from solo practitioners with $10 million in AUM to firms with 20 employees with a few hundred million in AUM. I also work with individual advisors at larger brokerage firms who need help creating their own individual marketing plans or are looking for assistance in creating a social media marketing strategy.”

3. What are their top issues/challenges when it comes to social media marketing?
“I consistently hear the same two challenges from my clients:
- Meeting compliance requirements. Up until recently, it was not clear what an advisor could and could not do according to FINRA. It is still unclear about what the SEC requires. So many advisors tell me that their compliance departments won’t allow them to participate in social media. I’m not sure if this is going to change now that FINRA has released their guidelines.”
Quick Note: The Companion Guide to FINRA Social Networking helps address these questions.
- “Finding the time to participate in social media.”

4. What percentage of your clients are engaged with social networks today?
“Almost 100% of my clients are engaged with social networks in some way. Most of them are only involved with LinkedIn. Closer to 50% are involved in Facebook or Twitter for business purposes.”

5. For those that are active how are they dealing with compliance issues?
“Some advisors have not been concerned about it and are doing nothing. Others are passing everything through their compliance departments prior to posting on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Others are using sites likes Socialware to archive their social media activity.”

6. What would recommend to your clients that are getting ready to start engaging with social networking?
“I would recommend that they first understand what they can and cannot do from a compliance standpoint. Then I’d recommend they start playing around with the different sites to get an understanding of which ones they like. I find that the advisors that are most successful with social media are the ones who personally enjoy interacting on the different sites. Once an advisor has a basic understanding of social media, it’s important to create a plan of action. This includes finding their target market and centers of influence on the different sites, determining what type of information to broadcast and how often to do so. Social media is like any other type of marketing. It should be planned out to increase the likelihood of success.”

It is clear from our day-to-day conversations and interviews like this that social media will continue to play a big role for independent investment advisors and financial planners. As Kristen points out it is critical to understand the compliance issues before jumping into this new channel of communication. I’ve already mentioned the Companion Guide to FINRA Social Networking and in addition you should look at the summary of the recent FINRA webinar explaining Notice 10-06 on Social Networking Compliance.

For more information from Kristen you can follow her on Twitter or at her blog.

Tags: Compliance, eDiscovery, Facebook, Financial Services, FINRA, LinkedIn, Risk Manager, Social Media, Social Media Archiving, Social Media Liability, Social Media Policy, Social Networks, Socialware, Twitter
Posted in Compliance, Marketing, eDiscovery | No Comments »

FINRA Webinar: Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

If you happened to miss it, FINRA hosted the Social Networking Compliance webinar this afternoon. Here is a summary from their site on what was scheduled to be discussed:

“This webinar covers compliance and regulatory considerations when using social networking sites to communicate firm business. With the advent of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, business use of social networking sites has become popular and can present supervision challenges for firms. Panelists from FINRA discuss the guidance that was recently issued in Regulatory Notice 10-06.”

If you already read Regulatory Notice 10-06 you didn’t miss too much. I will say the most valuable part was the Q&A from the audience and FINRA staff. As you might expect the FINRA team focused on the overarching guidelines but didn’t spend too much time interpreting specific situations. They made it very clear that this is the responsibility of the firm to evaluate a sites capabilities and determine what the firm’s policy will be on usage, supervision, record keeping, etc.

If you are looking for more details on how these guidelines get interpreted for use on social networks you should download the Companion Guide to FINRA Social Networking Compliance.

And if you are interested in a summary of the webinar here are all of my live tweets that I posted during the session. Feel free to follow me on Twitter and send me any questions you have.

Joe Price talking about FINRA task force on social networking, 14 industry participants, came out with Notice 10-06
5 key points, record keeping, suitability, types of content, supervision & 3rd party posts
Record Keeping: rules flow from SEC standards, no way to change this. Must retain, archive and retrieve to be compliant
Record Keeping: technology is going to be the issue, FINRA spoke to firms (including Socialware – we solve this today with Risk Manager)
Record Keeping: discussing integration to enterprise archives, lot of interest in area, each firm needs to assess each solution
FINRA will not endorse any technology provider, firms need to assess the fit, determine if it delivers on compliance needs
interested in position on acceptable formats of social media messaging for FINRA filing and internal record keeping
Question: how do you file a tweet? Acceptable filing format is PDF for FINRA but not for retention (discovery issues, etc)
Suitability: 01-23 applies to social media directly, applies around recommendations, “call to action” or “suggestion”
Suitability: more specific to individual more likely it will be a recommendation, general news not a rec.
Suitability: call to action is key, not going to have prior approval requirement so be careful of what you post
Possible use of templates? Firms have libraries, drop a recommendation of an approved template, be careful of specific products
Question: “Business as such?” SEC term, not addressing it in Notice 10-06, books and records rule apply in this situation
Question: “if we decide to utilize social media we must have technology to track information” there are low tech options…
…technology is going to be key to make this scale
Question: “if a rep indicates where they work is that an advertisement?” ex: business card info on LinkedIn, likely already approved
Question: “business related inquiry on social media site?” addressing later, need to have procedures for reps to follow
Content Types: “interactive electronic forum” have def. of public appearance (i.e., chat rooms), must all be supervised
Content Types: public appearances do not need to be pre-approved
Content Types: blogs? static communication = advertisement = prior approval. However some allow for interaction
Content Type: These interactive blogs would be considered a public appearance (i.e., allowing comments)
Question: “What if firm hosts a blog and allows for 3rd party comments? What if it is a marketing brochure blog?” This is static
Content Types: key ideas, employees should have site use approved for use of logos, content, etc (the static elements)
Content Types: engaging on the sites can then be supervised post-use, these are the interactive pieces
Content Type: firms should decide on their own policies as part of this.
Content Types: key is whether or not a dialogue is supported or intended on these portions of social sites
Technology to capture content is still evolving, will there be compliance grace period? FINRA answer “No”
Firms must make the call if a vendor can meet the FINRA requirements (check out companion guide http://bit.ly/72HiGj)
Recently looking at a blog that wasn’t interactive, send email back and comment *not real-time interactive communication*
Question: “On Twitter, is initial posting interactive or static?” background content is static part, tweets are interactive
Question: “what if social site doesn’t allow for archiving?” answer don’t use it or use a 3rd party solution (i.e., Socialware)
Question: “what about broker-to-broker communication?” defined as institutional sales material (2211), already defined
Question: “How will FINRA test compliance?” FINRA provides policy guidelines, new process, examiners take steps to analyze steps …
Question: …will look for supervisory steps, will look for policies, will look for other steps that compliance is being addressed with
Supervision: interactive communications can be supervised, implement risk based principles to review communications
Question: “Use of sites for recruiting?” Yes – they are subject to FINRA advertising rules, static vs. interactive
Question: Recruiting issue – expectation of earnings. Be careful here, this is most frequent issue
Question: “can registered reps conduct pre-approved, scripted, filed FINRA presentations via a webex type of application, w/instant messaging” …
…”assuming IM’s are being supervised by a reg. principle?” webinar=static, questions=interactive (can be supervised)
Supervision: can choose to pre-approve or not, can choose to sample pre or post, lot of flexibility, you decide
Supervision: communication between research and investment bank always need review, as well as incoming complaints
Question: “do personal social sites of RR need to be monitored to ensure not being used for professional use?” …
Question: … firms need to establish procedures/policies on this, once used for business firms are responsible,
Question: “don’t want reps using Facebook, agree not to, is firm responsible to still track?” I don’t know, maybe based on person
Question: “are firms accountable for how RR identifies themselves on personal SN site” firms need to adopt clear policies on this
Question: “does review of interactive communication have to be conducted by a registered principal” can be some delegation
Should not allow RR to use social media sites if you cannot supervise it (for business purposes)
Ensure you train those that are granted access, enforce your procedures, have consequences for violations
Question: “prohibit from using certain social site features, are firms accountable if RR use them if “prohibited”?” …
Question: Answer is same. They are responsible. (Socialware can disable these features completely to protect the firm – look at Feature Level Access Control of Risk Manager)
Question: “how do you supervise an anonymous complaint?” guidance already provided, must be able to identify person & issue
3rd Party Posts: not subject to advertising rule (great clarity), situations where you can be held accountable
3rd Party Posts: adoption & entanglement, you republish or direct people to content, you just adopted it and endorsed it
3rd Party Posts: influenced posts, can you please post a testimonial to my Facebook page = entanglement
Question: “implicit endorsement of posts, rep didn’t remove a comment?” does not create an endorsement situation
Question: “RR retweets a post, is this an endorsement/entanglement” absolutely endorsement or adoption
Question: “What if you “like” a comment on Facebook” Yes absolutely that is an endorsement (FYI – Socialware can block this)
Question: “what if statement is just wrong, what should firm do?” adopt policy to enable quick action, still needs to be supervised
Adoption & entanglement is SEC concept, one-off answers not the way to go, each firm should develop a complete policy
Firms are doing a lot of different things to monitor 3rd party posts, complaints, publishing guidance
Great FINRA webinar, hope you enjoyed the live tweets, be sure to grab the Companion Guide for SN Compliance http://bit.ly/72HiGj

Look for much more from Socialware on this topic. And if you haven’t registered for a Risk Manager invitation please do so here (it is free). Of course, if you want to get started right away you can sign up for the premium version here.

Tags: 3rd party posts, Compliance, eDiscovery, Facebook, Financial Services, FINRA, LinkedIn, MySpace, Notice 10-06, Record Keeping, Risk Manager, SEC, Social Media, Social Media Archiving, Social Media Policy, Social Networks, Socialware, Suitability, Supervision, Twitter
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Bringing financial advisors into the modern world

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

InvestmentNews, a publication specializing in delivering news and analysis essential to the business of financial advisers, posted an in depth look at Socialware and our solutions this past Friday.

Most of us take for granted the use of social networks at work. However, for registered investment advisors or broker-dealers, they must juggle using these tools to grow their business while ensuring compliance with federal and state law. For example, look at the laundry list of rules around advertisements and the type of communications that must comply with regulatory rules:

- Banner advertisements, blogs, and bulletin boards are advertisements
- An email or instant message sent to more than 25 prospective retail customers is considered sales literature
- A registered representative’s email sent from home or a firm office falls under FINRA jurisdiction
- Chat room discussions are considered public appearances
- Password protected websites are considered sales literature

Then of course, rules 17a3 and 17a4 of the Securities Exchange Act require broker-dealers to preserve certain electronic records. And in many cases prior approval and supervision is generally required before being published.

Naturally this raises a lot of questions around the use of social networks. Is participation in Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter considered an advertisement? Does it need to gain prior approval before publishing? Does this information need to be archived by the same standards? On this point Richard Ketchum, the CEO of FINRA, came out on national TV calling for a complete audit trail of this data.

So while the picture isn’t entirely clear one thing is for sure. These sites offer real business value for the financial advisor community today. Individuals or firms that are engaging on the social networks are doing their best to stay compliant even if it requires a lot of manual work.

Just look at some stats captured during a recent RidgeWorth Investments’ Webinar
- 60% of financial advisors who participated believe that social networking will grow in importance over the next year or two.
- 1 out of 5 said it already plays or will play a significant role in their 2010 marketing efforts

And let’s face it, social networks are all about connections, friends and acquaintances. And in the offline world those three things all translate to gold for financial advisors…referrals. The problem is the old way is inefficient and outdated. Advisors and firms need to get in the game so to speak, and soon.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. First FINRA is holding a live webinar titled Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites on March 17, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. EST. Here is the webinar summary in their words:

“This webinar covers compliance and regulatory considerations when using social networking sites to communicate firm business. With the advent of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter, business use of social networking sites has become popular and can present supervision challenges for firms. Panelists from FINRA discuss applicable FINRA rules for communications with the public and offer practical guidance on how to monitor and supervise social networking sites.”

The other piece of good news is that there are finally tools available to help both individual advisors and larger firms be compliant while using these tools (even if the final FINRA guidance hasn’t been delivered). This is covered in detail in the InvestmentNews article.

The article covers how Socialware’s technology helps advisors and firms get compliant by enabling complete social media archiving, real-time content moderation and discovery of every piece of captured content. But what’s more, they also discuss how our Social Middleware solutions can help take social networking investments to the next level by aggregating professional posts, from all three social networks, into a single search engine optimized feed that will help drive additional free traffic to your site, improve your market awareness and ultimately help drive sales.

I hope you enjoy the article – if you do please pass it along using one of the sites below. And as always we would love to hear your comments.

Tags: Broker-Dealers, Facebook, Financial Advisors, FINRA, FINRA Compliance, InvestmentNews, LinkedIn, Registered Representatives, Risk Manager, Social Media Archiving, Social Middleware, Social Network Compliance, Socialware, Twitter
Posted in Best Practices, Compliance, Marketing, News, Social Applications, Social Middleware, Social Networking News, eDiscovery | No Comments »

Subscribe by email:

Try Risk Manager

Fanbox

Twitter

Search our blog

Archives

Blogroll