LinkedIn and Socialware are working together to ensure that financial professionals have the knowledge and tools they need to get the most out of LinkedIn as an effective business platform. Now we’ve partnered with Ajax Social Media, a firm that specializes in improving LinkedIn profiles, to bring you a series of four how-to webinars to help you get the most out of LinkedIn.

Maximizing LinkedIn Use as a Financial Professional

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network and a natural fit for relationship-driven industries such as financial services. But many people just don’t know where to start. In these four webinars, which will air February 7-10, 2012, experts from LinkedIn, Ajax, and Socialware will share best practices and step-by-step training for building valuable relationships and realizing the full benefit of the LinkedIn community.

• Step 1 — How to Optimize Your Profile (February 7th) — This discussion will cover the necessary ingredients for presenting yourself and your unique value proposition effectively in your profile.
• Step 2 — How to Build Connections (February 8th) — This webinar will focus on how to build quality connections that correspond to your target audience and what tools are available within LinkedIn to find them.
• Step 3 — How to Listen and Engage (February 9th) — In this discussion, we will demonstrate how to listen to what your connections are saying and how to identify money-in-motion events such as job changes.
• Step 4 — How to Post and Share Your Voice (February 10th) — This session will focus on how to share content and post comments that demonstrate not only your professional core competencies but also your own personality.

Each of these highly practical sessions will address compliance considerations and real-life user examples. Most importantly, they will give you action items you can pursue immediately to make LinkedIn an important part of your professional success.

We’ll air one webinar each day at 11 a.m. Central time. Please register to attend all four webinars as they are separate events.

Click here to register for all four webinars.

Instead, Marketing should take up the challenge to perform true social networking by using social platforms to build direct connections with customers and prospects. To achieve this, marketers must answer key questions about our goals for social business, including:

• What messages does your firm want to deliver via social media?
• Will your use of social networking go beyond standard business communication?
• How will you drive real engagement—conversation—rather than simply publishing more content?

Marketing User Group Asks: “Social Content? Or Social Conversation?”

At Socialware’s latest Marketing User Group meeting, several members talked about the different types of content they have tried using to foster conversations on social networks. One member said that her firm had tried (with limited success) to start conversations around regulatory issues and accounting issues. Another member recommended putting oneself in the consumer’s shoes: “What do I want to hear from a company? Do I want them to sell me something?” In many cases, consumers probably do not want “brochure” content that aims to sell the firm’s products.

One attendee made the good point that content will differ based on the advisor and the type of clients served. Advisors ought to know what their clients want to hear, and prospects choose advisors based on styles of communication they like. This helps explain, for example, why some advisors constantly ask for more research to share, while others don’t want any. The goal of this particular attendee’s firm is to provide as much content as possible so that advisors can pick and choose what they need.

Should Marketers Start Conversations around Non-Financial Content?

As a marketer, do you believe it’s your responsibility to create content that is not financially related? For example, would you send out a message commemorating MLK Day?

In general, our User Group members agree that there should be a mix of messages, including topics outside of finance. One attendee said that his firm actively pursues other topics, for instance with content about families, living healthier, or keeping kids safe on Halloween. They find that this mix of non-financial messages is good for both retention and lead generation.

One attendee said that his company is focused not on pushing out just financial information, but on brainstorming articles and publishing content—financial or otherwise—each day that leads to conversation with prospects and clients.

Running the “Marathon” of Social Conversation

“You are embarking on a marathon.” That was the reminder offered by my colleague Carolyn Pawelek, who facilitated the User Group meeting. From everything we’ve seen, many advisors don’t know what to say via social media—and so they don’t say anything. Carolyn’s marathon analogy is meant to drive home the point that Marketing departments should provide tools for advisors to continually broaden their networks over the long haul.

Excitement and activity around social media creates intangible benefits like a greater sense of trust and connection between clients and advisors. These in turn lead to tangible benefits, from greater share-of-wallet for an individual advisor to higher revenue for the firm. But these benefits emerge most strongly when marketers and advisors invest the time and energy to build meaningful social connections.

Image source.

“Social is a shared service that’s used across the enterprise. As such, the CIO is responsible for being the integrator of those solutions.”

Wolberg also talked about how often CIOs, CTOs, CISOs, and other IT leaders are “at the nexus of saying ‘No’,” and how refreshing it can be to be able to say “Yes” to new initiatives or tools that enable better business outcomes—especially in cutting-edge areas like social.

IT as a Leader, Not a Follower, in Social Business

For more perspective on this, I talked with Ken Burbary, a technologist who serves as Vice President and Group Director for Strategy and Analysis at the global agency Digitas. His work puts him in touch with business leaders across different industries who are grappling with the implementation—and the implications—of social business practices.

“IT has a key role in all of these amazing and disruptive innovations. The days of command and control IT are waning, if not over, in most companies. So how can the CIO stay relevant to the business? By clearly articulating how to help internal clients be successful in achieving their goals by leveraging social technologies.”

Burbary is quick to acknowledge that this doesn’t change the IT organization’s dedication to maintaining traditional responsibilities for security, data integrity, and so on. But the approach has to be collaborative. “I’ve found IT departments that try to extend the command and control mentality into business units that are looking to be more agile and leverage disruptive technologies like social fail—they fail miserably and just get shut out and worked around.”

Avoiding the Risk of “Crowdsourced IT”

Burbary’s point was echoed by Adam Cohen, Senior Vice President for Digital and Social Media at Fleishman-Hillard. Cohen, who spent years helping major enterprises implement back-office systems, highlighted the connections between security, risk mitigation, and “crowdsourced IT.”

“If IT says no to an idea sponsored by a business unit without supplying better alternatives, employees may simply go outside the constraints of IT,” Cohen said. “Technology has changed, and people can get a lot done without involving IT if they want to.” Especially in financial services, he added, “employees talking about anything on social networks in an unsupervised or unstructured way is a risk.” In his view, these factors imply that “it’s actually riskier for an IT department not to be involved in social media.”

Again, IT organizations that embrace this viewpoint can become enablers of positive business outcomes for other areas of the company including marketing, compliance, and sales.

CIOs Look to Emerging Best Practices for Social Business

The good news is that you don’t need to go it alone. Flagship enterprises in financial services and other industries are establishing best practices to embrace the social technologies that provide a competitive advantage and improve internal and client-facing operations while maintaining compliance.

These best practices, which we will continue to discuss in future posts, allow IT departments to move away from “the nexus of saying ‘No’.” We’re here to share what we and our partners have learned from enterprises and IT departments across the industry.

Image source.

Last week I sat down with Socialware CEO Chad Bockius for our 2012 Predictions webinar, in which we discussed the social media trends he sees emerging in financial services. Now you can listen to the archive of the webinar to hear why Chad thinks that this is the year when social business gets personal, along with his specific predictions for consumers, financial advisors, regulators, and enterprises.

Social Business Questions Advisors and Enterprises Must Answer

Early on, Chad made the observation that “Social is how we live now—not just how we play,” and pointed out that consumers are increasingly turning to their social networks for trusted recommendations on handling their finances. We then talked about a number of issues that financial professionals must address if they want to get the most out of this sweeping change, including:

• What do enterprises need to do to build momentum in social business?
• “Social is the unfair advantage of 2012”—but how engaged does an advisor need to be to expect returns from social?
• What actions can we expect from the SEC and other regulators this year, and what can companies do to be ready?

As you’ll hear in the webinar archive, we left half an hour for Q&A—but still weren’t able to get to all the topics raised by audience members. Here were some of the questions we discussed:

• “Companies are losing support and engagement from the broader firm because only a select few have access to social media. . . . What would you recommend?”
• “Do you have any advice for social networking as it pertains to independent broker/dealers? Is there an added benefit in social media for a B2B-based firm?”
• “When you talk about 100% adoption, are you referring only to the sales force, or to all employees including marketing, product, and support personnel?”
• “We have brokers who are on LinkedIn and they always ask, ‘I’m on LinkedIn, I have connections, now what?’ How would you answer them?”

To hear the discussion around these questions and many others, click here for the webinar archive page. And feel free to leave more of your own questions in the comments on this post.

Image source.

Substantial social media change and growth

The entire social media landscape has evolved quickly on the regulatory front (the release of FINRA 11-39 was already months ago!), technology front (numerous updates to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more), and also, very importantly, best practices as financial advisors discover and improve upon using social media to develop new and strengthen existing business relationships.

A few weeks ago, Chad Bockius, Socialware CEO, and I hosted a 2011 Year in Review webinar. There were so many potential discussion topics, yet we focused on a few specific points:

• Growth of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• Evolution of the regulatory landscape (For even more recent developments, read about SEC and FINRA updates this week.)
• What it takes to deliver social business success within a firm
• It’s about the client, not the firm: how client relationships are changing and why social media matters.

Future social business potential

Since we are already in the second week of January, now it’s time to move onto the potential of 2012.

This week, Chad tackles 2012 Predictions for Social Media in a live interview regarding what to expect going forward. Social networking is getting personal for firms. Here are few topics that you can look forward to exploring:

• Overarching trends for business social networking
• Realizing corporate leadership commitment for social media
• How to grow social media use effectively throughout your organization
• What are some of the emerging social media technologies for 2012?

Tune into the webinar and the Q+A to learn more about what to expect for social business developments in 2012.

Podcast about Social Business for Financial Services

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to speak with Donna Sullivan of LIMRA about the social media developments in the industry.  We recorded an 11 minute podcast, LIMRA Industry Pulse Podcast: Social Media Use in the Financial Services Industry, that highlights our conversation surrounding how networking has evolved for agents and advisors, how social media leaders reflect on social media for financial services, and also what advisors are saying about the opportunities and challenges of social media.  There are also related videos with more detail to these conversations.

Business Social Networking: Stages and Success Metrics

More recently, I was fortunate to speak to marketing leaders from more than a dozen firms at a meeting we hosted in Boston.  There were representatives of wealth management, asset management, insurance, and more.  The meeting discussion took many twists and turns about social media, but one observation really stayed with me after the meeting.

One attendee who is responsible for the social media roll out to thousands of financial advisors shared a very nuanced and skilled philosophy about preparing the firm to be “social media ready.”  This included cross department conversations and alignment, education to create social media content or retrofit existing content, train corporate and field teams on social, and to develop measures of success that made sense depending on the stages of the process.  For example, the firm would not plan to measure social media success in terms of lead generation until this process was in place, advisors were trained, and these advisors had the time to build their social network connections.  This methodical and thoughtful approach was setting the firm up for alignment and social media success.

Upcoming: Social Media 2011 Review, FINRA 11-39 and more

We are all looking forward to the 2012 conversations to begin, but before leaving 2011, Chad Bockius, Socialware CEO and I are hosting a 2011 Year in Review webinar on Friday, December 16.  We welcome you to join us and compare if our highlights from the year match yours and perhaps provide additional insights.

While firms aren’t delaying their move to social in anticipation of these rule changes, it appears we will have to wait to get the official SEC stamp of approval.

On November 1^st the SEC issued a press release calling for public comment on FINRA’s recent amendment and the proposed rule in its entirety. Written comments are due back on Dec 7^th, 2011. It’s unclear how long the process will take following those comments but this delay is going to push the effort well into 2012.

The SEC calls out six specific areas as it relates to comments. Of the six items outlined, number three is the one area that would really impact social media use.

1. The scope of the definition of “institutional investor” for purposes of [Rule 2210]
2. The “reason to believe” standard under Proposed Rule 2210(a)(4)(F)
3. The requirements applicable to internal communications, public appearances and postings in online interactive forums
4. The requirements applicable to communications prepared by research department personnel
5. The scope of the category of associated persons who financial interests would have to be disclosed in a retail communication that includes a recommendation of securities
6. The scope of the proposed exclusion from the content standards as set forth in proposed paragraph 2210(d)(8)

In the initial round of comments Fidelity and SIFMA “opposed the elimination of the term ‘public appearance’ as a communication category, particularly with respect to interactive electronic communications.” They argued that these posts are “more analogous to physical public appearances. They also argued that recordkeeping requirements would be less burdensome if posts on social media websites are considered public appearances.”

FINRA disagreed. They stated they had “already created an exception from the principal pre-use approval requirements for such posts, permitting members to supervise and review such posts in the same manner permitted for correspondence.”

We will continue to watch this process closely and let you know what comments and changes get introduced that would impact the use of social media in the industry.

What do you think about the proposed changes?

Here are just a few places that you will find the Socialware team this month and next…

The National Society of Compliance Professionals 2011 Annual Meeting- We are currently attending this week’s annual meeting in Baltimore, Maryland and plan to attend Stephen Selby’s session on Social Media and Electronic Communications.

LIMRA Annual Conference- Next week, you will find members of the Socialware team at this conference in New York City.  We are looking forward to another great conference hosted by our strategic partner, LIMRA, especially a session on Social Success Strategies with Gregg Weiss from New York Life.

The Future of Wealth Management: Social Media- You can register to attend this FierceFinance webinar on October 26 presented by Lauren Boyman, Director of Social Media, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney and Socialware CEO, Chad Bockius, to learn more about how brokerage and wealth management firms are pursuing social media channels to connect with prospective and existing customers.

FINRA Advertising Regulation Conference- At the end of the month, we will have staff attending this FINRA conference in Washington, D.C.  The conference has very timely sessions including Compliance Considerations for Social Media.

Again, these are just a few places you will find members of the Socialware team.  We are looking forward to the opportunity to network with you.

We just released the 2011 version of the survey results with even more data about the impact of social media on the financial services industry, particularly focused on the advisors themselves.

Here’s some background on the advisors:

• Age- It wasn’t just the younger advisors who said they were using social media.  75% of the advisors replying to the survey were 36 years or older.
• Practice type- Advisors from all segments expressed interest in the survey.  Independent advisors, others with large firms, advisors just starting, and many with very established books of business.

Social media usage had definitely increased since last year.  In our 2010 survey, 60% of the responding advisors were using social for business purposes.  Fast forward to this year, and the number was greater than 80%.  And they are seeing results telling us about the referrals, prospects, and new clients coming from developing and deepening relationships through social media.

Prioritizing social media among the advisor’s tool set of options is increasing as well, so it’s not just a matter of “using social media.” Here’s how some of the advisors described social media in their own words:

• “This is where the people are.”
• “I think it’s a must going forward if you look to be competitive.”
• Social media is a “great way for prospects and clients to learn more about us and deepen relationships.”
• “We want to grow our firm by 20% annually for the next 5 years. We find social media to be an incredibly cost effective way of achieving that.”

To learn more about the survey results, the executive summary is available now.

As social networks continue to evolve four years later, there is still a lot of truth in the POST concept since it speaks to the need to bring business objectives and the customer central to decisions about social media.

One anecdote that I heard recently from the Austin Facebook team is the insightful comment by the CMO of Diageo, Andy Fennell, who spoke recently about marketing no longer being like bowling where you are pushing out a message in hope of it hitting the audience.  Marketing is now more like a pinball game with dynamic interaction.  This involves listening, responding, engaging rather than just sending a message one way at people.

There continues to be new technology capabilities on social networks sites, but the question is still… what business objectives are you trying to achieve?  I overheard a set of questions during a social media conference along the lines of… should we do such and such on Facebook or on Twitter?  While each social network has unique aspects, often, the answer comes from what are you are trying to achieve and how will you measure if it is working vs. jumping directly to the features and capabilities of each individual social network.

One key strategy question is whether you are looking to use social media to speak as a company brand with an arm distance relationship with your fans, followers, or friends?  Another option for many companies with large distribution channels is to approach social media as a way to have a much closer, engaging relationship from person (advisor) to person (client or prospect) vs. a company speaking to people.  It may even be a combination of both strategies that works best for your firm.

So how do you not only get started, but start effectively, efficiently and importantly, quickly? If the social networks keep releasing new technology options, than there’s no time to spare.  That means looking for resources that already exist from trusted sources, so you don’t have to recreate the wheel.  Examples include:

• Policy templates
• Quick start guides
• Best practice examples aggregated from firms that have already initiated programs
• Programs to get employees up and running on social media

The discussion around social media has so many metaphors, but social media really isn’t like a light switch except possibly a dimmer switch.   It is your firm’s decision how quickly and fully to turn on the light and embrace social media while keep in mind those key considerations:

• People (your current and future clients)
• Objectives (what are you trying to accomplish and how does social media fit in)
• Strategy (quick start programs, best practice resources, and employee training)
• Technology (ensure compliance, enable measurable results, stay on top of social technology changes)