Advisors Can Play Nice in the Social Media Sandbox

Social Media Sandbox

Advisors can play nice with compliance.

ActiveCanvas serves fee-based financial advisors so we’re always keeping up with Web trends that can help them be more effective reaching their audiences. We encourage almost all our clients to use Blogs, Facebook, and LinkedIn (sorry, Twitter) not just to demonstrate a willingness to have “conversations” with their customers and peers, but because it’s a must-have SEO strategy.

But playing in the social media sandbox for fee-based advisors can be tricky. Social media profiles are considered advertising, and advertising or any form of business-related communication has to first be approved by the mandatory compliance officer. Sort of takes the spontaneity out of being social, doesn’t it?

The dilemma hasn’t gone unnoticed though. According to advisor coach Matthew Halloran,  social networks are powerful tools to build and strengthen relationships, and once the relationship is created, you can take the business-related conversation away from the social network and into the approved and authorized channels.

In a recent article on what to do if your broker-dealer won’t allow social media, Matt, and his co-author suggest that not having to discuss business on Facebook can create a certain sense of freedom and be quite beneficial. It’s a good read if you’re an advisor staring at your FB and LI pages, not knowing what you can and can’t communicate to your fans and connections.

We understand the compliance rules and enjoy helping advisors, and anyone else for that matter, set up social media pages and compose Linked-In profiles.If you’d like to start a social media campaign, or just need to chat about whether SM is a worthy investment for your marketing strategy, let’s set up a time to chat about it. –Linda