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As an advisor at an investment management or advisory firm, your job is to secure new clients, enhance communication with current clients, and promote your firm. What better way to accomplish all of the above with very little marketing budget than with Social Media tools like Twitter and LinkedIn. If you happen to be at a nimble and small advisory firm, I believe you have an opportunity to get a jump start and adopt Social Media as a key part of your marketing effort, while the larger, more lumbering firms are still mulling over how to adapt and react.

Go to market quicker

Advisors inherently grasp the potential of the Social Media tools, while central office marketing leads and legal/compliance departments are currently spending time crafting elaborate compliance policies and complaining how they don’t have the man-power necessary to police and monitor the brand nor the content.

By working at a nimble and small advisory firm, advisors and marketing leads should be looking to establish open dialogues and a two-way partnership with the compliance department. Take advantage of the benefits of knowing your compliance contact personally and social media can be a great marketing tool. For example, setup weekly or monthly webcasts with a live Twitter feed to prospects and clients. In doing so, leverage the more personal nature of your firm to enlist the participation of your compliance contact in the room with you. This approach makes great use of the technology and tools while enabling you to fulfill the supervisory requirements for interactive social media as defined by FINRA’s regulatory notice 10-06.

If you happen to be an advisor at larger, more lumbering firm, just know that there are lots of people in your same situation of waiting for your compliance and technology departments to adapt and react. As described in FA Magazine:

Large broker-dealers like Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney don’t allow advisers to conduct business through social networking sites.

“There are substantial restrictions on its use right now, but we are continuing to review the issue,” a spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney said.

UBS AG allows financial advisers to use social networking sites outside of the office but not for anything related to UBS business or their activities at the firm. Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) allows its financial advisers to post biographical information on sites such as LinkedIn, but doesn’t allow participation on blogs, Twitter or Facebook.

So get out there, create a two-way partnership with the compliance and seize the opportunity to connect with the next generation of client assets that are already on these social media sites.

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