At focus11, LPL Financial's national conference held earlier this month, it was clear that social media was clearly more than just a casual "focus" for the 5,000-plus attendees. Along with several well attended sessions, LPL had a station on the exhibit floor dedicated to the topic that enjoyed constant advisor traffic.

As Marissa Fox-Foley, LPL Financial’s senior vice president of advisor marketing, put it, “We consider social media to be a very powerful tool in promoting an advisor’s practice.”

Fox-Foley cautions that advisors need to make social media part of an integrated marketing plan --  that it should not stand on its own.  "It is part of the marketing activity – not the sum total," she said.

How LPL advisors get started

Fox-Foley said, “We require our advisors to take a social media training course, which is a 20-minute interactive module. It is mandatory before they start using it."

Along with the training class, LPL advisors need to pay for an archiving service, in which LPL negotiated a significant discount. Fox-Foley said, “Erado is for archiving interactive content.”  She was referring to LPL bringing in the archiving vendor that enables LPL’s advisors to use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in real time and capture the activity in case the communications are ever needed for FINRA audits or other needs.

“Previously interactive content had to be preapproved,” she said. “As you can imagine, it would cause timely info to be delayed.”  Interactive content does not need pre-approval, but it does need to be captured, which the archiving solution does.

Fox-Foley added that things like videos, blogs, biographical profile info, business listings (e.g. Yelp, Yellow pages, etc.) and other similar things fall into the static category and they still require pre-approval. 

Early adoption rates

Fox-Foley said LPL’s Marketing Regulatory Review has approved 1,753 LinkedIn, 488 Facebook and 198 Twitter accounts.  She said, “We do not allow others, like Google+.”

These numbers are similar to what Craig Brauff, CEO of Erado, is seeing from all their accounts.  Brauff shared the current distribution of accounts:  87% LinkedIn, 10% Twitter and 3% Facebook. This is more evidence that the clear favorite social network among advisors is LinkedIn.

While almost 2,500 advisors have set up social network accounts, this means a majority of LPL’s advisors still have not adopted the ability to communicate with clients and find prospects. However, Fox-Foley did say that these numbers are steadily climbing.

Content for the social networks

Fox-Foley said, “Some advisors are out there blogging.” As far as LPL content support, she said, “The research group provides content that can be utilized in some instances.” This information is pre-approved, so if advisors make edits they then need to resubmit it to compliance. 

 “We are currently exploring external sources of content," she said. She also admitted LPL’s own content library is a work in progress.

For new static content, LPL’s average turnaround time is three business days.

LPL’s advice on social media

Fox-Foley cautions advisors to first determine why they want to use social media. She questions advisors by asking, “What do you want to accomplish by using these social media? [Do you want to attain] trust, rapport or cultivation or referrals?

She said the company believes social media can provide a savings if it can eliminate the need for advertising, direct mail and other traditional forms of marketing.

“Social media is not a platform to broadcast a one-size fits all message," she said. Although the industry has not fully adopted social media yet, Fox-Foley sees that the competition is out there, making it all the important that advisors create messages that are compelling, engaging and relevant.

Lastly, she said advisors need to commit to participating and not waver.

"Advisors should be active -- at least once a week. They need to give a reason to have them keep coming back. It needs to be embedded in their everyday activities to become revenue driving.”

Benefiting from social media

One LPL advisor that is making social media work is David Armstrong, managing director at Monument Wealth Management. He was also a presenter at LPL’s conference on the topic of social media and said LPL quickly figured out that advisors want to hear the benefits from other advisors that are using this marketing tool effectively.