A funny thing is happening to professionals on Facebook and LinkedIn. Their personal use of Facebook and business use of LinkedIn are converging, sometimes leading to new business and sometimes just rekindling relationships with acquaintances who might otherwise be lost. "I reconnected with old friends [on Facebook] who were looking for my type of expertise," an advisor told us, and that led to doing business. He and several other advisors reported their social media use in LederMark's survey with On Wall Street.

When advisors say their firms won't allow them to use social media, I wonder if that's the whole story. Would they prohibit you from responding to an invitation to a college reunion classmate via Facebook? Can an advisor set up a profile on LinkedIn and invite friends and acquaintances to join? Could you blog to friends about your training progress for a triathlon or join a group that shares your interest in indie rock or classical music?

The reports about business use are mixed. In fact, advisors report their firms may have a "no-use policy," unclear parameters, or a daunting approval process. Firms that have taken the time to establish a policy often ban employees, they tell us, from joining groups, engaging in discussions or linking to the advisor's website. Almost one-third are unsure about their firm's social media policy. Confusion reigns when firms proclaim "no-use" policies even when FINRA says no such thing. In fact, FINRA published its guidance in FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 to assist firms in threading the social media needle to comply with regulations. (You can access this memo at www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/Notices/2010/P120760.)

It's not that FINRA forbids engaging in social media. Rather it classifies its use as advertising or client communications, and puts the ball back in the court of firms' compliance departments to supervise, archive and retain static postings and supervise live postings (e.g., tweets). And a new generation of service providers has been gearing up to provide technology solutions to meet monitoring and retention requirements.

Meanwhile, younger advisors are using social media at a higher rate than their elders and to notable success. Our survey says users under 50 are getting business this way at double the rate of users over 50. We think this means that active personal users are keeping in touch with many more friends, which is leading to new business. Nothing wrong with that. These users are tweeting and sharing news links through their social network, just as their friends are. They are finding the door closed at work, as not only compliance but data security often blocks access to these sites from workplace servers.

"The biggest hurdles so far are from senior executives who do not use social media and who are trying to understand how it fits into the firm's objectives," said one commentator in the survey. We get that-the generation gap in technology use is well documented-and they will get it too when the evidence mounts in the form of relationships renewed, referrals gained and business getting done.

Stay tuned on this topic. This is in the early innings. We expect more prospecting to be done this way in the years ahead. Young advisors are wise to teach their firms what they need to know to invest the resources to comply with FINRA. This will be an important tool to the next generation of advisors looking to build a network for gaining referrals and doing business.

Gerri Leder is an industry marketing consultant and can be reached at leder@ledermark.com.