Social media

Putnam Investments has some advice on what not to say on Twitter to avoid regulatory scrutiny.

The human side of financial planning has been somewhat overlooked among some advisors who have tended to limit their interactions with clients to providing financial advice. The high-touch approach could become a "growing market niche" for advisors.

“We have the opportunity to think beyond tweeting and posting about how this will fundamentally change products in this industry,” said Augie Ray, director of social media strategy for Prudential Financial. “It’s not just about getting content out – we certainly have to do that too – but there are a lot of changes coming in the next five years.”

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has temporarily withdrawn a controversial proposal to require advisors, brokers and firms to incorporate links to the BrokerCheck database when they post content to social media sites.

Consumer advocate Jennifer Openshaw is launching a new company that offers advisors a platform in which to build social media communities, with some compliance features built in.

Kasina’s new social media report ranks Vanguard, Sun Life, iShares, Putnam and Franklin Templeton Investments as the top five asset managers for social media practices.

In March, Financial Planning Magazine launched a series of 30 tips to help advisors make better use of social media . We took that list and selected 15 of the best that you could apply to your own practice.

“To build online influence in the age of social media, you must build a powerful online presence and consistently publish your thought leadership insights through a professional blog site,” says Stephanie Sammons, founder of Wired Advisor, a company that helps advisors set up search engine optimized blogs.

The federal regulator published a guidance update to clarify what mutual funds and other investment advisors can say on their social media sites (and things have become much more social.)

What's next for financial advisors? How will wirehouses, banks and RIAs continue to evolve in the coming year? Tiburon's Chip Roame explains 15 key trends that every advisor must keep an eye on.

Just 34% of advisors believe that social media is a "wise use" of asset managers' time and resources and just over half (53%) feel that asset management firms are "smart to explore" social media.

Want proof that advisors need to be engaging with social media? Consider the SEC’s decision this week to let publicly traded companies make material corporate announcements on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

By now you’ve likely mastered the big three: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. What about all the other social platforms out there?

There’s no point in spending your time tweeting and building your online presence unless you make it useful to your practice.

Your Facebook strategy for your practice should be different from your Twitter and LinkedIn approaches, with a more personal touch.

Planners seem to be overestimating the investment knowledge -- and, perhaps more important, the risk appetite -- of their clients. Advisors are three times more likely to describe clients as “very knowledgeable” about investing than investors do themselves (42% vs. 12%, respectively), according to a new Accenture survey of 400 financial advisors and 1,000 investors in the United States. …

Bankers who were at the ICBA's national convention last month are considering ways to expand social media use and offer new products that will not run afoul of regulators.

As entrepreneurial clients build their businesses, advisors should bring in specialists to maximize the value

LinkedIn is tailor-made for referrals, unfortunately, most advisor's LinkedIn profiles are “abysmal." What can you do to stand out from the competition?

Are you on Google+ yet? You should be, especially if you have a blog that you are trying to draw more attention to.