Behind the scenes of AdvisorTweets.com
Archive for January, 2010
FINRA Issues Social Media Guidance: Tweets Do Not Require Prior Approval
Jan 25th
At about mid-day today, FINRA released its 10-page Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web Sites. (A tip of the hat to @BillWinterberg who was first among our tweeps to spot the regulatory notice.)
Others might disagree or read something in between the lines, but to us the guidance seems reasonable. Of course, FINRA will insist on record-keeping and supervision. And specific investment product recommendations are obviously trouble–in fact, FINRA says a prohibition would be a best practice unless the content posted was previously approved by a registered principal.
But we think that the door to the marketing potential of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for financial advisors and firms swings open with FINRA’s distinction between “static content” requiring the prior approval of a registered principal and “non-static content,” which does not require prior approval.
FINRA acknowledges that Twitter and Facebook provide for non-static, real-time communications, such
as interactive posts. “The portion of a social networking site that provides for these interactive communications constitutes an interactive electronic forum, and firms are not required to have a registered principal approve these communications prior to use,” FINRA says.
This could have been the deal-breaker. What FINRA describes as static content on social networking sites–profile, background or wall information–must be approved by a registered principal prior to posting. It’s more work for a Compliance review group but it’s manageable. If, on the other hand, all tweets by everybody needed to be approved prior to posting, social networking would be dead on arrival for FINRA-regulated entities in the investment industry.
Please read FINRA’s press release and the regulatory notice for all of the details.
There will be much more to come on this, including at the February 3 FINRA Webinar. (FINRA announced its rescheduling from March 17 via email this afternoon.)
From our perspective, the topic of social media participation has moved from “FINRA won’t let us” to “How long will it take for Compliance to prepare our policies and procedures?”
This announcement is great timing for tomorrow’s Investment News Webinar on Advisors and LinkedIn. See you there?
And, of course, we’re interested in what you think of the FINRA guidance–as always, we welcome your comments below.
Financial Advisors, Social Networking & FINRA: This Debate Is On
Jan 13th
In the last 12-15 months several Web sites have been developed to enable social networking for “financial professionals.” In a few cases, the term “financial professionals” includes the breadth of a network that a client would turn to for financial planning help, including financial advisors but CPAs, attorneys and insurance salespeople, too. Often the networks’ purpose and revenue model is to bring professional and client together.
We don’t have a dog in this fight (let alone a revenue model!). AdvisorTweets is a labor of love for us and we benefit in meaningful ways from the interaction it affords us. Beyond trying to keep AT up and loading quicker, we’re content just aggregating and reading financial advisor tweets.
So we’re just fascinated with the positioning that’s going on with these networks and what can be learned from the discussion. This is a great time to watch the distribution end of the investment industry put social media on for size.
(And as a quick digression, we see that Raymond James is spending some time on Twitter lately with its @RaymondJames‘ Twitter account created in December and its @RJAdvisorChoice account. We know about Northwestern Mutual’s account [@NM_News] and see imposter accounts but if you know of other broker-dealers on Twitter, please comment below.)
But, back to the debate. Yesterday a blog from Facetime Communications questioned LinkedFA’s very reason for being. LinkedFA, to be launched at some point this month, is marketing itself as the “first and only FINRA-compliant social networking site for financial professionals.”
“Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn don’t comply,” says the video on the LinkedFA site, which doesn’t acknowledge the more targeted social networks that have been created such as Fabeetle and FinanceAnswers.
The LinkedFA compliant claim sounds pretty interesting, right?
But, “Why would financial professionals want a ‘walled-garden’ social media site in the first place? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the objective?” asked FaceTime’s Kailash Ambwani on the FaceForward blog. Facetime’s product line, we should note, includes regulatory compliance solution for financial services customers.
LinkedFA posted its response, and this debate is now off and running.
Yo Sigmund! The Psychological Profile Of AdvisorTweets
Jan 4th
Yes, there are at least one dozen other things we should be doing on the first workday of 2010. But let’s never mind that for now.
Later in the week we’ll be updating our stats on the financial advisors that make up the AdvisorTweets.com universe. But when we saw an announcement today that TweetPsych creates psychological profiles of Twitter lists, we just had to give it a whirl. AdvisorTweets’ very reason for being is to follow financial advisors and better understand what what’s on their minds. And now there’s an app for that?
We submitted the full AdvisorTweets Twitter list for comparison with the thousands of other Twitter lists in the database. That’s how TweetPsych identifies traits that occur more or less frequently in the list analyzed.
Above is a screenshot for the profile. Given the nature of the list, which is drawn from who we follow on the curated AdvisorTweets site, we’re not surprised by the most frequently mentioned topic (money) or the least (sex). But the rankings of some of the other mentions (e.g., negative sentiments getting above average mentions and positive sentiments mentioned less than average) surprised us.
Above Average Mentions
- Money (257%)
- Leisure (38%)
- Time (13%)
- The Future (13%)
- Negative sentiments more than average: 10%
Less Than Average Mentions
- Work (-2%)
- The Present (-9%)
- Constructive behavior (-10%)
- Conceptual thoughts (-11%)
- Anxiety (-18%)
- Emotions (-18%)
- Social behaviors (-22%)
- Positive sentiments (-24%)
- Primordial content, defined as “lower level dream-state and unconscious modes of thought”) (-28%)
- The Past (-28%)
- Numbers (-33%)
- Learning and education (-37%)
- Senses (-40%)
- Self reference (-46%)
- Media (-48%)
- Sex (-79%)
Then just for fun, we thought we’d compare the advisors’ profile with the @RockTheBoatMKTG InvestmentManagers Twitter list. While individuals stand behind the advisors’ Twitter accounts, the investment managers on Twitter (18 that we know of) tweet with largely institutional personalities.
Again, no surprises at either end but the investment managers’ account profiles varied a bit from the advisors. The largest variations are in boldface.
Above Average Mentions Investment Managers Twitter List Results In Red
- Money (257%) 401%
- Leisure (38%) -88%
- Time (13%) N/A
- The Future (13%) -15%
- Negative sentiments more than average: 10% -74%
Less Than Average Mentions
- Work (-2%) 66%
- The Present (-9%) -33%
- Constructive behavior (-10%) 14%
- Conceptual thoughts (-11%) 16%
- Anxiety (-18%) -28%
- Emotions (-18%) -55%
- Social behaviors (-22%) 6%
- Positive sentiments (-24%) -36%
- Primordial content, defined as “lower level dream-state and unconscious modes of thought”) (-28%) -18%
- The Past (-28%) -75%
- Numbers (-33%) -21%
- Learning and education (-37%) 97%
- Senses (-40%) -44%
- Self reference (-46%) -80%
- Media (-48%) -60%
- Sex (-79%) -93%
OK, back to work.
