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Is The Facebook ‘Like’ Button Off-Limits? And Insights On Advisors’ LinkedIn Use
AdvisorTweets aggregates tweets so it would make sense that we confine our comments on the AdvisorTweets blog to Twitter. And we usually do…but we came across a few items this week about Facebook and LinkedIn that add to the growing body of knowledge about financial advisors’ use of social media. So, we thought we’d pass them on.
On Tuesday, the freshly named Huntington Asset Services (formerly Unified Fund Services, Inc.) hosted a Webinar whose overall theme was social media enablement. But we heard something about Facebook that we hadn’t heard before.
Advisors have been repeatedly told that they cannot provide or accept LinkedIn recommendations and that using the Favorites feature on Twitter is verboten. But the Huntington’s SEC Compliance discussion expanded the ban to include Facebook.
“Don’t use the Like button and discourage your friends from liking your content,” advisors were told. Is this consistent with what other Compliance officers are saying? Please comment below.
New LinkedIn Insights
Advisor Websites’ LinkedIn survey results, published yesterday, provide some new insights on financial advisors’ use of LinkedIn. Loic Jeanjean from the Vancouver, British Columbia-based firm tells us that 74% of the 349 survey respondents were from the U.S. and the rest from Canada.
The combined data muddy the usefulness of analyzing some of these findings to understand U.S.-based advisors. For example, responses to questions about use of LinkedIn recommendations and participation in LinkedIn Answers would be really interesting, if segmented by country affiliation. Indeed, subsequent surveys will be segmented, Jeanjean says.
We recommend the full survey report to you. Here are three data points we found thought-provoking:
- Just 55% of advisors add client contacts to their networks. It’s more common to add friends, colleagues and business partners.
- 60% of advisors are updating their LinkedIn profiles monthly. That sheds some light on the burden to be placed on Compliance review.
- 25% are running pay per click ads–higher than we might have guessed (see our guest blog post on the subject).
August 5, 2010 - 12:29 pm
Pat, thanks for sharing this interesting data. With regard to the Facebook “Like” button, we do not agree with Huntington. It is perfectly ok to show your affiliation or approval of content online without running afoul of compliance regulations, in our opinion, as long as you are not endorsing something that could be misconstrued as a recommendation or sale of a product for example. In turn, having someone “Like” your content is not a recommendation of your services as a financial advisor. “Liking” is applicable to social objects, or pieces of content, not services or performance. If advisors are not permitted to like, share, or comment on social content across the web, there would be no point in participating in social media of any kind. However, as with all regulations, it is based upon a firm’s interpretation and up to the firm as to how they want to develop and implement their policies. Firms who disallow financial advisors to “engage” in social media (i.e. like, share, comment) will stifle the growth of their business and miss the incredible opportunity to retain and acquire clients. For further reading, visit our comprehensive compliance overview: http://www.wiredadvisor.com/resources/advisor-compliance/
On this page you will find the Socialware Guidelines to Facebook where they have a different take on using the “Like” button…and we happen to concur with them.
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August 5, 2010 - 6:36 pm
Steph, I appreciate your posting your reaction. On the other hand, as you know, @BillWinterberg tweeted today that he believes “Like is too close to a recommendation.”
This is an inconsistency that will have firms and advisors (and you, Bill, me and others) guessing unecessarily. The firms and advisors, of course, are at risk, as would be their social media plans if they were cited.
It seems as if it could be avoided with clarification from the SEC and FINRA.
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August 5, 2010 - 9:07 pm
Thanks Pat. I just started a discussion about this over on http://www.socialturns.com. Curious to get feedback from that group! http://www.socialturns.com/forum/topics/thoughts-on-likes-and-retweets
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August 5, 2010 - 9:41 pm
Great idea!
(For the benefit of this blog’s readers, the SocialTurns Council is a just-launched group made up of compliance, marketing, technology and other financial services professionals. Membership currently is by invitation–if you’re interested, send an email to info@advisortweets.com and we’ll get you in.)
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August 11, 2010 - 1:30 pm
Pat and Stephanie,
I actually attended a webinar with Chris Winn @advisorassist last week and he talked about the “like” button during the presentation. He is anticipating some clarification will come soon from FINRA as more and more advisors are using these social sharing features (tweetmeme, Google Buzz etc.)
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August 11, 2010 - 2:05 pm
Thanks for the update, Loic, and thank you again for giving us access to your LinkedIn usage data.
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