Over the last several months, we at AdvisorTweets.com have watched several savvy financial advisors enhance their brands using Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. We’ve been impressed by their commitment to producing content, to mastering the publishing and marketing tools and to their online networking.

These activities have driven the growth and success of other small businesses, and we were reasonably confident they’d be well received by investors. Individual advisors no doubt are getting feedback. It’s possible that some of them have done their own research. But to our knowledge, there hasn’t been any empirical data on investors and whether they expect their financial advisors to participate in social media.

That came today in the form of research from Chicago-based Spectrem Group, the firm better known for specializing in the affluent and retirement markets.

Spectrem announced a “Social Media and the Investor” study based on a survey of 500 financial decision-makers in households with $50,000 or more in annual income who spend at least two hours per week on the internet.

Highlights of the findings:

• More than one-third (36%) of investors say they are interested in receiving information from their advisors or corresponding with them through social media. Among investors under age 35, this rises to 53%.
• At least one hour of respondents’ online time per week is devoted to financial pursuits.
• 77% of investors who read blogs are likely to consult them for information on new financial products and services.
• 69% of LinkedIn users are likely to consult their LinkedIn networks on investment issues.
• 63% of Twitter users would pay attention to investment tweets.
• 46% of YouTube users and 41% of Facebook users would seek investment information from these forums.
• Social media networks are also popular sources for developing new investment strategies and seeking buy/sell advice.

“For advisors and financial services providers, this means that a social media presence and the use of social media tools for communications have become a virtual necessity,” concluded George H. Walper, Jr., president of Spectrem.

Spectrem says the data have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.