In this environment, which compliance professionals are more confident about their practices surrounding the oversight of social media? Those who allow social media and have policies governing its use for business purposes – or those who prohibit it?

Findings from the just-released Smarsh 2013 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey are striking. Surprisingly, they show respondents who indicated they allow and govern social media use are nearly twice as confident in their ability to provide specifically requested messages, within a reasonable time frame, for compliance purposes.

On the other hand, respondents who prohibit social media were less confident in their ability to prove their policy of prohibition works. This was true across almost every type of communication, including public and enterprise social media, and text messaging.

One can infer that firms that prohibit the use of social media want to avoid any compliance issues by banning the medium altogether. However, these firms still have the burden of proving their policy is being followed by employees (most important in an audit scenario). That can be challenging when non-sanctioned social tools are adopted by employees for personal and corporate communication (Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, enterprise social media platforms). Without clear social media policies and enforcement, compliance professionals have the difficult task of making sure there are no rogue social media users and tools in their company.

The reality is your employees are going to use social media, in some form, in the workplace. The survey confirms that it’s a good idea to embrace social media as a valid form of business communication, and have a proactive policy in place to enforce proper use, similar to your company emails.

Even better – have a social media archiving solution that lets you capture, supervise, review and produce employee communications when they are requested, with ease.

Find more information about social media compliance trends in the Smarsh 2013 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey Report.

For more information about Smarsh archiving and compliance for social media, email: sales@smarsh.com.

This year’s report shows us that while compliance professionals still experience challenges in the oversight and retention of electronic communications, professionals in financial services have become more comfortable with greater regulatory scrutiny, new communications tools and channels, and the increasingly complex demands of email surveillance.

Compliance professionals are also adjusting their policies and procedures to adjust to the proliferation of social media and mobile devices in the workplace, too.

As compliance professionals move past the initial fear and uncertainty of using these for business communication, they are becoming more comfortable and familiar with the day-to-day, practical challenges of managing oversight of social media and mobile devices. The survey also reveals they are more confident in their ability to meet compliance obligations related to social media and mobile, too.

In the report, you’ll also find out…

• What social media platform leads the way in adoption by financial services professionals, with nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents now permitting its use.
• How many survey respondents say they have policies regarding the most popular social media platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, AND how many have a corresponding archiving/supervision system in place to support policies.
• Who is more confident in their ability to provide specifically requested social media messages within a reasonable time frame during an audit (it’s not who you think).
• What types of company-issued and personal devices are on the rise at financial services firms, according to survey participants.
• Why policies governing the use of company-issued and personal devices are only part of the compliance solution (and firms need a follow-up step to ensure they meet compliance regulations in this area).
• Which respondents have more confidence in the capture and archiving of business communications on mobile devices, and more.

Find more insights about compliance and electronic communications trends in the Smarsh 2013 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey Report. Download it now at www.Smarsh.com/2013ComplianceSurvey.

“This year’s survey findings illuminate the shifts underway related to electronic communications compliance,” said Stephen Marsh, CEO and founder of Smarsh. “The retention and oversight of electronic communications has becoming increasingly complicated as employees are presented with a growing number of options to communicate-from instant messages and mobile devices to websites and social collaboration tools-and compliance officers must adjust quickly and comprehensively to mitigate risks to their firms.”

Mobile devices and communications a top concern
Over the last year, there has been a significant increase in the number of firms that allow a variety of mobile devices for business purposes. Extending compliance practices to oversee these communication devices is a top three compliance concern, cited by 63 percent of survey respondents. More than half of firms now allow iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets on the corporate network.

Last year, FINRA issued Regulatory Notice 11-39, stating that firms are required to retain, retrieve and supervise business communications regardless of whether they are conducted from a work-issued device or personal device. Archiving and supervision practices governing communication from these devices, however, lag behind those in place for laptops and desktop computers. Today, the majority of compliance professionals (65 percent) said they would have minimal to no confidence in their ability to produce text messages during examinations.

Firms adapt to social communication channels
New communication channels remain the second biggest concern for firms. However, organizations are adapting and increasingly taking steps to formalize their position on social media use. Nearly eighty percent of respondents indicated they have written policies to address use of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, a significant increase from the year before, when less than half indicated they had a policy in place. However, the findings reveal that when it comes to putting archiving and supervision systems in place for social media, most firms (more than 60 percent) have not yet taken action.

“Social media is following a similar adoption path to instant messaging and email,” said Marsh. “As with those communications channels, we are seeing firms first put policies in place. Then, they turn their attention to enforcement and how they can effectively and efficiently supervise and archive the communications – ultimately leading them to employ a technology solution.”

Websites in use, but retention and supervision systems lag
Most financial services firms have an online presence through their websites, which have become increasingly interactive with videos, slideshows, Flash and other interactive elements. Respondents indicated that website content was the second most requested communication type during regulatory examinations, second only to email. At the same time, 41 percent of respondents indicated having minimal to no confidence in their ability to produce website content during an examination, and only 35 percent reported having an archiving and supervision system in place for websites.

The full survey report is available for download at www.smarsh.com/compliancesurvey.

How are your peers supervising social media use at their firms? What are the top priorities for compliance departments with regard to supervising electronic communications, and how have these changed since last year? The time is clearly right to reexamine the attitudes and concerns of compliance professionals!

Smarsh is calling on compliance professionals in financial services to provide insight through a short questionnaire for this year’s compliance survey. Enforcing policy and supervising organizational use of electronic communications is an important part of a compliance department’s responsibilities, and the information culled from the day-to-day experience of those tasked with managing these growing challenges will truly shed some light on the related pain points and best practices.

Respondents to the survey will be the first to receive a copy of the survey results report when it is released, and for each qualified registrant, a donation will be made to one of four selected children’s charitable organizations:

• Boys Town
• Make-A-Wish Foundation
• National Center for Learning Disabilities
• The National Children’s Cancer Society

Be assured that all answers are completely confidential and anonymous, and will only be analyzed in aggregate. Learn more about the survey at Smarsh.com/ComplianceSurvey, and please forward on to any of your colleagues in the industry.

Using Wordle word cloud, this is a visual representation of the most common language used on the AdvisorTweets blog. Pat Allen did a fantastic job at analyzing what was happening in the world of financial advisors on Twitter, and Smarsh would like to continue that tradition on the AdvisorTweets blog.

With that said what would you like to see on AdvisorTweets? Want to submit a guest blog post and lend your voice to the community? Email info@advisortweets.com or send a tweet my way at @AdvisorTweets.

Adam Bullock
@AdamatSmarsh

Of course, the media are seeking the perspectives of advisors and filing their own reports. But what AdvisorTweets.com celebrates is the visibility of advisors using self-publishing platforms (Twitter, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.) to deliver their own analyses, as long, short and caustic as necessary. They’re on the line to anticipate and explain the impact of a U.S. default on their clients’ portfolios.

This is a high information-gathering and sharing time as shown by the high volume of tweets this week and especially today.

Here’s just a sampling of some of the tweets spotted in the AdvisorTweets stream and by using the site’s search engine.

The title–”FINRA’s 10 Commandments of Social Media Engagement for Financial Firms”–is what caught my attention. If there’s been one single comment I’ve heard about FINRA and social media, it’s that the “guidance” in last year’s FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06 has left too much to interpretation. Commandments? That’s not been my sense of FINRA comments so far. (And remember that the industry is on high alert for some additional direction in a matter of weeks.)

Nonetheless, you may benefit from taking a look at this 43-slide presentation published yesterday by Glen Gilmore. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gilmore is principal of Gilmore Business Network, a NJ-based social media consulting firm, and a practicing attorney. He’s an adjunct professor of Digital Marketing & Social Media Law at Rutgers University. His presentation provides substantial detail on some of the issues facing FINRA-regulated entities.

As I pass this on, I’ll echo Gilmore’s disclaimer on page 3 of the deck–none of the content should be taken as gospel (as it were). Gilmore’s background is impressive and includes serving as a media source during the country’s anthrax crisis and mayorship of New Jersey’s eighth-largest city. But, no financial services experience is shown.

At this writing, at least two articles have appeared with some interesting detail on what was said Tuesday at the Insured Retirement Institute’s (IRI) regulatory conference in Washington. Check out:

• FINRA Prepares New Social Media Guidance for BDs is AdvisorOne’s coverage of “Social Media–The Latest Word,” a session with Joseph Price, senior VP for advertising regulation/corporate financing at FINRA, and Mitchell Bompey, executive director, legal and compliance at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.

According to the article, Price said the additional guidance being prepared (to build on FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06) would not upend social media systems that have been developed. The guidance is being reviewed by senior staff at FINRA and will be sent to the SEC in the “next week or two.”

(As an aside, I take issue with the reporter’s characterization of Morgan Stanley as having “pioneered the concept of allowing its advisors to use social media.” Cambridge Investment Research staked that claim exactly one year ago and others’ pilots went public before Morgan Stanley. When the history is written about how social media enabled advisors to became more authentic and relevant to their clients, we’re going to want to have the facts straight.)

• Finra’s Ketchum: Questions still surrounding social media, which is Investment News’ excerpt of the prepared statement made by Richard Ketchum, Finra’s chairman and chief executive.

But we’re partial to tweets here on AdvisorTweets.com, and the tweets made by conference attendees onsite using #GLRC2011 were especially intriguing. I’ve selected a few of them below. Thanks to the BGK Group Twitter accounts and to @jbreitfelder, whose re-tweeting some of these today pointed out the value of the hashtag. I hadn’t followed it in real-time.

As I wrote in October, LPL advisors have been part of the AdvisorTweets database since Day 1. Last fall, I wondered whether the inclusion of “Securities offered through LPL Financial Member FINRA/SIPC” in several accounts’ Twitter bios reflected the start of an LPL sanction.

It’s welcome news to hear that more LPL advisors are on their way. Expect more announcements from broker-dealers, wirehouses and investment companies.

Last week, The 140 Characters Conference: New York City featured a panel discussion called “How I Did It: Financial Services Social Media Champions Tell Their Stories.” The scope of the presentation by representatives from Citi, Deutsche Bank, the Financial Women’s Association and BGK Group was broader than financial advisors’ adoption of social media but well worth your time.

At the 12:45 mark, listen to Deutsche Bank Managing Director John Stepper as he describes his firm’s internal reaction to the May news that Morgan Stanley would be empowering its broker force of almost 18,000 with access to social media.

That scene, those questions streaming in from multiple sources, is being played out at many firms. LPL’s greenlight on the heels of Morgan Stanley on the heels of earlier decisions by Commonwealth, Cambridge and Raymond James is accelerating others’ consideration of social media and ultimate adoption. This revolution is underway.

P.S. There’s news coming about the future of AdvisorTweets.com. I should be able to update you in a few days.

Flippa is the world’s largest marketplace for Websites and I think it’s the right place to cast the broadest net. It is one big tent, however, so if you check it out, please don’t be put off by the lower-quality sites that dominate the listings.

Thanks to some feedback I was given last week, the site will be offered as a private sale—meaning that bidders and bids will not be disclosed. There will be no sequential bidding such as you see on the public sale auctions, and no one but the buyer and seller will know what the site sold for.

In a private sale, bidders are asked to simply submit their best offer. The seller has 72 hours to react. Acceptance of an offer ends the sale. Alternatively, in the absence of an accepted offer, the sale ends when the sale time expires, which will be one week from today.

For more information, please see Flippa’s explanation of the difference between a public auction and a private sale. In essence, I’m using the Flippa infrastructure to surface interest and process bids in lieu of having to develop my own ad hoc process.

And, although some of it is repetitive from last week’s post, what follows is the listing in its entirety:

Financial Niche Site With Break-out Potential, PR3, Extra Domains

This site’s modest traffic and lack of revenue belie its current authority (including #1 position in Google for “social media regulation” and #7 ranked personal finance Twitter account) and the value and potential of the site to serve as a social media magnet for financial advisors and those interested in what financial advisors are thinking, in real-time.

Background

Included among the millions of Twitter accounts are accounts that belong to U.S.-based financial advisors (i.e., SEC and FINRA-regulated registered investment advisers, financial planners and registered representatives) using Twitter to share perspectives on the economy, investing and personal finance. The availability of Twitter and other social media self-publishing tools came along just at the right time for financial advisors eager to build their personal brands and share what they know in the wake of the market and economic collapse of 2008-2009.

Advisors use Twitter to call attention to what they’re thinking and saying on their blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, etc. AdvisorTweets heightens the visibility of advisors using social media. The site offers:

• Curation—We follow only U.S.-based financial advisors using Twitter for a business purpose. This provides a useful content stream and provides a level of assurance to potential sponsors or advertisers. Each advisor included in the database has his or her own profile page.
• Aggregation—The AdvisorTweets stream includes tweets from advisors with a range of experience and specialization, representing a variety of firms. The aggregation yields the trending topics and tags that provide a (navigable) snapshot of what’s being discussed and by whom. Listings of the advisors by state enable another way of filtering the tweets.
• A searchable archive with more than one year’s worth of advisor-only tweets.

AdvisorTweets provides a window into the pace of social media adoption for the thousands of others in the investment business that remain on the sidelines, pending their firms’ development of social media strategies, policies and procedures and enabling technologies. The site is visited by domains representing Wall Street and Main Street money management firms, media seeking to source advisors and other financial services providers.

For more about why the site was created, see this blog post.

Growth potential

The site launched in September 2009 following about 70 advisors and today follows 565 mostly independent advisors. Financial firms’ adoption of social media has been on lockdown, pending regulatory guidance and firms’ establishment of policies and procedures. This is changing. Guidance is in place and firms are moving forward, as suggested by these datapoints:

• Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the country’s largest wirehouse firm, becomes the first major wealth management firm to announce that its 17,800 broker force will be given access to Twitter and LinkedIn (May 25, 2011). See the AdvisorTweets blog post.
• The CEO of Raymond James, one of the country’s largest broker-dealer, confirms that its 5,300 financial advisors will be “actively participating” on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites (May 2, 2011). See the AdvisorTweets blog post.
• Charles Schwab survey reports that advisors consider social media the new frontier (August 2010). See the AdvisorTweets blog post.

Unique value

Advisors with Twitter accounts recognize that their inclusion on AdvisorTweets.com contributes to overall awareness of their online presence, particularly on the state listing pages (which have been under-leveraged). In addition, many are interested in what other advisors have to say but don’t want to explicitly include other advisors among the Twitter accounts they follow. Those who pick and choose advisors from this aggregation to build their own Twitter list still value the AdvisorTweets archive.

The vast majority of investment firms and advisors today do not have Twitter accounts. Many will never have Twitter accounts—even once their Compliance officers approve the activity, some are not interested in initiating their own activity. They are interested, however, in what other advisors are saying. For these “shadow” advisors, AdvisorTweets is an increasingly useful reference site.

There are some sites published by the media and vendors that describe advisors’ social media activities, but no site puts the advisors and what they’re saying front and center.

AdvisorTweets enjoys the support of the financial advisor ecosystem. See the AdvisorTweets Twitter account followers, names of Twitter lists the account is added to and read the comments to the blog posts. My hope is that this sale will identify a buyer that will enhance what’s delivered to the advisors and early users of the site.

Other recognition/acknowledgement includes:

• @AdvisorTweets’ appearance on more than 150 Twitter lists–most of which are personal finance-related– ranks it as Sulia’s #7 most followed personal finance Twitter account
• In January 2011, AdvisorTweets is cited in an SEC sweep letter in which the SEC is seeking documentation that identifies adviser’s involvement with or usage of

“social media web sites, including, without limitation: Facebook; b. Twitter, including, without limitation, AdvisorTweets.com; c.LinkedIn; d. LinkedFa e.YouTube f. Flickr g. MySpace h. Digg i. Reddit; RSS and j. Blogs and micro-blogs.” See the AdvisorTweets blog post.

• AdvisorTweets named a Killer Startup, September 2009
• AdvisorTweets singled out by keynote speaker futurist Gerd Leonhard at the Financial Planners Association (FPA) Business Solutions 2011 conference. See the AdvisorTweets blog post.
• AdvisorTweets included among five great resources for financial planners on the Financial Planners Association (FPA) Practice Management blog

Why am I selling?

It may seem counterintuitive that I am selling the site just as I believe it’s on the brink of break-out growth. But I started the site as a proof of concept. My business is not Web site development and I don’t sell any services to financial advisors. Growth of the AdvisorTweets database will drive added traffic to the site, raise visibility and interaction, I can say with certainty and confidence. But for me it will represent a distraction from Rock The Boat Marketing, my digital marketing strategy consulting business. A buyer should be able to leverage the potential that I have been building toward.

Who might this appeal to?

I can think of four potential buyer types:

• A media company that seeks to support an online community where advisors are front and center. A publisher might combine AdvisorTweets as a subdomain or subdirectory to its own site as a means of offering a social media awareness opportunity to advertisers.
• A business or organization that seeks to tap into the industry’s high interest in social media by aligning itself with a social ecosystem that includes not just financial advisors but also financial services service providers.
• An individual brokerage or planning firm seeking to use the AdvisorTweets domain and publishing platform to promote its own advisors’ tweets.
• An Internet-focused business seeking to earn off the site with the addition of sponsorships or text and display ads.

How much work is it?

In order to continue to grow, this site will require attention and marketing. Day-to-day publishing to the site is automated, via the Twitter API. Changes to the database are made at the convenience of the site manager. They are straightforward and follow a process that can be explained. Blog posts have been published at least once a week and can significantly drive traffic—more posts would drive more traffic. If the buyer doesn’t have writing resources available, I’m sure that a calendar of freelance and guest posts could be developed. The Twitter account will need to be used. I have limited the tweeting to weekdays and work-hours only, more tweeting could conceivably drive higher awareness.

Site assets

The site’s assets include:

• A publishing platform and account management admin capability built in PHP with some javascript.
• All files including html code and source code, a search capability, a searchable archive of more than a year’s worth of tweets and an admin capability for managing followers and report-running. The site is being sold as is.
• The WordPress blog and all files
• Three domain names—AdvisorTweets.com and AdviserTweets.com and CFPTweets.com (CFP = certified financial planner). The latter domains today redirect to AdvisorTweets.com.

Social media presence

Twitter account—1,905 followers follow @AdvisorTweets as of June 13

3 public Twitter lists:

• U.S. advisors—the first 500 followed–unfortunately, Twitter caps lists at 500 so post-500 advisors added to AdvisorTweets can be followed only on AdvisorTweets.com.
• Investment advisors—RIAs
• Financial planners—CFPs

Private lists tracking advisors from various firms will enable additional filtering.

• Google Page Rank (PR3)

• Facebook page (lightly used)

Revenue details

No attempt has been made to monetize the site. Here are some possibilities:

• Selling sponsorships
• The site’s use of widgets accommodates the introduction of advertising zones for targeting AdSense and banner ads. The state listings, too, might also be targeted.
• Email newsletter advertising
• Adding AdSense to the WordPress blog

Traffic details

Traffic is reported in two separate Google Analytics reports—one for the aggregation site and one for the WordPress blog. While the blog receives more visits (attributable to the fact that I tweet about the blog posts), the site has almost twice the page views. This is a site that visitors return to.

The traffic is 100% free and a result of a mix of:

• Direct (representing the growing awareness of “AdvisorTweets”)
• Campaigns (representing my use of Twitter to drive traffic to the blog posts)
• Search
  • 3,820 pages are indexed by Google
  • 19 organic keywords (Semrush.com) drive traffic to the site including the #1 position for social media regulation (see the extended due diligence data for this listing)
  • Referring sites (68 domains link to the site)

As can be seen in the verified Google Analytics documents, traffic in the first 5.5 months of 2011 is a significant improvement over the last six months of 2010. Visits to the site and blog combined are up 164%, views are up 161% and unique visitors are up 164%. My approach to the site hasn’t varied in the last six months. I attribute this growth to heightened interest, which will only build.

But while the general direction is positive and encouraging, the overall level of traffic is modest. Traffic is muted for these reasons:

• Relative low awareness, attributable to at least 1)It’s been widely assumed that regulations prohibit financial advisor participation 2)There has been no marketing of the site.
• Social media domains have been blocked by investment-related firms prior to their adoption of enabling policies and procedures. This is changing.
• My focus has been on a business-to-business use of the site. A new buyer might broaden its value to and use by consumers.

Because my goal was raising social media-using advisor visibility and not monetization, I made no express effort to drive traffic. In fact, I made two deliberate decisions that had the counter effect:

• Each advisor followed by the AdvisorTweets account (whose tweets were added to the aggregation that appears on AdvisorTweets.com) was also added to a public Twitter list. This enabled people to follow the list without needing to rely exclusively on the site.
• The AdvisorTweets Twitter account has been used to share content, especially related to financial advisors and social media and to support advisors new to Twitter. Its tweeting of AdvisorTweets.com content has been light, limited to a few times a week at most.

When an offer is accepted

Upon acceptance of the offer, my attorney will send the successful bidder a bill of sale to sign and return within 24 hours. The attorney will then follow up with a request for payment to be deposited in the law firm’s trust account. Payment will need to be made within 48 hours. The property transfer will begin immediately after funds are verified.

Thank you for your interest.