Like it or not, advisors are going to need to focus on social media as a part of their marketing and sales efforts moving forward. Still, many are sitting on the side lines because of compliance concerns. Speakers at the Raymond James national conference helped ease those fears.

In a morning breakout session at the Raymond James national conference, Patrick Cuillo a compliance officer, and William Brill, a compliance supervisor, both working at Raymond James Financial Services, presented on the topic of social media compliance.

Cuillo started by asking, “Does anyone think the Web is going away?”  No hands went up.  Instead there were lots of laughs. His point was clear. Advisors need to focus on online communications.

Raymond James Social Media Usage
In a show of hands, less than half of the attendees in the breakout session had a business page for any of the following social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (the approved options).

Statistics shared from Anthea Penrose, public relations manager at Raymond James, stated about 50 percent of all advisors are using social media at Raymond James. At RJA (the employee channel), of approximately 2,400 financial advisors, there is just over 60 percent penetration. At RJFS (the independent channel), with roughly 3,200 financial advisors, penetration is around 40 percent.

Of all advisors using social media through the Hearsay platform:
• 98 percent have a LinkedIn profile
• 26 percent have Facebook pages or profiles
• 21 percent have Twitter pages
• YouTube stats were unavailable, as videos go through the usual review process instead of Hearsay

Scott Curtis, president of Raymond James Financial Services, in a private meeting spoke on social media usage at Raymond James. He said, “There are certain advisors that are using it more than others. There are some that are very active. Some like it.  Some just aren’t as active.” He believes one determining factor is what type of clients the advisors are serving.

For usage, Brill stated, “[We have] almost 8,000 posts in the last 10 months from our advisors. It’s on the increase.”

“Ninety percent of the time what is being posted by advisors is not problematic,” added Brill

Compliance Monitoring And Archiving
It was clear that Raymond James is not interested in monitoring personal information.  For that reason they recommend advisors have separate personal and business profiles. Personal profiles can note individuals are an advisor at Raymond James, but they do not need to be submitted if financial-related information is not shared there.  The business profiles have to be resubmitted every year and are reviewed by the 15-person team that is growing in size.

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