For those of us who are frequent users of social media, it’s hard to imagine a world without it. The explosion of social media has changed the way we communicate in our personal lives – and more recently, its influence is being felt in the way we do business.

The investment management industry might be the last holdout. While nearly 100 percent of financial services professionals surveyed in a recent Advent study reported using some form of social media, the industry has been slow to adopt social media beyond personal use. In fact, almost a third of financial services professionals say social media is not appropriate for the industry at all.

Except for that reluctant one-third – and I sense that they’ll soon change their minds – most of us have accepted that social media is becoming entrenched in the world of business, including financial services. Some of you may have already embraced social media, but many more of you may have decided to hold off until best practices have emerged.

Well, best practices have emerged, thanks to a few pioneers. In our survey, we found advanced users of social media have identified professional uses and strategies that significantly benefit their business. Not only have they figured out that they need to be active in social media because everyone else is, they’ve uncovered specific applications for finance. To those of you still unsure of the best ways to use the technology, these advanced users have valuable lessons to share.

On LinkedIn? Great! Time for Twitter. You’re probably on LinkedIn already, which makes sense, since it’s a social network geared specifically towards the business community. However, it’s time to explore other social media platforms for their professional utility. Each channel offers unique information, insights and means of interaction that can benefit your business.

According to an April 2012 report from Corporate Insight, 92 percent of financial services firms are on Twitter -- but that doesn’t mean they actively use it, our study suggests. Of the financial professionals we surveyed who consider themselves to be experienced social media users, more than two-thirds use Twitter for professional purposes, with financial advisors and planners the most likely to tweet professionally. However, that percentage shrinks to one-fourth when surveying financial professionals across the board. If you have a Twitter account, it’s time to start thinking of it as a business development tool: it’s a great way to engage your clients, build relationships, share company news and share your point of view on key industry issues and hot topics.

Our more socially savvy respondents recognize that the bigger their social footprint, the bigger the audience they will reach. Social media has introduced new paths for prospective clients to find, research and engage with professionals across the financial spectrum. Having a presence on multiple social channels makes it easier for clients, investors and other potential stakeholders to find you and connect.

YouTube is another social media powerhouse that’s worthy of your attention. YouTube is the number two search engine in the world, surpassing even Yahoo! People are spending more time on the web watching videos, and the video format is a great way to communicate your most important messages in a concise and engaging way.

Listen to your clients. Financial services is a relationship business, and social media is all about building relationships. Most likely, your clients are using and communicating on multiple social media platforms -- and they expect you to be, too. One out of four respondents in our survey reported feeling pressure from clients to be more active in social media.

Social media has become a forum to air complaints and other feedback, and it’s possible your clients and prospects are talking about you, too. Whether someone is praising you or voicing a complaint, you need to know what’s being said about you and how you’re perceived online.

Your clients’ activity on social media can also reveal a lot about their needs and interests. They might post links to their latest reading materials or comment on market trends that intrigue them. For example, a client might tweet a link to a white paper on high-yield debt – knowing about this interest creates an opportunity for you to have a conversation on this topic. Similarly, commenting on something a prospective client has posted on social media can be a great conversation starter.

So how do you listen? Start by making a list of your clients’ (and any high-value prospective clients’) social media profiles, and then follow them. You might also want to identify popular hashtags relevant to your business, such as #401k or #currencies. Applications like HootSuite and TweetDeck enable you to create streaming lists that organize your contacts into categories and view their tweets and Facebook posts in real-time.

There are also a number of paid monitoring services like Radian6 that scour the entire spectrum of social media for company mentions or important keywords, and package all relevant conversations in a convenient report.

Collect news and market intelligence. The number one way financial professionals in our survey use social media is to collect news and information. Almost every traditional news outlet now has a Twitter account, and it’s not uncommon for them to break news on Twitter first. Of course, reacting to news from social media requires an extra degree of caution – a case in point is the recent hack of the Associated Press’ Twitter account, which resulted in a 143-point fall in the Dow.

News gathering is a useful – and basic – function of social media. But savvier users in financial services are tuning into broader conversations and gleaning valuable market insights. With new SEC guidelines permitting public companies to disclose corporate developments through social media, there are now more conversations relevant to the financial community taking place than ever before.

How are your peers collecting this intelligence? There are a variety of tools and techniques that you can use to get at trends and insights. It’s not as simple as following the top news outlets or financial pundits, though that’s a good place to start. Specialized searches and monitoring and analytical tools can help track buzz and identify emerging market trends and new pockets of investor demand while filtering out irrelevant information.

Paid monitoring services can help you monitor what individuals and companies are saying on social media channels about their industry, their competitors, the market in general and the sentiment with which they express these thoughts. Also consider joining StockTwits, a financial communications platform that allows you to easily track financial data and analysis around company tickers (demarcated on Twitter as $TICKER).

Navigate compliance. Compliance concerns may be the biggest barrier to social media engagement in the financial services world.  Though the SEC has issued more guidelines of late, there’s no clear-cut manual that explains the DOs and DON’Ts.

If you don’t already, make sure you have an approval mechanism in place for any social media content. Depending on the size of your firm, you may want to appoint just a few individuals to post content on the company’s behalf or about the company until you’ve educated the rest of your colleagues. Before rolling out social media to the entire firm, develop guidelines that outline exactly what is and what is not permitted and detail the approval process.

To prevent a backlog of content, you can use a social media management platform to cue up and schedule posts in advance. As soon as you have approval, you can release your posts with the click of a button.

It certainly isn’t easy to sort through the clutter when getting started with social media, but it is clear that there are significant advantages to be gained. As with any new technology, it’s important to temper enthusiastic participation with thorough research and good judgment. Now that social media has proved itself no passing fad, we’re at the stage where it’s no longer a question of will you participate but how. Don’t get left behind!

Katherine Calvert is vice president of marketing for Advent Software.