I participated in a webinar on June 9 hosted by InvestmentNews titled “50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes” (blogged about here).
The replay of that webinar is available here or use the embedded player below (my portion begins at the -27:50 time point).
I highlighted the following 10 technology tips to help advisers cut costs and increase revenue:
Update: LifestreamBackup recently changed its name to Backupify. The points in this post are still applicable despite the name change!
Many advisers who consult with me regarding the use of social media are justifiably concerned about compliance when it comes to using such services. Advisers can use outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to communicate with others and to broadcast information to targeted niche markets. These tools are fantastic ways to build brand recognition for an adviser or a firm and to identify the level of services offered to the public.
I’ve written here previously how FINRA and the SEC may determine that any message disseminated through social media services constitutes marketing and/or advertising and at the very least should be archived and retained in a compliance file. If you are a representative regulated under FINRA, you likely need pre-approval from compliance before posting any messages through social media services. SEC-registered advisers should consult with their Chief Compliance Officer before posting messages as well.
Now let’s assume that an adviser decides to use social media to grow the business. Terrific! But what can be done to efficiently archive and retain those messages sent through social media services?
Over the next week, I’ll be participating in two webinars that I hope you will attend.
First, Andrew Gluck at Advisor Products, Inc. has asked me to participate in Friday’s Financial Crisis Webinar Series. The topic is Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully. I will share some of the experiences I’ve had through the use of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook mediums that have personally resulted in new connections and new business.
Click here to register for the Friday, June 5 webinar Advisors Using Social Networking Successfully.
Second, I’ll be part of a panel hosted by InvestmentNews to offer 50 Cost-Saving and Money-Making Ideas in 50 Minutes. I have a list of my top 10 technologies that I believe financial advisers can use to save money, make money, and sometimes both simultaneously. There should be at least one good tip for every adviser listening to the webinar.
Hope to “see” you on the web.
Smarsh continues to impress me as an innovative force and market leader in email archiving and compliance. They recently announced a Smarsh CRM product to help users be more efficient and productive (a post I’ve had in my drafts section ever since my son was born!).
Today I read an article on a new service that may prove to be very useful and timely to the adviser community.
Smarsh has announced a social media (a.k.a.Twitter) message archiving service at a Twitter conference this week.
So I woke up early in the hospital room Monday morning and turned on the TV. What do I see rolling by in the bottom scroll bar?
Apparently over the weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined $25,000 by the NBA for comments he posted on Twitter (from USNews.com).
Can the SEC be far behind by issuing fines to registered advisers using Twitter for failing to comply with regulatory law on the publishing of advertisements? I posted a few weeks ago about my concern of advisers using LinkedIn’s Recommendations feature when it may violate rules against testimonials.
Now that some precedent has been set, albeit by a completely different body (i.e. the NBA), I suspect that the SEC might not be too far behind in stepping up its enforcement efforts by following the tweets of registered advisers.
My advice to registered advisers: Tweet with extreme caution.
Want to Know More?
Andy Gluck at Advisor Products, Inc. is hosting a webinar this Friday, April 3 featuring Brian Hamburger of Market Counsel to address the compliance issues of using social networking technology, including LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and others.
If you’re interested in learning more about this subject, I highly recommend you register now! This session has the potential to reach the maximum number of participants allowed.
Register for Friday’s Compliance Issues Posed By Linkedin, Twitter, Blogging, & Social Networking at Advisor Products, Inc.
Thanks to one of my readers, Bob, for reminding me about potential security issues that don’t receive much attention in the financial adviser space.
If you’re using a standard (i.e. not Bluetooth) wireless keyboard in the office, anything you type is not secure. This includes all the Social Security Numbers, account numbers, birthdays, email addresses, etc. for your clients that you type day in and day out.
See this YouTube video featuring Steve Gibson of GRC.com addressing the ease at which wireless keyboards can be compromised.
Back in May I wrote about joining the Twitter bandwagon to see whether or not this new social media outlet had any relevance to my daily responsibilities. After about 400 updates in my Twitter profile, I struck gold.
Over the last week, our firm has been implementing tax loss harvesting strategies across our entire book of assets. As one might imagine, there are many, many individual trades to identify, submit, track, and confirm, as we want to ensure that all activity is executed without errors for our clients.
04/18/2012 UPDATE: The Independent Advisor Tech Forum is no more, as the domain registration has expired. Still, you can get great information on advisor technology right here! Subscribe today.
In Friday’s Tech Bits column on InvestmentNews, Davis Janowski highlighted a new technology-oriented website targeted “for financial advisors affiliated with a broker dealer and/or wirehouse who are interested in becoming independent.”
Click here to visit Independent Advisor Tech Forum. (link removed)
Independent Advisor Tech Forum is a collaborative effort spearheaded by several technology vendors in the independent adviser space. The list of participants is a genuine who’s who of big players in the technology space for CRM, paperless office, and performance reporting. Here’s a short list of who’s involved:
When you have 2 minutes, go read Joel Bruckenstein’s “The Best of Technology 2008” article at MorningstarAdvisor.
Click here for The Best of Technology 2008.
A tip when you read articles from MorningstarAdvisor: hit “Print” so you don’t have to click on the 1-2-3-4 page links at the bottom. Get the whole article on one screen with the print preview. The 4-page split posts are starting to annoy me.
Back to the technology picks. Bruckenstein’s hardware pick for 2008: a wireless keyboard/mouse combo from Logitech. He cites a minimum productivity improvement of 5%.
Really? A keyboard/mouse combo? Did dual-monitors make the cut, or did the pick have to be something reviewed in 2008? I think the minimum productivity improvement of an additional monitor starts at 10%.
Monday’s Wall Street Journal has a short column extolling the benefits of using multiple monitors on a computer.
The article, titled When More Is More by Michael Totty can be viewed by clicking here.
From the article:
Paccar has added multimonitor setups for material planners on its manufacturing lines, who have to manage demand for production parts using information on inventories inside and outside the company. Because of limited desk space and falling prices of displays, planners received two larger widescreen monitors instead of the three-screen setup in the call center. The ability to manage more rapidly changing information has produced a 10% to 20% boost in productivity, Mr. Quinn says.
