On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the annual MFEA STAR awards in Chicago focusing on social media within the asset management industry. It was a lively discussion and a topic that is clearly on the minds of fund executives. Over the course of the day, there were a few recurring themes and issues, which I thought I’d highlight here as they are relevant to any financial firm exploring the social media waters:

• If nothing else, firms need to employ social media tools to monitor their brand. Even if you are not going to start tweeting, blogging, bleating (ok, I made that one up) or anything, you should at least be monitoring the cyber world to see what people are saying about you. (One service whose name kept coming up here was BuzzMetrics - note that we have never used them nor do I know much about them so this is NOT an endorsement, they were simply referenced a few times).
• Of course, if you need to monitor the situation, you need access to the tools. Several people mentioned that their firms’ IT departments restrict access to sites like FaceBook, YouTube, etc. Clearly, this is a priority for financial marketers and brand/product managers. You need to work with your executive management and IT to at least get specific people access to these sites.
• Before you engage in a broader social media strategy, you first need to get your online house in order. By that, we mean you need your website up to industry standards (at least). It makes little sense to have a successful social media strategy that draws people to your site only to have the site lose the sale.
• Once you’ve decided you want to employ a social media strategy, you need to work with management and compliance to get internal buy-in. This comment is repeated so much that it almost sounds trite. Unfortunately, it’s true. The real problem, then, is how to do this. It’s an area where you might need to be creative. One of the panel participants was able to get compliance buy-in because the compliance officer used Facebook personally. This meant he understood the value - and perceived risks - and was able to engage with the marketing team in an effective way.
• A good point was raised about the limits compliance places on social media and what value is left as a result. For example, if in order to get a Facebook page up and running a firm needs to shut off commentary, reserve the right to remove fan comments, can’t accept endorsements, doesn’t this effectively hobble social media and make it simply marketing? The short answer, frankly, is yes. But, that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. You wouldn’t ignore more traditional marketing strategies like email campaigns, right? Why ignore the marketing benefits that even a hobbled social media strategy can bring?
• On December 16, FINRA is hosting a webinar entitled Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites. This will likely be a useful webinar to participate in for any financial firm wrestling with compliance issues relative to social media.