As is so often the case in social media, we can only predict what will happen in the UK by glancing at our adventurous cousins in the US.

There, the financial services sector has just bravely dipped another toe into the choppy and unsure waters of social media in the face of draconian regulation.

Until now, many of the big investment firms have imposed a blanket ban on their advisers and brokers using social networks for work, so unsettled are they by the threats of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra).

A brave few, including Merill Lynch and Wells Fargo, allow their advisers to create social media profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter for private communications, including invitations, introductions and private messages related to work. This means they can talk with social media-savvy clients in a way that suits those consumers – but privately.

However, in a rather intriguing development last week, Morgan Stanley told its 18,000 advisers they’d now be allowed to start sending out public messages relating to market updates, economic and investment insights and wealth management topics.

That’s right, they’re now allowed to start tweeting about work and what they do.

But there are strings attached: the messages all have to have gone through prior compliance approval.

Yep, that means they’ll be prepared for general use by no-one in particular for no-one in particular to serve up to no-one in particular, a bit like a loaf of bread in a supermarket.

I realise all of this sounds faintly ludicrous in a space that demands authenticity and spontaneity – but hear me out; it’s a positive step.

The fact is if you’re Coca Cola or Starbucks, you’re not going to get fined for recommending your own product – and if it doesn’t work for the customer…then no-one but the customer will care.

Not so with financial services firms – because the regulators are all over them like a fat donkey on a golden, crispy waffle if they so much as smile at a customer in a noncompliant way.

Morgan Stanley is to begin a pilot of the scheme with 600 advisers later this month and the communications will all be done through a ‘proprietary platform’. This means advisers will sign in to the software, a sort of inhouse Twitter service called ‘Socialware’, and post messages inside it. These will automatically be published to the advisers’ public profiles in LinkedIn and Twitter.

This rather cumbersome arrangement is another attempt to appease the regulator because it allows the firm to archive records of messages (as it does already with phone calls and emails). And, because of the regulations, the advisers still can’t recommend other advisers or allow themselves to be recommended.

Despite the plethora of restrictions surrounding this initiative, it still strikes me as a major advance.

The company’s director of social media, Lauren Boyman, has said Morgan Stanley will eventually loosen restrictions still further and Facebook could be added as a channel.

Yet Josh Brown, who blogs at the Wall Street Journal, is not impressed. He asked in a recent column: “Can [Morgan Stanley] really think that anyone has an interest in being spammed with PR and pre-approved status updates from their broker?”

It’s a shame he thinks this is ‘spam’ because here’s the value in it:

Morgan Stanley produces a lot of research and information related to investing. Its advisers have clients who might now be following them on Twitter or LinkedIn (even though they’re not allowed to post work-related updates). Presumably those clients and prospects would be interested in legitimate information and research that the company has released. This is how they will now find out about it – from their advisers through their personal Twitter streams and LinkedIn accounts.

For those who think this is ‘spam’, the Golden Rule of all social media connections applies: if you don’t like it, don’t follow it.

More importantly, if advisers can provide value with this form of engagement, it could open the door to looser regulations and more willingness to take a little risk based on what the regulators say. As Boyman points out, the crux of social networking is building relationships and trust. This is also what financial advisers do every day and so social channels are very obvious media for adviser/client communications.

It’s a baby step in a very conservative and heavily-regulated industry. Morgan Stanley is leading the way, pushing the envelope, poking the box – so good luck to them for experimenting.

Let’s see how long London takes to follow suit.

Michael Taggart is head of digital and social at MRM – follow him on Twitter.

I’m often asked what the use of social media is if you’re not selling directly to consumers – what if you’re B2B?

The thinking goes like this: if social is all about people and relationships – and Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are populated mostly by real individual people – then what use are they when your customers are other businesses.

A classic example would be an investment platform provider whose customers are Independent Financial Advisers, not the consumers making the investments.

Here’s the thing.

Businesses are full of people and business people – just like consumers – are on the social web. You only have to look at the examples of IFAs to realise that. Maybe they’re not there explicitly to represent a brand – but they are there nonetheless. And when they’re at their workplaces they are often making spending decisions that are influenced by their experiences the evening before on the social web.

But even more important is that social media excels over all other forms of media in its ability to facilitate human relationships. And this is why social media works for B2B even more than B2C.

Human relationships play a greater role in B2B than B2C. 

Take, for example the classic B2C sales of a can of Coke or pair of jeans – these are quick-hit interactions based on emotion and impulse. They often have little to do with human relationships – not deep ones, anyway – but are more based on consumers’ feelings towards a brand. In fact, most B2C companies find it harder to have personal, human relationships with their customers by sheer dint of the size of their customer bases.

But in B2B, where the markets are often very small and spends are high, the interactions are more intense because the need for information is so high prior to and during a transaction. So much information changes hands, much deeper relationships develop in comparison to the surface-level B2C relationships.

B2B purchasing is based on rational, value-based considerations, like quality and dependability. The question is always “what is the value of the product we are buying?”, not “what are the brand promises of this company?” or “what does the seller believe about the world?”. And the sales cycle is often long so the seller has to demonstrate that she is in the game for the long haul. Social media offers a number of ways of doing this, such as consistently publishing buyer-oriented content to your blog.

Another key factor: B2B purchasing decisions have real impact on the lives of those making them. Careers are bet on buying expensive products like software or research. People are actually concerned about their livelihoods when they’re in discussions with B2B suppliers. So we’re talking about very serious relationships between the buyer and seller. The buyer can’t have too much information and always wants to feel more comfortable with the decision they are making. This is not true of B2C purchases generally.

Social channels are great at communicating complex and in-depth information. For example the buyer might return often in the run up to signing on the dotted line to check reviews, testimonials, explanatory videos and helpful blogs…or he might spend some time interacting with other B2B customers on Q&A sites, like Quora, or niche forums and communities.

Finally, time and energy goes into integrating a B2B supplier into a business. B2B buyers often don’t just buy a product; they buy a company. They buy into the health, knowledge and ability of the supplier.

Will the YouTube channel/blog/Facebook page make the sale on its own? No. But here’s a fact: 93% of business customers start the process of buying by searching the web.

So if you’re selling to businesses rather than direct to consumers, there’s even more reason to be on the social web.

Michael Taggart is head of digital and social at MRM. Follow Michael here on Twitter or visit his blog at www.michael-taggart.com

Image from http://www.nickgarner.co.uk

George Emsden, 'CancerIFA' on Twitter

When George Emsden was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2007, his instinct was to keep it to himself.

Four years later he is one of Twitter’s best-known Independent Financial Advisers and his online identity “CancerIFA” could barely be more stark.

The story of how George defied his inhibitions to find catharsis in speaking about his illness is an inspiration in itself – but another absorbing aspect of this tale is untold. You see, George is a case in point about how the Internet has changed the way the world does business. Social networks have allowed people all over the planet with niche – but common – interests to connect as never before. For businesses with a specialism, this is a golden opportunity.

Imagine, if you will, a Runcorn-based record shop specialising in 1930s Romanian folk. Ten years ago, with a potential customer-base of probably somewhere around none in that town, there would not have been any business. Now it’s possible to connect to the few thousand dotted around the world’s seven continents who love pre-war Romanian folk – and to build a business by selling regularly to, say, a tenth of them every year.

We live in a global economy of niches – marketing wonks call it The Long Tail – and for financial services, this means being able to target specific markets in ways that never previously existed.

This is exactly what George is doing. He is one of the few people in the country with the personal experience and the professional expertise to help people take care of their money issues after a life-shattering cancer diagnosis. And he’s able to find potential clients using social media.

He blogs most weeks, at Money Made Simple and has a chirpy style that has led to invites to talk about finances on TV. George also engages daily with dozens of clients, prospects and contacts on Twitter.

He asked me rhetorically yesterday: “Why do I blog? It’s fun and since some of the areas I specialise in are serious, giving financial guidance to people with cancer for example, one needs some enjoyment.

“The best blogs are written just after something you have seen, heard or read – maybe someone you have just met. Things that grab you basically – as these tend to write themselves.”

George is one of an army of IFAs exploiting social tools to do business.

Tina Weeks, known on Twitter as The Finance Coach, has discovered some unexpected

Tina Weeks, The Finance Coach

uses for social media.

The Barnet-based mum found 10 minutes between the school run and the first of many meetings to call me earlier this week.

“I asked my followers whether I should change my name on Twitter because I was worried that people weren’t associating it with me,” she said. “About 50 people responded and said, emphatically, that I should keep it as The Finance Coach because it had become a successful brand.

“I was able to glean some really valuable business intelligence by using the networks I had built up.”

Tina said she’s seen genuine return on investment from social, gaining ‘one or two’ new clients every week as a direct result of her online engagement.

“I have also used social media to recruit good people and for PR – because journalists have noticed what I’ve been doing. It takes time to see results – it took about a year for me – but it is worth it in the end.

“I don’t worry at all about compliance. I talk about my life and business, never about clients or partners; it’s just common sense. Ask yourself if you’re enticing anyone to do anything and if you’re not, you’re probably okay.”

Father-of-two Pete Matthew, an IFA from West Cornwall, has won awards for his use of online communications, including MeaningfulMoney.TV.

meaningfulmoney.tv

He said: “Through Social Media I have met with people, both virtually and in the flesh who have enhanced my career, business, and life.

“As far as my YouTube efforts are concerned I want to get decent financial information out to the world. I do believe that the RDR will reduce access to advice for ordinary people, and MeaningfulMoney.tv is my way of using the internet to educate and inform.

“I am not remotely concerned about compliance. I don’t see social media as any different to chatting to someone at a party. Be careful what you say and how you say it and you’ll be fine. Keep the information generic and there’s no worries.”

Nick Cann, CEO IFP

Nick Cann, chief executive of the Institute of Financial Planning, emailed me as he was drafting his 100^th blog,  to say he saw social media as a way of reaching new audiences who like its informal tone.

“In my role it’s important to engage with as wide an audience as possible at a number of levels. Having both a formal and an informal presence allows for extending out my personality to a portion of the market which would perhaps be a little more difficult to reach.”

Philippa Gee, a fee-based IFA from  Church Stretton, Shropshire, was the most succinct of all the advisors I spoke to when she told me about

Philippa Gee

the benefits she’d seen from engaging with her 561 followers on Twitter.

“Huge benefits,” she enthused. “New clients, new business relationships and it keeps life interesting.”

Short but sweet – and why not? Because it really is that simple.

There are many other IFAs doing great things in the social space – if you think anyone else deserves a mention, let me know in the comments below. In the meantime, why not follow the pick of the bunch below in my newly-composed ‘Power 40′ list of IFA tweeters:

Michael Taggart blogs about social media and online marketing at his personal blog here. Follow him on Twitter here.

[UPDATE: It turns out there are many IFAs I've left off this list who deserve to be on there (and several on it who shouldn't - so I have narrowed the list to 30). With this in mind I propose we use this list as a conversation starter and I'll blog again about some of the other IFA tweeters and compose a new list? In the meantime Ian Highton has an up-to-date Twitter list that you might want to look at here - thanks Ian!]

The issue I was asked to address was ‘How to build an IFA brand’. These visuals are my way of addressing the issue.

Given the changing nature of the communications landscape – which we’ve already covered in our recent post here – it struck me that businesses of any size are now in a much stronger position to build sustainable brands. The visuals suggests what to concentrate on to build a brand – any brand – in such a dynamic consumer environment.