Hootsuite Media Inc. has taken its consumer-friendly social media management tool and fine-tuned it for financial advisors with the recent launch of Hootsuite Advisor.
The Vancouver-based company has 14 million users worldwide and is well known among individuals and companies, which use Hootsuite to manage various social networks and track the success of their posts.
Hootsuite is now bringing those tools, as well as compliance features built specifically for the financial services space, to firms that employ advisors, with a focus on the management of five social networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.
Hootsuite Advisor was developed partly to respond to a specific challenge that surrounds advisors’ use of social media, says Amy McIlwain, global industry principal of financial services at Hootsuite.
“Advisors were often given tools that were too complex and, therefore, the social media curve and adoption curve were low,” she says.
A key feature of Hootsuite Advisor is the presence of three user levels that allow an advisor to choose his or her degree of social media knowledge and use the features designed specifically for that level.
For example, an advisor who considers him- or herself a “beginner” in social media could use Hootsuite’s mobile app to access a library of pre-approved content from that advisor’s firm and share that material. This would all happen within two clicks, McIlwain says.
As the advisor graduates into the “movable middle” and “expert” levels, he or she can use more advanced features such as automated scheduling and the Hootsuite dashboard, which displays various streams of social media activity.
Hootsuite has also designed an element of flexibility into its compliance tool. Although regulators produce guidelines about social media use for advisors, firms can sometimes interpret those rules differently. Some firms may prefer their advisors’ posts be reviewed prior to publishing while others may wish to archive those posts and review them after the fact. Hootsuite Advisor has been designed to adapt to those types of compliance specifications, says McIlwain.
In addition, financial services firms that choose to adopt Hootsuite Advisor will soon have access to an educational program that will communicate the best practices of social media marketing to advisors. The program is approaching the end of its development, but when it’s available, it will be accessible through online courses, webinars and in-person presentations by Hootsuite representatives.
“[Within the educational program,] we have used a lot of examples,” says McIlwain, “about things that [advisors] might already be doing and how they can use social media as a shortcut to better enhance that.”
An advisor’s understanding of how to use social media effectively — as well as its potential contributions to the business — is critical in order to increase use among these professionals, McIlwain adds.
“It’s no longer a question of, ‘Do I need to do it?’ but a question of, ‘Do I have the right tools and am I able to do it and how am I tracking the results?’,” she explains. “We’re going to see advisors getting on board with social media as they see results that are tangible and driving direct revenue to their business.”
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