Social networking not delivering the goods

The advent of social media has revolutionized most industries and changed the way participants market their businesses and build relationships with clients.

However, financial services industry has been slow to adopt social media and has so far been unable and unwilling to leverage the medium to its fullest potential.

It is little wonder then this Aite Group study found that social media is not producing the much-touted benefits for financial advisors.

“The absence of benefits provided by social media may be muting advisors’ views of the potential impact of social media on business objectives,” said Ron Shevlin, a senior analyst at Aite Group, and a co-author on the report.

Compliance, wariness about the medium and the lack of awareness as to how to effectively use various social media tools to take advantage of technology continue to remain the biggest barriers to acceptance.

However, social media is far from a lost cause for the financial advisor community. This new study from the same agency shows an increasing number of financial advisors are making the transition to using social media professionally. They are also the lot that is enjoying “higher revenue growth”, “wider increases in their book of business” and “greater expansion of their client bases” than those who are still sitting on the wrong side of the social media divide.