LinkedIn Disclaimers & Social Media Archiving
In working with a lot of professional service firms to train them on LinkedIn, we have found that each have unique professional standards they must meet. During a recent presentation we gave on LinkedIn, we received an overwhelming request for more information on sample disclaimers and tools that can help wealth management firms and financial planners comply with their professional standards.
Legal Disclaimers on Social Media
When participating in Social Media, many professionals are often required or prefer to provide a disclaimer about their advice. An easy way to do this on LinkedIn is to create a landing page on your website with the disclaimer and then add the disclaimer on your profile as a separate company link. Balasa Dinverno Foltz, a wealth management firm, does this well. A sample can be found at: http://www.bdfllc.com/disclosure/ .
When participating in groups or providing responses in the “Answer” section of LinkedIn, you can also reference the URL to your landing page their.
Social Media Archiving for Wealth Managers & Financial Planners
If you are a registered representative, you are required to comply with standards set out by FINRA with regards to participation in social media forums. This includes
- Blog posts
- Comments
- Instant messaging
- Webinars
Those standards require the registered representative/company to archive or record content. As a result of these standards, many resources have popped up to help registered representatives and companies comply with these standards. Most of the tools are referred to as social media archiving tools.
Investment News recently published a great article The financial adviser’s quick guide to social media archiving. It includes specific recommendations on social media archiving software. There are lots of tools out there. While most work very similarly, if you ever need to retrieve your content for an audit- customer service and their search features would be two key things to consider in your evaluations.
For a full guide on compliance requirements, check out the Compliance Guide created by Financial Social Media.