Compliance in social media communications was a hot topic at the FINRA 2011 Advertising Regulation Conference.

The two-day event, held at the trendy Renaissance Hotel in the heart of downtown Washington D.C, was bustling with 400 registered attendees including securities representatives, compliance officers, lawyers and marketing folks from brokerage firms and branch offices all over the United States. They were there to take in the informative seminars on FINRA’s advertising regulations.

The two days were jam packed with concurrent sessions covering advertising, compliance, sales practices, and my favorite, social media.

Key Takeaways

1. Advertising Regulation officer, Justice Zormelo, eloquently, and with a speckling of humor, touched on serious compliance issues in the Nuts & Bolts of Advertising Regulation seminar and identified the regulations that apply to social media. Some highlights:

• Understanding the regulations for social media is the key to gaining a clear and focused perspective on how to thrive in social media in financial services
• Social media conversations are considered a Public Appearance, or participation in a  public space. Therefore, all regulations around Public Appearance applies to social media engagement
• A social media post is considered advertising, so all the regulations around advertising will apply

2. In the Compliance Considerations for Social Media session, the panel was asked, “What is the biggest hurdle that Financial Services companies need to overcome to participate in social media?” The panelists agreed it was archiving the conversations on the social web.
Financial Services companies can easily extend and modify their company’s policy for advertising and public appearances to their social media policy, as a starting point.

Regulations shouldn’t hold your organization back. FINRA makes it simple to be compliantly social by identifying the regulations for social media and providing guidelines. We need to get out there, and engage with our Financial Services community, but as Zormelo so wisely phrased it, “Compliance is the cure to exposure.”

How does your financial services social media policy adhere to FINRA regulations as well as support your big picture marketing initiatives? Learn more about social media for financial services here.

Julie Meredith is a Community Engagement Specialist at Radian6. Her focus is social strategy as it relates to finance, but she also blogs about beer and films. You can follow her on Twitter at @julie_meredith.

Tags: compliance, engagement, Financial Services, FINRA, social media strategy