Actiance will help Raymond James to implement its "Socialite" platform, where advisors can connect with existing clients through social media networks including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“We have developed guidelines, training sessions and marketing and communications support to help advisors leverage social media in their client engagement and new prospecting activities,” said Mike White, managing director of Raymond James. 

Financial services firms have been hesitant to allow their employees to use social media to connect with prospective and current clients, over fears about monitoring and archiving the content, for example. However, as employees frequently use social media for personal purposes, companies with no social media policies run the risk that information pertaining to their business may end up on social media sites anyway. Consequently, an increasing number of firms are creating social media policies.

Earlier this year, the MHP Asset Management Social Media Survey found that 35 per cent of asset managers were active on Twitter, 29 per cent on YouTube, 11 per cent on Facebook and 96 per cent on LinkedIn.

“Asset managers have been slow to use social media,” said Martin Forrest, author of the report, which surveyed 100 asset managers. “However, their stakeholders, particularly their current and future employees and clients are already tweeting and on Facebook, reading news on iPads rather than hardcopy newspapers, consuming information in very different ways.”