Advisors ‘Struggling’ to Get Most Out of Social Media as Its Popularity Grows: Study

Advisors’ attitudes toward social media are changing for the better, but few are maximizing its business-growing potential.

Two-thirds of advisors today rank social media’s overall value to their business as “high” or “medium,” a 36% increase from 2010, according to American Century’s fifth annual Financial Professionals Social Media Adoption Study released Thursday.

However, while more financial professionals are seeing more value in social media, “many are still struggling with the best way to use it,” said Jamie Needham, digital marketing strategist for American Century, in a statement. “If leveraged correctly, social media has proven to produce tangible business results, yet only 7% of advisors surveyed chose business building and promotion as their top use of social media.”

The top three uses were reading expert commentary, researching people and monitoring industry and market news.

The study found that nearly 15% of advisors who use social media ranked it as having a “high” overall value to their businesses, roughly twice as many as in 2010 (8%).

In conducting its online survey of 309 financial professionals who are employed as financial advisors, brokers or RIAs, American Century used a 10-point scale, with “high” being a value of eight, nine or 10 and “medium” being four, five, six or seven out of 10. The study was conducted during the first quarter and assessed financial professionals’ attitudes toward LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The bottom three rankings (one, two or three out of 10), also dropped substantially during the five-year period: 40% in 2014 vs. 55% in 2010.