Hearsay Adds Instagram to Platform for Advisors

Hearsay Systems says that advisors using its platform for social media can now communicate with their investor clients and prospects on Instagram, the photo-sharing network that has about 105 million users in the U.S. — most of whom are under 35.  

The social-media tech firm says Instagram should help advisors work with younger generations and tap into the potential transfer of as much as $30 trillion in wealth over the next 10 years, according to Cerulli Associates. Just 20% of advisors currently target younger family members as clients, Corporate Insight says.

“Instagram is important to Gen X as their communication channel, so now is the time for … advisors to start working with them as clients are using it,” said Donna Prlich, Hearsay’s chief business officer, in an interview. “We have wanted to get ahead of that [wealth transfer] and … to support financial advisors in successfully using Instagram within the industry’s constraints.”  

Hearsay will review, track and store content for advisors on Instagram as it does already for content posted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

“It is … essentially like managing the other channels but with photos,” Prlich explained, with Hearsay in charge of the scanning, archiving and workflow processes for images.

As for how Hearsay’s 150-plus clients are likely to get advisors up to speed on using Instagram, the executive says the social-media tech firm will be sharing educational materials and “spending time upfront with them, so they can get started in the most successful ways.”

It suggests that broker-dealers and other organizations first work with a pilot group of registered reps, for instance. Plus, with Instagram’s emphasis on photos, financial firms and their advisors need to spend some time thinking about “the brand and the look and feel [they] want to create,” Prlich says.

As has been the case with other social-media networks, adoption of Instagram by clients working on Hearsay’s platform should be gradual — with some financial firms and advisors expected to start posting on the network over the next few months and broader use to follow, according to the executive.