The social media marketing adoption rate among financial advisors has grown tremendously over the course of the last few years.  In fact, according to the recently released Advent Software; “Social Media Study” released in March, 2013 nearly all advisors are utilizing some type of social media in their professional and or personal lives.  Of note, LinkedIn is the social networking site of choice with over 80% of the advisors surveyed indicating that they were using LinkedIn for their business and personal needs.  

Most financial advisors have become comfortable enough with social networking to at least have a LinkedIn profile.  That is a great start.  However, most have not yet tapped the marketing potential offered by this important social networking site.  Having a LinkedIn profile should be considered a “cost-of-entry” in the context of social media marketing.  However, if this is the extent of an advisor’s efforts (and it frequently is), the advisor shouldn’t expect much in the way of practice development benefits.

The “Three R’s” as they were called by Sir William Curtis when he coined the term in 1795 referred to “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic.”  While these are important base skills for any individual, these are not the focus of this article.