Platform Boosts Engagement and Social Ease

The enhancements are designed to increase productivity, making it easier to engage and share content, Sarah Carter, general manager of social business and compliance at Actiance, told PLANADVISER.  Sales, return on investment and customer engagement are three areas the firm said can be leveraged through social media and the use of its platform.

The platform now lets a user aggregate Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in order to see a single feed of all updates and Tweets. The newsfeed can be filtered by network or individual.

Integrated RSS feeds allow users to subscribe to a blog or newsfeed, so that content is brought to the reader’s home screen without having to leave the application. The feature also enables the user to share news with social network contacts.

Socialite users can delegate access, a feature Carter said is purely designed for those in financial services, who may not necessarily be completely up to speed in social media use or who are extremely busy. Users can share content and delegate access to allow others to share content on their behalf.

The platform’s content library has been built out. “We’ve increased the analytics available against content,” Carter said. “I can export personal results or the results of a team to a file to interrogate, see what content works.” Metrics can detail which contacts are engaged, time-of-day analysis or the users within a network, among others. “You can see who the poster children are,” Carter said, explaining that these very engaged and committed users may be able to help others in the organization.

Compliance also ties into the content library, which containers trigger terms and red flags. If users try to post content that would be out of compliance, alerts are sent out and the content cannot be posted until it is approved.

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“The content library allows people to share pre-approved content designed specifically for use in social media,” Carter said. “If people are new to social, providing them with a preapproved library saves time. It’s a unique skill, social media. Standard marketing doesn’t necessary mean you’ll be great at social media marketing.”

Staying in Compliance 

The enhancements address not only requirements the firm’s customers alert them to, but changes in the industry, such as recent SEC guidance. (See “Tweet Away (Just Be Sure You Alert Investors).”)

“Financial advisers and other users in regulated industries have a unique set of requirements when using social media for business, said Ajesh Shah, senior product manager at Actiance.

And use of social media by people in financial services is on the rise. Carter said the firm has seen significantly increased demand from financial advisers. “We are delivering to an industry that is starting to use social media effectively,” she noted, adding that there has been a sea change, as the use of social media by people in financial services has taken a dramatic uptick in the last two years. “In listening to our user base and mapping industry trends, we’ve increased the competitive edge our customers require to unleash social business.”

Other productivity features are:

• Content Subscriptions through RSS feed readers allow users to utilize content from multiple sources and share centrally to multiple social properties, without leaving the platform;
• Newsfeed filtering lets users find news items or individuals that matter to them, and focus on important contacts and events; and
• Content Effectiveness Measurement enables users and administrators to effectively review the mix of content that delivers the best results, along with the most effective time of day for content delivery.

Socialite is also available as a native Apple operating system application. The Socialite Engage mobile app is available as a free download from the App Store and requires a Socialite account provided to users by their organization. 

More about Socialite and the Socialite Engage mobile app is available on Actiance’s website.