Nick Hayes of Forrester has just published the December, 2015 report for Security and Risk Professionals. The title of the report is TechRadar^TM: Risk Management, Q4.

In this Forrester report, Nick identifies the thirteen most important technology and service categories for risk management at various stages of market maturity, business value, and user adoption.

Hayes raises several issues/opportunities/risks/practices to consider in this report and we recommend it to anyone in the C-suite or who is tasked with managing risk to the enterprise.

In every industry, good sales and marketing professionals seek external data to support marketing ideas and business decisions. That is doubly true in a regulated industry, like financial services, where a decision could cost the company high compliance fines. So when external data is available, such as meaningful survey results showing social media industry trends, it's a great idea to leverage the findings to update, change, or confirm your existing social media programs.

Recently, Putnam Investments and Socialware conducted social media use surveys among advisors in financial services firms. In this article, I present highlights of the Putnam survey and more detail on the Socialware study.

The biggest data point from the Putnam Investment study that demonstrates why you should ramp up your social media program for advisors is: 

• The share of advisors acquiring new clients through social media is up sharply to 79% (from 66% in 2014), with the average annual asset gain from these clients standing at $4.6 million.

The top findings in Socialware's Social Media Trends survey are:

• 48% of advisors are allowed to create their own social media posts, as well as share pre-approved content
• The top challenges center around social media risk management 
• 39% of firms still have no ROI metrics to assess social media program success 

We hope you find information in this article to help you navigate the chasm of corporate risk and build a bridge to social media success!

Over the last 6 months we've seen several large enterprises make commitments to incorporate social media into their governance, risk and compliance (GRC) practices. As a result, digital teams are coming to us with mandates and deadlines to inventory, review and remediate their enterprise's global web and social footprint. This appears to be a harbinger of a sea change in how the C-suite addresses the risks and rewards of social media – in other words, social media governance.

Taming Your Enterprise Social Media Presence

Your boss has just asked you to inventory all the social media accounts used across the enterprise. On the surface, enterprise social media account management may sound simple to your boss but you know it's nothing but.... That's because social media points-of-presence (POPs) can be created by anyone at any time without any form of control or oversight by you or your team.

When used properly, web and social media sites are powerful marketing tools which can bring customers to your door; however, they can also bring the regulators knocking. The FFIEC has finalized its guidance on the use of social media by financial institutions and the CFPB has started the door-knocking. Factor in the use of social media by mortgage loan originators (MLOs), which you are also required to monitor, and the compliance challenge is escalated. Now state regulators (for example WA, TX, CA and AZ) are getting more aggressive in overseeing the use of social media and are sending out "intent to audit" letters. Are you prepared to meet the challenge of an audit?

Every few years technology evolves and something wondrous emerges that affects businesses and consumers in a significant way. Often, the new technology replaces an existing technology, or even makes it obsolete. In some cases, it has a major impact on how an enterprise shifts its IT focus to better serve its customers and shareholders. We’ve come to know these impactful technologies as “disruptive.” The most significant “disruptive technology” of the past ten years has been social media; not just for the platforms themselves, but because it takes a significant shift in business culture and operational excellence to incorporate it effectively. In fact, it takes a transformation.

This morning I awoke to a private message from an old and distant friend. I don't hear from her very often so this caught my attention. Why was she reaching out to me?

It turns out she had just received a friend request from me via Facebook. I thought this was odd since we're already "friends". I mean, we were talking over Facebook at that very moment! Fortunately, she was skeptical enough to double check with me as this didn't seem right.

Every industry has adopted social media at different levels and each industry analysis shows a particular pattern of performance with social media. Regulated industries, such as the Mortgage Industry, have the additional burden of keeping their employees’ and agents’ points of presence (POPs) compliant as well as their own branded POPs. Today, we see every industry, regulated or not, jumping heavily into social media.

If you have been following my Social Media Governance series, you know that I have introduced new terms and laid out several processes to help you strengthen your Social Media Governance plan. The last post was all about conducting an effective audit and creating a solid inventory. In this post, Part 3 of the series, I will highlight how you maintain brand equity and reduce corporate risk as a social enterprise. It's all about monitoring what you know, looking for what you don't know, and implementing the governance needed at any given time.

Last week I began a series on Social Media Governance with the first post titled 3 Keys to Managing Your Social Footprint. In that post I stressed the distinction between social presence governance and social content governance. For a decade people have focused their governance concerns on what can and cannot be said within the content stream of social networks, placing guidelines in a corporate social media policy. This is social content governance.