Judging by his Facebook page, it would seem that Jeffrey E. Blum experienced a surge of patriotic inspiration around July 4. Mr. Blum, a financial adviser, posted no fewer than 12 updates with good wishes and trivia about the holiday.
But the messages — “The 4th of July wasn’t declared a national holiday until 1941,” for example — were not written by him. Mr. Blum, 53, who is based in Westlake Village, Calif., was testing a social media program that his firm, Raymond James Financial, views as a potential source of new business.
Raymond James plans to announce on Thursday that it will use software from Hearsay Social, a start-up company based in San Francisco, to help its thousands of financial advisers use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The effort is among the more extensive efforts by a financial firm to mine the benefits of social media.
The Hearsay software will be available to Raymond James’s more than 5,400 financial advisers in the United States. It will let them post from a library of prewritten material, as well as compose their own messages, which will be vetted before publication. The program also includes a feature to let advisers “listen” to activity on their social networks.
This is the second major foray into social media for Raymond James, which initiated a similar program in 2011. That effort covered about 2,000 financial advisers and used software from Actiance, a Hearsay rival based in Belmont, Calif., which continues to have a relationship with Raymond James.
“The way advisers communicate with their clients has really transformed,” said Mike White, the chief marketing officer of Raymond James, which is based in St. Petersburg, Fla. “While the core of their business is not dependent on social media, their clients are increasingly expecting everyone they do business with to communicate that way.”
For financial firms, the promises, and perils, of social media have presented challenges. Regulations require firms like Raymond James to monitor and archive their employees’ postings, making a spontaneous social media experience all but out of the question. Some firms have banned certain platforms like Facebook altogether in the workplace.
Hearsay and its rivals have found a niche in helping highly regulated corporations navigate this fast-paced world. Financial advisers with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, for instance, use software from Socialware, a start-up based in Austin, Tex., to post preapproved messages to Twitter and find prospects on LinkedIn.
Such regulated postings — with their tendency to appear stiff and impersonal — have drawn mockery online. Even in the new Raymond James program, the corporate scaffolding was easily identifiable when a second financial adviser, David W. Adams, who is based in Nashville, posted some of the same holiday messages as Mr. Blum.
Joshua M. Brown, a financial adviser with Fusion Analytics who is active on Twitter and on his blog, said social media policies using preapproved messages were not worth the trouble.
“The firms that get it are the firms that allow their brokers to be human,” Mr. Brown said.
Still, Raymond James and Hearsay say their system is relatively flexible and easy to use. Financial advisers using the software can post from their mobile devices and personal computers, in addition to their computers at work.
Clara Shih, the chief executive of Hearsay, says her software has advantages that rivals’ lack.
“The canned responses from corporate miss the mark on social media,” Ms. Shih said. “This is really the first time that a major broker-dealer is coming out and saying compliance is not enough.”
Financial advisers say social media helps, but only up to a point. Mr. Blum of Raymond James, who manages about $70 million, said LinkedIn and Facebook could deepen client relationships and help him stay visible.
Having a library of ready content, he said, is useful, whether it’s about the Fourth of July or retirement planning.
“I don’t necessarily see it as a way to actually bring me direct business,” Mr. Blum said. “I see it as a way to broaden my reach.”