I presented last week to the Young Adviser’s Team in Memphis, which is a part of NAIFA (National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors), about how to use Social Media for Business.

This is a common speaking topic for me, and I’ve started giving some consulting and coaching sessions on this to some local organizations who want to get their sales team up to speed.  This group was pretty unique and challenging in that regard because they are so closely regulated by compliance issues that they can hardly say anything at all about their business without getting into trouble.

This obviously presents a major issue if anyone in the financial world who would like to start communicating through some of the new social media channels available.  And when I say that it represents a problem, I mean a big one – to the level that some of them can’t even have a LinkedIn profile that is not approved.

That being said, we had some great discussions about unique ways to utilize LinkedIn, Twitter, and blogs that would involve more listening and conversational interaction.  Since social media marketing is basically a conversation that takes place online, my feeling is that these compliance organizations will have to get with the times before too long.  In the meantime, however, using tools to listen and engage may be more effective (and allowed) than trying to start a blog about financial planning.

Every industry faces challenges when it comes to how to best use social media, and the Internet in general, for marketing.  I was pleasantly surprised by the number of great ideas and discussions that this group brought up.

Take a look at the presentation I gave them: