Of those advisors who take advantage of social media platforms, the overwhelming majority prefer Facebook for personal use and LinkedIn for business use, with response rates of two-thirds and over 90%, respectively. However, with response rates ranging from 27% to 44%, we note that advisors across all three channels leverage Facebook for business use, indicating that the use of social media in the business environment is increasingly expanding to other platforms. On average, Google+ and YouTube are more likely to be used for personal than business while usage of Twitter is evenly split between the two use cases. However, we also observe that the RIA advisors, relative to the other channels, are much more willing to use these platforms for business purposes. Blogs also register meaningful use by the RIA community, but less so by the W/R and IBD channels. The diverse group of social media platforms gives advisors multiple avenues to leverage for different kinds of client interaction and an ability to make available to clients varying types of information and media.
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