Hearsay Social adds content providers

Hearsay Social Inc. announced Wednesday that it has entered into four new content partnerships for its social media platform for broker-dealers. The partnerships with Broadridge Financial Solutions, Life Happens, NewsCred and Trapit Inc. broadens Hearsay's preapproved content library and gives broker-dealers' advisers access to content through Hearsay's compliant social-business platform, according to Gary Liu, Hearsay's vice president of marketing. “The partnerships are in the space that's applicable to advisers and their consumer clients. If you're a professional on social media, you don't want to just share stuff that's a commercial for your firm. You want content that's applicable to your consumers,” Mr. Liu said. He added that Hearsay Social's content exchange works by allowing advisers engage with their professional and personal networks and letting advisers create, curate and manage social content on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Tim Welsh, president of wealth management consulting firm Nexus Strategy, said Hearsay's announcement is significant because it reflects a trend toward better, more authentic content that advisers can share on social media while remaining compliant. “Preapproved content would traditionally emanate from the corporate marketing department, and due to compliance requirements it would be a watered-down personal finance article about a topic like Roth IRAs or how 529 plans can help with college savings. You would give this content to 1,500 advisers, and they all would have the same thing,” Mr. Welsh said. “The key is content that's compliance-approved,” he said. “Previously, Hearsay only had the compliance piece, but now they have the content piece. The good news is that advisers now have tools; innovation is letting them come into 2014 on social media platforms.” He noted that the trend also is picking up in the registered investment adviser space, pointing to RIA United Capital, which announced earlier in May that it had signed a deal with social content startup Vestorly. Broadridge is a large provider of financial education and institutional content that is approved by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. Its content includes newsletters, articles, timely alerts, videos and market reviews. Life Happens, a nonprofit organization in the life insurance space, posts educational content on the major social media channels, including LinkedIn and Twitter. NewsCred is a cloud-based content marketing platform that commissions and licenses news content, while Trapit offers a library of more than 100,000 sources, including blogs, professional journals and news services. According to a recent Forrester Research Inc. study of companies that track and archive online communications, Hearsay Social and Actiance topped the list of providers in the growing market for social risk and compliance technology platforms.