Twitter management tool Hootsuite has co-produced a guide to help finance firms avoid running into trouble with the FCA over their staff’s social media use.

The company has teamed up with Smarsh, a social media firm specialising primarily in the financial services sector.

A white paper outlines how companies can compliantly manage social media to meet the requirements introduced by the FCA 2015.

The guide, called key components of a successful and compliant social media strategy, details how businesses can manage their brand, engage customers and maintain compliance.

Smarsh offers practical advice on how financial firms can develop a social media strategy, establish proper policies and procedures to educate employees and includes tips on measuring and monitoring social media activity.

Anna Carless, director of marketing EMEA said: “Today’s adviser businesses rely increasingly on social media to help them achieve their business development goals and compliance now- more than ever- needs to be at the forefront of all this activity.

“Advisers need to understand how they can best use the technology available to grow their business and effectively supervise and retain social media records, without adding to workloads.

“So its vital businesses implement a centralised approach to any social media activity to ensure it can be effectively managed, monitored and controlled.”

The guide, available to download, helps financial firms learn:

· what to look for in solutions that will mitigate risk and simplify archiving and compliance

· the benefits of training and educating employees as social media brand ambassadors

· how to use metrics and analytics to promote business growth and customer engagement

Ms Carless said: “Now more than ever, its important advisers understand how to archive social media which is vastly different from email archiving. Social media posts include more than static words.

“They are constantly updated, changed, or deleted and can include pictures, links and more. An educated workforce that contains well-trained social media ambassadors is a starting point.

“But once strategies have been created and policies implemented to support social use, businesses must give just as much consideration to how they will enforce these.”