Wealth Manager-Social networking sites widen prospect pool

* Facebook, Twitter offer access to young professionals

* Advisers need to stay alert about compliance issues

By John McCrank

TORONTO, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Do you tweet about Bay Street? If so, you're part of a growing number of people in the financial services industry who are taking to social networking sites to connect with clients and find new ones.

While some dismiss them as a waste of time, Internet sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have exploded in popularity, giving easy access to a potentially huge amount of new business.

"Social media is one of the most evolving parts of the Internet and if we don't evolve, then we're going to get left behind," said Terry Wright, an investment adviser at National Bank Financial in Vancouver.

Wright uses Twitter -- he "tweets" -- as well as other networking sites and a personal website to promote his services to a growing pool of prospective clients who are mostly young, professional and tech-savvy.

"Using it to get more exposure for my business is a pretty simple process that could reap some pretty significant rewards down the road," he said.

Wright said the financial services sector has been slower than some other industries to embrace the power of online networking.

One reason for that is that the industry is so heavily regulated.

"Advisers have to be careful about advertising or promoting a specific stock," said Rebecca Cowdery, a law partner at the firm Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto.

"If they're doing it through this new media, they have to be doubly careful that they're not breaching any securities laws," said Cowdery, who's worked in the investment management industry as a lawyer and a regulator for more than 20 years.

Wright, for example, said he's registered to give financial advice in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, but not in the rest of Canada. But the Internet knows no borders, making it easier to run afoul of the rules, something Wright said he's very aware of.

"You definitely have to be careful on the specifics of what it is you're talking about," he said.

That means you have to focus more on selling the service you're offering, rather than the products.

"I'm definitely a service guy," Wright said. "I don't call a client to sell a stock, or call a new client to sell a bond. I call a client to provide them with ongoing advice."

Kevin Press, assistant vice-president of Canadian marketing at Sun Life Financial Inc (SLF.TO) in Toronto, writes a blog for the company and can also be found on Twitter.

"When the economy began to downturn last year, we saw an opportunity to provide information and engage Canadians in a dialogue, and blogging for us was an ideal tool to use for that," he said.

Everything Press writes online goes through a quick, but thorough, internal company review process that includes both compliance and legal review.

"It's been greatly successful," he said. "We've engaged Canadians and provided good information on a regular, frequent basis ... for how they can make the right moves in what is obviously a challenging economic environment."

Along with increased traffic to the blog, Press said that readers are writing more responses to his posts than ever, allowing him to develop a dialogue with Sun Life's clients.

National Bank Financial's Wright said he's just hired an Internet marketing firm to help him get the most out of his Web presence, with the hope of better connecting with investors.

"There are a million brokers, financial planners, investment advisers, and we all do the same thing," he said. "So it's just a matter of who you trust the most and who you get along with the best and that's where the more ways you can expose yourself compared to your competitors, the better." (Reporting by John McCrank; editing by Peter Galloway)