• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 21, 2014

While adoption rates have lagged so far, social media will be an important tool for investor relations in the near future,. Overall, 56% of institutional investors surveyed said that social media was “not yet significant but growing in importance” as a professional tool.
 
Those findings, per a global survey of institutional investors by National Public Relations and the AMO network of financial communications agencies, also noted a smaller proportion (37%) said that they welcomed social media, including investment forums and blogs, as a new way for disseminating news and information. In addition,  33% said they consider social sites useful as a “heads up,” especially during fast-moving events, like takeover bids or proxy fights.
 
No surprise, investment pros were most likely to visit investment forums, with 39% saying they visit these frequently or very frequently. Next up was LinkedIn, at 34%, followed by investment and financial services blogs at 32%. Some 22% said they consult Twitter frequently or very frequently for professional purposes; just 10% said they use Facebook this way.
 
It’s worth noting that social media lags behind other sources of information in terms of its perceived trustworthiness: 76% of investors said they considered newswires their main source of information, and 87% said newswires are always or usually reliable, versus just 17% for social media sites.

On the other hand, just 17% of investors dismissed social media as irrelevant to their work.
 
Back in March 2013, I wrote about the results of a survey by Accenture showing that 50% of financial advisors use social media to communicate with clients on a daily basis. The Accenture survey also found that 74% of financial advisors believe social media is helping them build their asset portfolio, while half have used social media to gain new clients. Further, 49% said they think firms that fail to use social media will lose clients as a result.