One of the most effective forms of marketing for professional services providers is to use video for education and engagement. In certain industries, however, creating videos can seem like a difficult endeavor, due to confidentiality and compliance standards.

For example, in the financial services industry, you have to be careful about the information you share. As a financial advisor, this could make you hesitant about creating video content for your website. You want to remain compliant, after all.

Fortunately, you should have no trouble remaining compliant when it comes to creating video or using your website or social media to share that video.

As long as you keep focused on the right content, and use the proper professional video services, you’ll not only remain compliant, but you will also be able to create video content that can greatly benefit your financial advisor practice. The following are some of the things that you should keep in mind when planning video content to ensure that you remain compliant.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority

For a time, financial advisors would struggle to obtain approval for something as simple as a single blog post while other businesses in other industries could post practically anything they wanted. This led many financial advisors to avoid using social media altogether.

This was due to the stringent reporting regulations of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Fortunately, FINRA has relaxed its regulations somewhat since then.

You’ll no longer have to submit every single piece of content to the people in your firm in charge of ensuring compliance to have the content approved. You do however need to have a supervisory system in place in order to publish financial content, but that’s not nearly as difficult as it might seem.

Understanding Static vs. Non-Static Content

It’s important to understand what the difference between static and non-static content is. This is because static content will most likely need to be approved by your compliance department before it can be published.

Basically, static content is content that is considered a singular event that doesn’t change. For example, an introduction video about your company that’s posted on your “about us” page.

Non-static content is content that involves some kind of real-time interaction, such as videos posted on social media or on your blog that have comment feeds, likes or shares. Non-static content doesn’t have to be approved to be posted.

Ensuring Compliance

Because static content must be approved by a compliance department before being posted, you typically don’t have to worry about non-compliance. However, it’s a bit different with non-static content.

Because you don’t have to put it through the approval process (if you did, much of your content would become dated by the time you got a chance to post it), there’s more of a risk that the subject matter of the content isn’t compliant. To ensure that your non-static video content remains compliant, follow these tips:

• If you produce video company announcements, understand that even though you’re allowed to post them on social media, you have to inform your investors of the types of social media you’ll be using to release those announcements on.

• Add a disclaimer to your video content that informs viewers that your videos do not provide personal financial advice, like tax, legal or investment advice, or make recommendations regarding specific investments or financial products.

• In the pre-production stages of video content development, submit your scripts to your compliance department to ensure that they are actually compliant.

• Check with your compliance department to identify what is and what isn’t allowed so that time isn’t wasted.

• Don’t do anything in the process of creating or posting video content that you wouldn’t do offline. For example, the things you know you can’t say at an educational seminar for your clients should also not be said in your video content.

Creating Video Content

Now that you know how you can remain compliant when creating video content, you’re probably curious as to how video services can help to create video content that will benefit you as a financial advisor. The following are some of the different types of financial advisor videos that professional video services can help you create.

Company profile video

This would be an example of static content. This type of video would explain what type of services you provide.

Many financial management companies will use leadership within the company to explain the services so that viewers feel more connected to the company. The use of your financial team hard at work can be used to compliment the person speaking.

Tool explanations

This could arguably function as either static or non-static content depending on how you use it. These are videos that show members of your firm explaining a financial tool that they use to benefit their clients, such as a software. If you post them on your blog, they’re non-static, but if you post them on something like an “our services” page, it becomes static.

Financial tips

Non-static video content that can be posted to social media and to your blog include basic tips and guides to financial management. For example, videos such as summer saving tips or energy costs saving tips.

Obviously, these have to be very basic financial tips – personal investment, tax or legal financial tips will get you in trouble in terms of compliance. Just make sure that you understand what the regulations are before you begin creating video content and don’t do anything that you wouldn’t do offline.

Overall, video production services can greatly benefit the financial services industry when used the proper way. If you’re worried about leveraging the power of video while still remaining compliant with your industry or company’s guidelines, these tips can help you join the world of video marketers.

Video services can help enhance your brand image, marketing and sales greatly, plus can help deliver the benefits of a content-rich website or social media pages.