I was part of a panel at the Investment Institute Association of Canada’s (IIAC) Social Media Conference. We had a great panel discussion on having compliant social media in the financial service sector. It was a packed audience and I think they enjoyed the different perspectives presented by the panelists.
Investment Executive Magazine had a great write-up of the panel discussion. My favourite excerpt:
Reputation is everything and who you are is your business,” said Modi. “You should always assume that your personal persona is tied to your professional persona. Don’t post anything on a private feed that you wouldn’t want to email out to your clients.”
Clare O’Hara said quoted it better than I thought it sounded live. It’s true. One of the things I’m quite aware of in my digital postings is ensuring that no matter what I write professionally or personally, I assume that it’s all tied back to me professionally. As I quote around the office, “Never write anything online that you don’t want posted on the front page of the newspaper that your boss, your spouse, your friends and your parents read!”
I was asked to appear on BNN’s “The Close” again. On May 3, 2013, I was on the show with Stan Wong. We had a great conversation with host Michael Hainsworth on how financial professionals can use social media, specifically LinkedIn, to help prospect for new clients and grow their reputation as thought leaders. This was my second appearance on the show and I was far less nervous than the first time. Still, live TV is nerve-wracking. But I’m getting more and more used to it. Click on the images below to watch the clip (it’s only 5 minutes).
Silu Modi and Stan Wong on BNN – May 3, 2013
Silu Modi on “The Close” on BNN – May 3, 2013
I was asked to present at the Hearsay Social Innovation Summit in early May 2013. It was a last-minute thing and I hadn’t had a chance to meet the other panelists ahead of time. We had about 15 minutes during a coffee break to have a quick chat about the panel topic and I was a little nervous going in with almost no preparation. However, the panel went very well. It’s great to be with 3 other people that know the topic so well. We had some areas of agreement and some areas of debate. All of which makes the panel far more interesting for the audience.
Silu Modi presenting at the Hearsay Innovation Summit at the Royal York in Toronto.
We had a great discussion about several topics (highlighted in the Hearsay blog post). My favourite part was:
Sulemaan made a comparison between social technologies emerging today and the way some companies approached email in prior decades. Speaking to a CEO about compliance trying to block a social media pilot, he told them, “You sat on the other side of this table and told me we didn’t need email. We did, and we’re moving forward with social.” Later, Sulemaan added, “People don’t connect with brands. They connect with people. Unleash them.”
I just returned from the Net.Finance conference in Phoenix. If you’ve never been, and if you’re in digital field in financial service, this is THE conference to attend! I met colleagues from across North America. As is usual with conferences like these, I took lots of notes from the many sessions I attended… but the true value of the conference came from the meals and cocktails outside of the sessions. It was at these where I was able to talk to peers and find out what they were *really* doing. The insights and advice from those ad-hoc chats were almost more valuable than the information gleaned from the official sessions.
I was there to present on a panel titled “Deploying social across your organization” with Martha Hayward from Fidelity I think the panel went exceptionally well… the feedback I received was very positive. Though I couldn’t get much feedback as I was hurdling over the chairs on my way out the back door. I had two hours from the end of my session to my flight back to Toronto. With TSA security at the US airports, that didn’t leave any time to bask in the glow.
