With social media going viral across the globe, it's no surprise that financial services companies are starting to venture into the social networks as part of their day-to-day business functions. The tough part is using these systems in a way that won't violate regulations that govern financial institutions.

Since 2010, growth within social networking sites has been astronomical, said Chad Bockius, CEO of Socialware, a company that offers social business management solutions to the financial services industry. There were only 600 million users on Facebook in 2010, but that number rose to 800 million in 2011. Twitter had 190 million users in 2010 and 200 million in 2011. LinkedIn had 90 million users in 2010 and 150 million in 2011.

"One thing is very clear with Facebook and other social networks, you have to go where the customers are and customers are on social networks today," he said.