According to research conducted by MarketingSherpa 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition, content creation is ranked as the most effective technique used for building traffic even ahead of search engine optimization (SEO) including SEO landing pages, keyword research, social media integration, link building, etc.
“70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than advertisements,” stated the white paper.
The following ideas will help you create interesting and engaging content:
- Client generated ideas
If there is one thing financial advisors can count on, it’s a constant stream of questions from their clients. Since it’s your job to answer those questions, why not use that as an opportunity to communicate your insights to all of your clients? Ultimately, you know that if there is one client with a question or concern, there are probably dozens more waiting to ask you the same question.
And, when blog posts are posed as a question from a client, they tend to attract more attention because people are looking for solutions to problems.
Equally important, they also generate more comments from readers which are an invaluable source of new content for your website.
If you can turn your blog into an active conversation between you and your clients you have succeeded at engaging them. Client-posed questions also make for more compelling titles for your blog post.
Action step:
Make a list of the top 30 questions you receive from clients and prospects regularly. Survey your staff as well.
Think about it this way – for every prospect or client that asks a question about you or your firm, there may be a dozen people who didn’t ask you directly and they’re still looking for an answer.
Now, there is quite a bit you can do once you’ve got a list of questions together. You can easily form 30 blogs posts (more than three months’ worth!). For each of the 30 questions you listed, write one thorough explanation and answer and post it on your blog.
For instance, if your client asks ‘is investing is like gambling?’ then this can be the topic of your article.
- Market-led ideas
If you specialize in a particular target market, like physicians or business owners, focus your content ideas on issues important to them.
Within specialized niches it is especially critical for you to establish yourself as an authority on the issues that concern your market. You’ve already done the research in these niches, now you need to demonstrate your expertise, and the more timely your insights the better.
Issues centering on taxation, regulations, market trends, and even business management are constantly at the forefront for these clients. When they see that you clearly understand their issues, your influence within your market will expand.
Action step:
If you follow any websites that are relevant to your market, sign up for their RSS feeds so you will be notified of any content updates or news. Better yet, ask your best clients what websites they follow and add their RSS feeds.
Use search aggregation tools such as Google Alerts to track market or industry specific news.
- Repurposed content
If you’ve chosen your topics well, your content is likely to have legs, which means that the topic will have as much value in subsequent posts as it did with the original post.
Revisiting a critical tax issue or a changing market trend is always worthwhile when it continues to impact your audience; the same with any discussion around investment strategies.
Breaking down any complex topic in different ways is always appreciated by your readers. Another approach to repurposing content is taking the same content and using in a new way. Reusing information in multiple ways is beneficial for both you and your prospects.
Once again, remember how important it is to position yourself as an industry expert by providing educational content to help your audience solve their problems.
Action step:
Repurposed content ideas are easy to devise. All you need to do is take an original title and add the word “Update” or “What We Learned from...” and then write about the topic from a different perspective or with updated information.
If you’ve got a lot of material saved over a period of time, try reusing it but in a different form.
For instance, if you’re written a dozen blog articles on retirement, consider putting the articles together and creating a brochure, guide or e-book all about retirement.
Another idea is to take content you’ve posted already (on your website, blog or elsewhere) and post it on other people’s website and/or blog. Try reusing your posts as ‘guest’ posts on other industry blogs.
7 ways to make your content rock!
Write compelling headlines
With so much content available on the web, people (especially busy people) have become extremely discerning in what they choose to read.
Be yourself
Publishing your own content is your best opportunity to let your personality shine through. Your content needs to be written in your voice as if you were engaging a client in a conversation. Prospects are interested in learning more about what it’s like to work with you and there’s no better way to give them a sneak peek.
Consider your audience
Cater to your web audience. Unlike printed material, readers don’t read entire paragraphs, or even sentences. Web readers tend to scan content looking for “the big picture” and other key ideas. How can you resolve this issue and make sure people are reading your content?
Link to older posts
By linking to older posts, you not only expand the amount of information available to your audience, you can breathe new life into them which helps build traffic to your site.
More than likely, you’ve picked up some new readers since an older post. By linking relevant posts to your newer content, viewers have an opportunity to read more about a given topic while your web traffic will continue to grow.
Add a call-to-action
The primary purpose of your content is to provide value and engage your audience, and the one way to gauge your success is the response to a call-to-action, such as “leave a comment”, or “download our special report” or simply, “contact me with your questions”.
Your overall goal is to build relationships, not to generate sales leads. But the more you can engage your audience; those relationships will blossom into additional business, referrals and a broader audience.
Leverage social media
Your social media sites can be a powerful traffic generator for your website especially when you use them to link to a new blog post.
Conversely, your blog and website are gateways to your social media sites. Linking between them will create a much more powerful digital platform for launching your content into the blogosphere and online community.
Monitor and measure your traffic
The key to writing compelling content is practice and experimentation. When you monitor and measure your blog activities you will learn which ideas resonate and which content captures the most attention.
TheDigitalFA
is a portal dedicated exclusively to the social media, technology and marketing
needs of Financial Advisors. Advisor Websites develops websites for financial
advisors.
Download the white paper here : https://advisorwebsites.com/forms/form-313
Note: Prepared verbatim based on the white paper “How to create content that rocks and converts”
