Five Little Things for Your Monday: November 19, 2018

Happy Thanksgiving Week! 🦃 This time of the year always gets crazy with the beginning of holidays and wrapping up the end of the year. Holiday breaks, parties, and shopping are about to take over, but don’t slip into holiday mode just yet! Touch up on the latest news in content creation, social media, and digital marketing to finish out your hard work from this year.

1. What You Should Expect From Your Financial Advisor In the Digital Age via Forbes

In an age when asset management has become commoditized, you should be able to provide more value to your clients than just portfolio management. With more and more emphasis on technology, it’s become crucial that you simplify the digital elements of your clients’ lives. Here is what Forbes says you should be providing to your clients amongst digital disruption:

1. Fewer steps. Your tech tools that you have your clients use should aggregate everything from investment portfolios to checking and savings accounts, all under a single sign-on. Keep it simple!
2. Customization. Ideal experiences will change with the demographics of your clients. Advisors today must be willing to take the time to consider clients’ financial and lifestyle needs to ensure they get the service that best matches their individual circumstance.
3. Big picture. Have technology that crystallizes the big picture. As clients age, financial advice only gets more complicated. It’s crucial to have technology that can gather clients’ data from disparate sources and synthesize it in a way that makes sense.

2. To Succeed with Content Marketing, Get Out of the Financial Planning Business via Practice Management Blog

We always say that content is 👑. But, even knowing that, it’s hard to nail your content marketing strategy. Many advisors who start creating their own content quickly get frustrated when they don’t see instant results. This article dispels false perceptions and bad practices of content marketing.

Here’s the big problem: simply posting content for the sake of posting content is NOT content marketing. Content marketing is high-quality, unique content that communicates value with your intended audience. For your content marketing to work, make sure you:

• Post only high-quality content
• Communicate your value
• Provide a specific message to a specific group of people

3. Holiday Social Media: How to Show the Personal Side of Your Firm via SEI

Thanksgiving and Christmas are both sneaking up, which can make us all want to take a hiatus from everything business-related, including social media. It’s important to keep up with your social posting schedule even in the midst of the crazy holiday season, and there are ways to make it easier on yourself. Now’s a great time to be present on social as people are spending more and more time searching online for recipes, holiday deals, and just searching around when they have a break from work. Check out SEI’s tips to get ahead this holiday season 🎁.

• Don’t take a social vacation
• Take advantage of scheduling technology
• Don’t forget your camera when you go to holiday events
• Don’t forget to tag and mention people

4. Holiday Marketing Trends and Research [Infographic] via Social Media Today

Going along with the holiday theme, Social Media Today covered a survey by Promo to get insight on different marketing approaches that your financial advising business can employ in your holiday marketing strategy. Here are some key findings:

• 2018 marks a tipping point for video marketing – nearly 50% of respondents started using video just within the last year
• In total, 77% of all marketers in the survey are using video as part of their marketing strategy
• Facebook wins the day – with nearly 80% of respondents saying they plan to spend the majority of their holiday budget on Facebook ads

5. How to Make Your Content More Snackable for the Modern-Day Consumer via Cision

According to eMarketer, nearly 132 million American adults interact with unrelated content while they watch TV, while an additional 46 million consume related content. Consumers spend less than a minute on any given website, and mobile — where short is the name of the game — is responsible for 56 percent of internet traffic. This forces brands to fight harder and harder to get and keep the attention of potential clients. Following these four tips from Cision can help for make your own content more snackable for your audience:

1. Add multimedia in multiple formats
2. Deliver value to create repeat customers
3. Cater to various consumption habits
4. Diversify your distribution