There’s no denying that blogging is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Having a blog allows you to share specific knowledge with your stakeholders that you may not dive into on your website. Not only is a blog a great source of knowledge, but it can also do wonders for your lead generation. The more content your put on your blog, the more you have to share on social media channels to drive more traffic to your advisor site!
With our blogging capabilities, many financial advisors are hopping on the blogging train, but there are still a lot of questions. Here are answers to some of the questions we get most often from financial advisors wanting to start their own blog. Let’s conquer this together.
How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?
At Twenty Over Ten, we try to make sure each of our blog posts is at least a ten-minute read. It’s a balancing act – you want to give your readers enough information for the blog to be useful, but you don’t want it to be unreasonably long since you don’t want your readers to lose interest. HubSpot recommends that a blog post should be a seven-minute read or average around 2100 words. You don’t have to stick to these numbers precisely, but try to keep the length within a range of two to three minutes of the recommended time.
It’s important to recognize that some readers might view your blog on a tablet or smartphone and can only dedicate a limited amount of time to reading. Not only should you keep your posts shorter in length, but we also recommend breaking up long text blocks with headers, bullet points, images and graphics. This will allow for bite-sized viewing and make it easier for your readers to digest information. Not to mention the amazing SEO benefits that header tags and alt tags on images can provide!
As you can see in the above blog, “Creating Killer Blog Content Ideas for Your Financial Planning Blog,” it is a 13-minute read and broken out into sections, making it much more digestible for your readers.
What Should I Write About?
Your blog gives you the opportunity to dive deeper into subjects you may not cover as extensively within your website’s content. As a financial advisor, your blog should serve as a means for you to tap deeper into the niches you serve and humanize your brand by giving readers a behind-the-scenes look into your company. For example, if your niche is women, you should be writing about financial planning advice specifically for women.
Be sure to take full advantage of SEO keywords within your content and carefully select phrases you want to use for inbound links to other blogs and pages on your website. The wording you choose can affect your search term ranking and can ultimately drive more traffic to your website.
An example of writing for a niche can be seen in the above from Twenty Over Ten client, Ascension College Planning, as they specialize in helping students and families better afford college and offer advice on college loan repayment strategies.
How Often Should I Blog?
We recommend blogging as much as you can and with Twenty Over Ten’s unlimited blogging feature, you can do just that! A good rule of thumb for financial advisors is to blog 11+ times per month. We know that may sound like a lot but according to Hubspot, blogging as often as possible will increase the likelihood of your blog being found in search engines, shared on social media and linked to by other websites. Ultimately, this exposure will help build your credibility and it may lead new clients to your website.
We know that keeping up with content across all platforms of social media plus your blog can get tricky. We recommend creating an editorial calendar to keep track of exactly what you need to post and when you need to do it. Download our free editorial calendar from this article!
How Do I Get Current and Potential Clients to Read My Blog?
You’ve put in all the hard work of writing an amazing blog, so of course you want it to reach as many people as possible! We wrote an entire article on “5 Things to Do Before you Hit Publish on Another Blog” that can increase the number of readers you get! But here are some additional tips:
Have a Compelling Title
Since your title is the first thing readers see it should be concise and intriguing. Using a statistic in a blog’s title is a popular way to build interest and demonstrate expertise. For example, instead of saying “how to boost income” instead try “how to boost monthly income by 98%” to draw in more viewers. Make sure the title gives an overview of the blog’s content and would entice a client to read! Some other ways to create a stronger title that gets more clicks is to:
- Use language that makes your readers want to take some type of action
- Include numbers in your title
- Tailor the title to your audience
- Ask a question
- Keep it short and to the point
- Use strong keywords
- Include statistics
Twenty Over Ten client, Generations Wealth has used the blog, “Presidential Elections & The Market: Is There a Correlation?” There is a lot of drama surrounding the 2020 presidential election, so including this timely topic plus asking a question is a great way to intrigue your audience to continue reading and find out more about the blog.
Social Media Sharing
Every time you write a new blog post, get in the habit of sharing the content on your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter channels. For additional visibility, sharing your blog content on your personal social channels isn’t a bad idea either. Try adding graphics with your social media posts to grab the reader’s attention! Here at Twenty Over Ten, we use Canva to promote our blog posts every day. Check out this article on promoting your blog content on social media for additional tips.
When you share your content on social, you are opening up opportunities to connect with an entirely different audience that might not see your content otherwise. It also allows the opportunity for them to share your content, therefore getting even more eyes on your content and potentially driving new prospects to your website.
Twenty Over Ten client, Provence Wealth Management Group does a great job of sharing useful blog content on their Facebook page that will inform their readers and drive them back to their blog section, making it a win-win situation for all!
Use SEO
We’ve already mentioned the importance of including SEO keywords in your blog posts, but we wanted to stress SEO’s importance in steering potential clients to your posts. Google and other search engines reward long-form content that is informational, relevant, timely, and otherwise helps searchers find the information they’re looking for. The first and most important step to converting potential clients is simply showing up in their online search results, and that possibility can be increased through SEO!
How Do I Know If My Clients Enjoy My Blog?
Even if you’ve used all of the tips above, there is no way to know if your efforts are truly working unless you perform an audit. Checking the success of your blog and website is essential to mastering content creation. We recommend using Google Analytics to check up on what’s working and what’s not. If you’ve never used analytics, don’t worry! We’ve got plenty of resources for you here. Start with the basics of Google Analytics here!
Utilizing Content Assist and Lead Pilot
Content Assist
Content Assist gives our clients the direction and tools necessary to effectively run and manage the content marketing for their financial firm in one place. Since blogging and content marketing have recently gained so much importance, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for advisors to publish unique blog posts that are tailored for their firm’s voice that also speak to their unique niche. If you’re stumped with your advisor blog, we’ve got you covered. This is a service that is offered only to Twenty Over Ten clients, but it’s included in all of our packages for no additional fee!
Lead Pilot
Lead Pilot is the industry’s first-ever AI-powered all-in-one solution for content creation and distribution. By using this tool, advisors are able to launch robust content campaigns from a streamlined, easy-to-use dashboard. Team members can collaborate and share content pieces, upload original content, and customize content from the media library. It not only includes blogs but also video and infographic content. Once it is added, the content can be easily scheduled to be sent out via email or social media with branded landing pages.
Final Thoughts
A strong content creation and blogging strategy is crucial to boosting your online presence and overall marketing strategy. As we are spending more time away from the office and people are still social distancing, it’s more important than ever to boost your SEO rankings and solidify your firm’s inbound marketing strategy. If you have any more questions that you would like answered please let us know, we are here to help you boost your blogging efforts. Shoots us an email at marketing@twentyoverten.com.
Struggling With What Content to Share on Social Media or via Email?
We are offering access to our content for advisors to use via Lead Pilot for 7-days completely free (even on our month to month plans).
About the author
Blair Kelly
Blair is a digital marketing assistant at Twenty Over Ten and has a passion for uncovering what drives online traffic and the highest engagement. She follows more animals on Instagram than humans and her greatest achievement is her daughter, Grey.
