Tag: strategy

Basic Content Creation Strategy for Financial Advisors in 2022 (updated)

Keep it simple but make sure its thorough! Content Strategy Answers the Question ‘Why’ You’re Publishing Content.

  1. Understand your firm and how it works. Clients and brand considerations. What do you specialize in? Retirement? Wealth Management? Trusts? Client demographics. The specialization (client persona demographics) will dictate the kind of content you should plan to generate.
  2. Collect data. Competitive analysis, Keywords, Customer (client) research.
  3. Audit your website. Google Analytics. Traffic data. Conversion and bounce rates, etc. SEO metrics.
  4. Prospect company’s key influencers and where your customers or potential live online. Do they live on Twitter? Facebook? Do you think they would gravitate to you via another platform such as YouTube if you made instructional financial videos? or maybe subscribing to a Podcast?
  5. Create useful, exceptional content (blog posts, landing pages, contact forms, eBooks, videos, infographics, case studies) according to steps 1-4. Rank them in importance and create content accordingly. Ensure that editorial standards are being followed. Make sure the content is compliant if you are a Financial Advisor. Pictures and videos should be high-resolution.
  6. Measure content performance. Google & Social Media Analytics. A/B testing, etc.

If you lack the resources for generating content, outsource to an agency or freelancer for help. Content strategy is the foundation on which successful content marketing is built. Content marketing is the journey towards success, content strategy is the blueprint that directs it.

Pinterest Strategies for Success

  1. Publish High Resolution photos of your product. The ideal image dimension is 736 pixels wide. Pinterest will display your image at it’s maximum size up to 736 pixels wide. As long as its 736 pixels wide, Pinterest will adjust the dimensions. Also, highlight customers using your product. Ask them to submit pictures. Acknowledge them and give them a discount coupon for this content.
  2. Make sure your product website is set up to be shared socially on Pinterest. Make the social sharing buttons on your content pages easy to find and use.
  3. Repinning. Repinning isn’t like “retweeting” on Twitter. You’ll want to be sure to update the caption on a repinned pin to make it your own.
  4. Make sure you “verify” your website by Pinterest! Show pinners you’re a trustworthy source. Directions and steps here.

 

Your Social Media Strategy Must Include These Platforms

  • FaceBook (encourage Likes and Shares)
  • Twitter (create robust profiles that link-back to your company website)
  • LinkedIn (many forums you can promote your business)
  • YouTube (create marketing & product videos to technical support “how to” solutions)
  • StumbleUpon (StumbleUpon now accounts for more than 50% of all referral traffic from the top social media sites)
  • Wikipedia (The key to getting traffic from Wikipedia is to simply post external and reference links)
  • Blogs (base your blog on the WordPress or Tumblr platform. The “reblog” strategy helps generate traffic. Post at least one blog post a day. Don’t have blog content? Pull some content out of existing white papers, or marketing collateral) 
  • Forums (get active in your online community!)
  • Social News Sites such as digg, reddit, Slashdot, etc.
  • Q & A Sites such as Yahoo Answers, Quora, Answers.com, etc.
  • Document Sharing Sites such as Scribd, docstoc, slideshare (generate good content that people will want to share)
  • Check-in sites such as foursquare

These Social Media sites create “signals” to Google in which they take into account when ranking search results. They also push enormous amounts of traffic back to your website. An active social media presence creates branding opportunities as well as goodwill for your customers (think customer support). In cases of PR messaging, social media delivers instantly.

Protecting Your Online IP

Intellectual property (IP) are legal property rights over creations of the mind, both artistic, commercial, and the corresponding fields of law. Common types of intellectual property include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets. (WikiPedia)

If you have an innovative, brilliant Marketing campaign(s) or Strategy and you want to tell the world about them (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, conferences) you may want to think again. It’s called “competitive advantage” and you want to keep it “close to the cuff” as much as possible. Why? So your competitors won’t jump on your coattails and follow the same tactic. Why would you want to give out your marketing strategies? Ego perhaps, or to generate traffic to your blogs, corporate website or increase your Twitter following? Forget it. Again, think about your competitors and think about your sales or services business.

*This blog entry is for most companies or service oriented businesses and not necessarily for marketing blogs (like mine) that give out basic online marketing strategy.

Here are some important tips for making sure your ideas are preserved. I have only listed a few but there are many more safeguards that can be set up in the “process”:

  1. Create a policy. Establish a policy for all of your intellectual property – including all patents, logos, designs, trademarks, copyrights and domain names. Policy comes first. Give yourself a competitive advantage. Just because you think there’s no competition out there for your business, don’t use that as an argument not to spend the money to protect your idea.
  2. Keep all marketing strategy and reports under a “red cover” confidential. If the IP is printed on hard copy, always have a red cover sheet up front to remind everyone that this information is confidential. If you’re marketing strategy (or IP) is distributed by email or document files, make sure everyone one on your team knows and writes (sig file) “confidential”. Clearly label sensitive data as “confidential” (or put a “watermark” right on the document), and explicitly state this fact in your email. Perhaps go as far as hold a team/staff meeting and explain the fact that if ANY confidential strategy IP gets outside of the company, that person will be fired. It works for Steve Jobs. Example of setting up a confidential watermark in MS-Word below.

Watermark

  1. Copyright. Have you written an article, eBook, created a video or made a podcast? You’ll want copyright protection. Once you have created the work, you have the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform and display it.
  2. Trademark/Service mark. Got a logo or tagline you want to use? Look into trademark protection. Service marks provide the same protection for intangible things such as services.
  3. Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA). A common approach is to make sure that anyone you share the IP information………..signs a “non-disclosure agreement” (NDA) prior to your disclosure. Typical NDAs contractually obligate signatories to refrain from disclosing confidential information without the disclosing party’s express consent.
  4. If you have client newsletters or email blasts, do not go into details of your marketing strategy. Leave that for your face-to-face meetings.

With marketing strategy, be very guarded. Share your strategy on a need-to-know basis, and make sure everyone with access understands the importance of keeping this information confidential.