Whether advisors want to boost their SEO, increase site traffic, or generate leads, a financial advisor blog always helps. In fact, 69% of businesses say that their blogs are what gives them the most lead generation. In addition, 60% of companies that blog see higher customer acquisition. These are just some of the reasons that you see so many financial advisors starting to add blogs to their regular content schedule.
For that exact reason, we’ll be showing you the best way to create a financial advisor blog. Including the type of content you should look into writing, what to do when publishing, and much more. Blogging can take a lot of work, but as you continue to write, it will become more natural to you. Sometimes a few tips are all you need. Let’s jump in.
1. Name Your Blog (If You Want To)
With so many financial advisor blogs out there, ideas, titles, and content are bound to overlap. What helps you stand out from the competition is having a blog that reflects you as an advisor and a writer. When blogs first started popping up in the advisor industry, writers didn’t have to worry about having that extra oomph to help them stand out. But today is different. That’s why we recommend you have a title for your blog. Something that grabs the attention of readers or reminds them of your brand.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a name for your financial advisor blog, use the following for inspiration:
- Your audience; What type of title would attract them? Are there common phrases they use that could be turned into a title?
- Your tone: Should your title be more serious or playful?
- Your goals: What’s the objective of your blog? Can you connect that to your title?
For example, at FMG, we wanted to give our blog a simple name to communicate its purpose and set it apart from the rest of our site. The title “Insights” fit these goals.
2. Find Your Blog’s Voice
The voice of your blog is crucial as it represents your business and your brand. While some advisors will look to create a more serious tone, others might want to be more light and playful. Figuring out your voice is important for setting the stage for all your blogs to come.
Your job should be to find a voice that fits your company. If you’re curious about how to find the right voice for your financial advisor blog, take into account the following:
- Your audience: What kind of advisor do they want or do they expect?
- Your own feelings: What kind of blog do you want to run? Serious, playful, casual, or somewhere in between?
- Established brand voices: If you’ve already established a brand voice, do you want your blog to support it or use a different approach?
Money Maven Financial offers a great example of a voice that’s identifiable and consistent. The use of emojis and conversational language makes reading the blog feel more like you’re speaking with a friend:
3. Select Topics for Your Blog
Before you can write a blog, you need to select a few topics for it. That can involve picking an important topic related to your business, finding out what’s trending at the moment, or seeing if there are any important updates in the industry you think your audience should know about. The great thing about blogging is that anything can be turned into an article if you’re willing to put in the effort. And selecting topics ahead of time can help you plan content a little easier.
Here are a few ways to select topics for your financial advisor blog:
- Audience interests: Like our last three steps, your audience should always be considered.
- Personal passion: If you’re not interested in what you’re creating, it will show
- Industry trends: Look at what’s relevant at the moment and offer your opinion.
- Branding topics: Is there anything you can relate to financial services to make topics easier to understand?
For example, Peabody Wealth Advisors uses March Madness as an opportunity to discuss investing, leveraging a timely and popular topic to clarify investing practices, making the information both entertaining and memorable.
Coming up with blog topics shouldn’t be hard, and it doesn’t need to be. As long as you take into account what your audience is looking for, there are thousands of ideas for financial advisor blogs, regardless of specialty. If you can, make a list of topics you’re interested in covering and save them for future blogs. What might not work at the moment might come into play later.
Having trouble selecting the type of content you want to create? Check out our content solutions, where we offer authentic, timely emails and social posts, market commentaries, videos, blogs, lead generation & client engagement series.
4. Create an Outline for Each Article
Your blog is built, and you know the voice you want to use and the categories you would like to cover. But before you dive in to write, there are a few things you will want to include in each post to get more out of your SEO.
Always Use Keywords
Keywords are a crucial element of SEO, as search engines use the keywords within your blog to understand its focus. Important keywords should be used within your blog, but be sure only to use them when it adds to the blog. Using keywords just to add them is called “keyword stuffing” and can lead to negative SEO outcomes. Not sure what keywords to use or how to find new ones? This blog can help.
Build Your Outline Using the SERP
The search engine results page (SERP) is the list of websites that appears when a specific query is typed into a search engine. For example, searching “financial advisor” on Google. Once you’ve selected a keyword for each article, it will be important to check the SERP by reverse searching the keyword, as the top results in a SERP can give context into what ranks. For example, if we search “financial advisor,” the following two articles from Forbes and NerdWallet appear at the top of the results, letting readers know how to choose a financial advisor. This lets us know that top-ranking articles focusing on the keyword “financial advisor” should answer this question. Therefore, any article written with “financial advisor” as the primary keyword should do the same.
In many cases, there will be several takeaways from a SERP. Returning to our example above, beneath the listed articles was a map with several local businesses, letting us know that someone searching “financial advisor” might also be looking for one nearby. As you write your content, take these elements into consideration, and write down any takeaways from the SERP for your selected keyword.
Write to Potential Clients
Similar to defining your ideal future client or thinking of your target market, your blog posts should be catered to clients you would like to work with. For example, if most of your clients are healthcare professionals or teachers, write blog posts that relate to their specific concerns.
At the end of the day, your readers are going to be your future clients, so why not write to those that you enjoy working with most? That way, as your firm continues to grow, you will distill your market down to those that you work well with.
Solve a Problem
Chances are the majority of blogs you come across share inspiration rather than education. While these types of posts are good to sprinkle in, the majority of your blog posts should solve a problem for the potential clients mentioned before. If a reader is coming to your blog, they are looking for solutions. In order to solve these problems, though, you must first understand what they are. Ask yourself:
- What questions do my clients ask most often?
- What skills do I have that would aid my clients with their concerns?
- How are my services different than others, and what does that mean for my clients?
By solving a reader’s problems, you will prove your professional value, and readers will be more likely to share your post or reach out.
Ask For Action
The best (and most converting) blog posts prompt action and provide a reader with the next steps to achieve their goal.
What will change after a reader finishes your article? An actionable step can be as easy as signing up for your newsletter or joining your email list and as involved as figuring out an annual budget for yourself or setting up an IRA. Depending on your readers and posts, these action steps will differ. But always provide a tangible next step for readers to increase your value.
Add Internal Links
Internal links are important to the health of your blog as they connect everything on your website/blog together. Using specific keywords and phrases to link to related pages is important for SEO. For example, let’s say you’re writing a blog about trending topics, and retirement comes up. If you have another blog talking about retirement, then use this section to link to it.
5. After Publishing a Blog
Congrats! You’ve published your blog, but your work isn’t quite over yet. There’s still a little more to do. Once you’ve added your blog to the internet for all to see, boost your blog’s success by:
- Share it on social media for your followers to see
- Distribute via email or text
- Continue to check in on the blog and see if any improvements can be made
- Return to the blog in the future and see if any optimizations can be done
You’ve done it! Your blog has successfully been published. Keep it up. We look forward to seeing what the future of blogging holds for you!
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