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Is Your Financial Services Blog Effective?

Is Your Financial Services Blog Effective

When you write content, who are you writing for? Maybe you’re targeting young adults going through life changes such as marriage or buying a home, or maybe you are more interested in older executives preparing to retire who need advice on their investments. Now think about what that audience needs to hear. Meeting their needs is the foundation of strategic content and can provide many benefits, such as:

  • Improving your search engine optimization (SEO).
  • Keeping content relevant to your mission and business goals.
  • Staying inspired while avoiding burnout and frustration.
  • Using your time effectively to garner results.
Is Your Content Serving You?

Everyone can write a blog post, but maybe your time is better spent helping clients than diving into the writing process. Furthermore, it’s hard to know where to start when creating a strategy to lead your content writing. According to the Content Marketing Institute, up to 63% of businesses don’t have a documented strategy for their content, despite needing one. The good news is it’s not too late to create one. Oftentimes, it can be best to start with a blog and social media audit to know where you already stand. 

  • Keep track of what key messages and keywords are doing well. 
  • Find out what your conversion rate is and where you are ranking on search engines. 
  • Be aware of what audience you are reaching in relation to your target market. 

While an audit might seem scary, it’s the best way to find your current strengths and areas that need improvement. Having this preparation and research before attempting to reconstruct your overarching strategy will greatly smooth your process, saving you time, money, and energy.

Crafting Your Strategy

Now that you know where you are, you can decide where you want to go with your financial services blog. Which parts of your current strategy are effective, and which parts are a drain on your resources? Follow these steps as a guideline to crafting your own strategy.

  1. Analyze your previous content. Knowing what doesn’t work can help you to narrow down what does. Take a hard look at your audit and pay attention to trends. If any of your previous posts were successful, great! Try to figure out what made them strong and make a note for later.

  2. Remember your business goals. Business and sales goals should always be your first priority. While not every post has to have a direct connection to conversions, there should always be a reason for posting. Maybe it’s to add to the conversation about investing opportunities or set your business apart as an expert in wealth management. Before posting, ask yourself why this topic is important for you, your company, and your target audience.

  3. Define your target market and audience segments. After spending so much time crafting the perfect blog post, you don’t want your message to fall on deaf ears. By creating audience segments, you can cater how you target those specific people. Marketing to your target audience will boost your return on investment and make your efforts worthwhile.

  4. Consider which vehicles are appropriate for your goals. Every day, it seems another social media platform emerges from cyberspace. Balancing blogs, podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more can be too much to handle. Luckily, your business probably doesn’t need to be on every single platform. Take the time to decide which align with your business goals and target demographics. According to Sprout Social, LinkedIn’s largest age group is composed of those aged 46–55, while Instagram’s is 25–34. If you’re trying to reach those about to retire, LinkedIn is a great platform to use, while you might pass on Instagram.

  5. Finalize your strategy. The hardest part of creating your content strategy is over. Research in hand, it’s time to write down a plan (and stick to it!). This is your time to nail down how often you’re going to post, where you’re going to post, and keywords to boost your SEO. A good practice activity is to design a mock timeline with topic ideas and keywords.
Want More Tips?

Still need more advice? Try getting in touch with a marketing agency. Getting an objective, outside opinion can help you gain clarity. Content strategy is complicated, especially regarding SEO, so hiring an expert can take the difficulty and stress off your hands so you have more time to do what you love: serving your clients.

Improve your strategic content now by reaching out to the specialists at Out & About Communications, or get more help by reading these blog posts on how to improve your content marketing and what you need to know approaching a marketing team.