Author: Anu Heda

Best Blogs of the Week

Two posts this week that are clearly helpful.

  • American Century – This post presents relates the fiscal cliff to dividend paying stocks and a few clear next steps.
  • BlackRock – This post shares Russ’s critique of … Russ. The post is honest and helpful to remind FAs what was thought about and discuss one year ago.

 

Best Blogs of the Week

This week’s blogs all take a specific stance within the first three sentences. We think that leads to effective FA support in thought leadership especially when intertwined onto current events/topics.

  • Columbia – This post paints the case for global emerging markets eloquently.
  • Oppenheimer – The author has a clear opinion on one of the world’s most important currency.
  • Wells Fargo – This post is a Q&A related to allocating within a fixed income allocation and then relative to equities.

Writing Market Commentary to be Read

We’re fortunate to be currently leading one-on-one interviews with financial advisors on behalf of a long-standing client. We always enjoy these discussions as a good way to vet the execution of strategic sales and marketing plans.

In a conversation yesterday, an advisor and I talked a lot about content, detailing what makes for good and bad commentary. He’s a savvy advisor, serving his clients for over 15 years and had myriad examples starting with “this is great” and “these guys waste my time with…”.

Reflecting on that conversation, I distilled two ideas to share broadly (others stay privy to our client, sorry).

  1. Add bullets to the top of any commentary longer than 3 paragraphs. I noticed as we walked through positive examples the role bullets play in his decision-making process (whether to read or not).
  2. Make sure the graphics and charts belong. He wanted information and data that told something interesting, not  supportive. He thought, numerous times, an author included a chart to prove his opinion. He’s not looking for asset managers to show their work or use backwards-looking data to prove a case.

We find many more asset managers (relative to years’ past) relying on commentary to influence their prospective clients. As they do so, it’s crucial to produce content as client-friendly as possible.

Improve Your Blog (5 of 5)

Titles sell blog posts. I’m impressed with how blog post titles have been improving in our industry. The most valuable blogs – ones that keep readers coming back frequently – include a good mix of titles.

Oversubscribed advisors, institutional investors and consultants appreciate titles such as:

  1. 3 Reasons to Consider Frontier Markets
  2. Tax predictions are hard – especially about the future…

Improve your blog with titles that (a) are short and (b)  provide incentive to read.

The first four installments in this series covered:

  1. Injecting personality
  2. Frequency
  3. Adding graphics
  4. Q&A