Russell

3 Practices to Improve Your Firm’s Blog Posts

Posted by Anu Heda on Oct 18, 2016, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

For the last five years, I’ve tracked the industry’s blog posts and seen tremendous growth. Growth in number of firms, frequency of posts, and quality per post. In the quality dimension, many aspects of individual posts taken for granted now were absent five years ago. For example, these four details were not commonplace:

Authors’ names (many posts were published by “admin” or “asset manager”)

Charts, graphs and data tables (many posts were 500+ words of straight text)

Links to related thought leadership

A clear conclusion

QualityFrom reading hundreds of industry blog posts, I want to share three favorite practices.

  1. Include a “Bottom line.” Too many times, authors post 500+ word entries without a highlighted point of view or logical next step. A bottom line reiterates a single idea to take away.
  2. Add only relevant and simple charts. Many posts include unnecessarily complex charts. Each week, I come across a chart with multiple vertical axes, and data in both line and bar chart form. If the post’s point is so complex it requires such a difficult chart, perhaps a whitepaper is a better format.
  3. Use a precise question as the title. Of the three, this practice is changing the most quickly in 2016. Still, we see posts titled “Q2 Bond Update” or “Views from Asia.” Titles like this often undersell the quality within. Title-as-question is not preferred for all posts, yet many posts could benefit from this format.

I imagine in 5 years’ time these will be commonplace across the industry.

Best Blogs of the Week #242

Posted by Anu Heda on Aug 22, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with

Russell – Year of the Comeback? Portfolio Diversifiers Rally in first half of 2016 – The last few years have been difficult from a return perspective, but commodities tend to run in cycles and this year’s strong start may be the beginning of a new, more positive cycle for the asset class. Even if not, it is very likely to expect that they will still deliver diversification benefits to the rest of the portfolio.

 

Via Russell Investments

Best Blogs of the Week #241

Posted by Anu Heda on Aug 10, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with ,

The industry’s blog rate continues to slow as the summer temperatures rise. This week had multiple posts on FinTech and we included the most interesting related post, from BlackRock. That along with an interesting examination of the broad U.S. equity market (Russell) round out our best posts.

BlackRock – The expanding role of technology in financial advice – The process will be far more dynamic and interactive. We’ll be sitting in the pockets of our clients, in their phones, and ready to answer questions, all day every day.

Russell – Go where most passive investors don’t: The “left over” 77% of the U.S. stock market – Russell Investments believes that U.S. equities (represented by Russell 1000® Index) are currently overvalued – and that’s been the case for some time.

via BNY Mellon