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Blogging is the single biggest driver of traffic to Investment Advisor websites. Advisor websites with blogs generate about 50% more traffic than the firm average. They also receive increase dengagement and time spent on the rest of their website.
Optimization (SEO) Google favours websites with fresh content, so routinely updated blogs can boost your SEO (the likelihood your website will appear in Google’s search results).
Blogs provide content for you to share on LinkedIn, home to half a billion users. What’s more, 45 per cent of article readers on LinkedIn are in high-ranking positions (executives, directors, and C-suite). Blogs can also be shared by visitors on their own social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Email). So, in addition to driving traffic to your website (bonus!), sharing on social media creates stronger user engagement with clients and prospects alike.
Blogs provide an opportunity to capture the reader’s attention and give them something they find truly useful, interesting, relatable, or informative.
By blogging regularly, you can establish yourself as an authority / expert on chosen subject matter and differentiate yourself from competitors by providing your own unique perspectives.
As a guideline, we suggest 500 words. This is enough content to get your point across, increase time spent on your website, and optimize SEO (Google tends to favour articles over 300 words). And, it’s not so much content that a reader will be scared off. As shown in the graph below, advisor blogs between 200 and 1000 words tend to generate the most page views, so there is quite a range of acceptability:
Page views of RBC Dominion Securities Investment Advisor blogs, Q1 2021
More important than that, however, is writing a post that is as long as you want it to be. If you feel you’ve said what you want to in 300 words, don’t try to stretch it for the sake of length – readers will lose interest. If you hit 600 words but the story feels fresh, interesting, and unfinished to you, keep going (or ask yourself if it works as a two-parter).
Admittedly, there are plenty of blog gurus out there who recommend 1,500 words or more to increase SEO and page views, but that doesn’t always suit a relationship business like wealth management. Your goal is not to attract thousands of eyeballs and generate ad revenue – it’s to offer insights, value, and a positive experience to the clients who trust you and the prospects who discover you.
We get this question a lot and, sadly, there is no golden egg. Successful blogs can post every week, every month or even every quarter. The important things are to know your audience, know your capacity, and keep it consistent.
If you’re unsure where to start, try committing to posting a monthly blog. Over time, you can feel out whether you have capacity to write more, view statistics on how many people are visiting your blog (and how much time they’re spending on it), or even ask the clients you know well – would you like to see more or less blog content from my team?
A common follow-up to question #3! The answer is usually no. When it comes to sharing your blog through social media, LinkedIn and Facebook’s algorithms will disperse your content among other posters, so you aren’t dominating any one user’s experience (unless they are liking your content).
Email can be a little trickier, and it simply depends on your audience. Plenty of successful DS advisor teams promote their blog through a weekly email blast that their clients look forward to. At the same time, it’s always possible your email is landing in an already crowded inbox. If this concerns you, consider starting with the monthly approach described in question 3.
This matters less than you might think! Looking at the number of blog views over approximately the last year, we can see that posts during business days/hours perform well, with Friday between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. yielding the highest.
Number of views to DS blog posts, January 1 to November 25, 2020
Any articles published through the Blog Subscription Tool will go out automatically – these cannot be set for a particular time. Your custom-written blogs, however, can be set with any publication time you wish (see our step-by-step guide).
A good title will peak the reader’s interest while also giving them a clear understanding of what value your blog offers.
We’ll say this first: if you feel like you have a strong, clever title in mind, follow your gut. Chances are good that a title you love represents your personal brand well. But if you want to think of ways to improve it, or you’re completely stumped on a title at all, here are some helpful approaches that can be mixed and matched:
List-based articles (aptly nicknamed “Listicles”) are popular for a reason. They convey authority, promise a simple take-away, and don’t require much commitment to read or skim. What’s more, they alleviate the reader’s first subconscious task: organizing the information before them.
Examples
You know better than anyone that your clients have questions. Why not make your blog post an answer? With this approach, your reader will have no trouble recognizing what value lies beyond the title.
Note: Try to answer what will feel like real questions, not just self-serving ones like “Why you need an Investment Advisor in today’s markets.”
Bonus tip: Making your title a question is another good way to engage the reader. For example “Is it time to step away from your business? Here’s how to know, and how to prepare.”
Financial management can feel complicated and sometimes daunting, which makes common pitfalls valuable knowledge. This approach also promises concrete take-aways, which readers love.
Note: Keep a calm, positive tone and solution-focused attitude in these titles. A title like “3 DEADLY Mistakes That Cost Entrepreneurs Their Businesses!” or “Common Financial Planning Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make!” can come across as pushy, exaggerative, dishonest, and fear-mongering.
With a “...Here’s Why” Title, your reader will immediately understand your article’s thesis. The key is to make it an interesting one. Think of a philosophy or perspective you hold that your own family, friends, and clients find interesting – whether it’s about the way you invest, where you see markets headed, or the importance of an added wealth service you offer.
Any of the title strategies covered above could and should also contain keywords. These are words your target group is likely to include in their web search as they pursue their individual needs, like “business owner”, “ TFSA”, “ETF”, “Save tax”, etc. Location is often used as a keyword as well when searching for local services or regulations, such as “Hamilton”, “Quebec” or “Canada”.
The Blog Subscription Tool publishes pre-approved, RBC-written articles to your blog automatically. There are two good ways to use it:
To get started, you can complete the Blog Activation Survey on this page and our team will set it up for you. Or, you can set the tool up yourself by following this step-by-step set-up guide.
Check out our one-page guide: Choosing Your Blog Subscription Tool Hubs. This document offers a brief summary of each hub’s content. If you want to get a more in-depth understanding, you can also preview each article within the Blog Subscription Tool like this:
Currently, you can be notified the Monday after an article is published, but not before. We’re working on being able to offer both, but this will take time as we establish longer-term content planning.
To be notified after, sign up for our Monday email blast. It lists all the articles that have been published in the previous week.
Yes. Here’s how:
