Great blog posts don’t matter…
…if people don’t read them. As the saying goes, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
Don’t count on readers for your financial advice or investment services blog posts to come to your blog. Grow your audience by making your content available the way your readers prefer.
A client recently reinforced this lesson for me. She said, “Susan, I love those links you post on LinkedIn!” I was surprised. This client had declined my offer to send her my e-newsletter, which is the main way my clients read my blog posts. However, my content developed greater appeal when delivered via LinkedIn, a way that suits her style. Linking to my blog posts in my LinkedIn status updates is a bigger success than I’d realized.
Here are some ways you can make your blog posts available to satisfy your readers’ preferences.
1. LinkedIn status updates. I explain how to post links in “Reader question: How can I share my investment commentary on LinkedIn?”
2. LinkedIn groups. Once you’ve shared your link as a status update, it’s easy to share it with your LinkedIn groups. First, go to the status update in which you shared your link and click “Share.” Second, check the box that says “Post to groups.”
Start typing the names of the relevant groups in the box to the right. The group names will auto-fill. Finally, hit the Share button in the lower left.
3. E-newsletter. An e-newsletter is a great way to package your blog posts for readers who’ll never visit a blog or use an RSS feed. My blog post, “E-newsletters: Great marketing tool for financial advisors and writers,” discusses this option in greater detail.
4. Other social media: Twitter, Facebook, and more. You can post links to your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites much as you would on LinkedIn. Of course, link-posting will reach a point of diminishing returns. Figure out which sites yield your best results, and then focus on them.
You may find that more of your prospects are on Facebook than Twitter or other social media sites. I think this is especially true of parents who get online to monitor their children. I recently started a Facebook business page because I felt I needed to make content available in more ways to my audience.
5. Guest posts. Appearing as a guest on someone else’s blog is another way to get your content seen. While many blogs want original content for their guest spots, some don’t. You can learn more in “Audiocast: How to Guest-Blog on Personal Finance or Investments.”
If you’re not using any of these methods, it’s time to re-think your approach to blogging.
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Need to write better? Register for my next class on “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Writing Class for Financial Advisors” starting May 16. You won’t get another chance to take this class until 2013.
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SUSAN WEINER, CFA
August 24th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Great post, Susan, and an important message.
I’ve recently moved my entire site/blog to Posterous which is a free, hosted content management platform. Everytime I post something, it is automatically shared to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and elsewhere.
And following your example, I’ve just setup “RSS to Email” with my email provider, so now everyone on my email list will get a monthly update email with all my recent blog posts. This happens automatically in addition to the occasional email newsletter I might create and send out myself.
All great ideas.
August 24th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Thanks, Russ! Glad to hear you’re making your blog available by email. A significant number of people prefer to consume their content via email.
The idea of having something automatically posted to all of those places is appealing. I’m struggling with getting my blog posts to post automatically to my new Facebook page. Twitterfeed is working sporadically for me.
However, I’ve got my blog posting automatically to Twitter. Phew!
August 24th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Susan,
You could consider setting up a free Posterous site solely for the purpose of automating the syndication of your content.
You could copy and paste or email a copy of your blog posts to Posterous and it would auto-post it everywhere for you.
The downside to this is that links would go back to the Posterous site instead of your main site.
This is one of the reasons I went with Posterous – to simplify and automate things for me.
August 24th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Russ,
I’ve heard that Posterous is good for that purpose, but I’d like to drive traffic to my site. I’m hoping my web guy will figure out something for me. Maybe Networked Blogs.
Who knows? I may come back to Posterous if I get too frustrated.
August 30th, 2010 at 11:09 pm
It would be great if Posterous would evolve more into a content posting application rather than attempting to be a blogging platform. I have found that the lack of flexibility is just too limiting on Posterous, and overall it has a more casual feel. I think you can have a presence there, but don’t believe it should be your main presence. Maybe it’s your photo blog or your family blog, for example. I also don’t like that even if you customize your theme, you still seem to be connected into that ‘casual’ network. WordPress, on the other hand, is used by most of the top bloggers, is great for SEO ,and it’s also open source. In addition, there is an enormous developer community behind it. Sure, it’s a little more complicated and time consuming to set up and maintain, but like everything you get what you pay for. As a matter of fact, I just spent a weekend at the Dallas http://www.Openca.mp (WordPress) conference and am even more convinced that it is the best in class platform for either a blog site or a powerful content management system. The power of the plug-ins are amazing and you can accomplish all of the same functionality of most any other platform out there through plug-ins. In addition, there are great tools like Hootsuite to help you automate post-sharing to multiple social sites. (by the way Susan, great tip about submitting your blog post to groups through the status update feature)
I’m glad it’s working for you Russ, just wish Posterous could be more of a posting tool without having to deal with duplicate content issues or sacrifice our sites. Also, for those who like to tinker, Posterous doesn’t leave much room for that!
August 31st, 2010 at 12:09 am
Thanks, Stephanie! There’s so much to learn about these options and they just keep evolving.
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:18 am
Susan,
Thanks for the pointers on connecting to Linkedin. Clear and helpful. I am working to get my blogs or a mutual funds analysis tool, www. FundReveal.com known. The connections to Linkedin and other social/business media sites seems critical. We have tried some automatic posting mechanisms and have not been pleased. We’ll look into Posterious immediately.
We are working with HubSpot http://www.hubspot.com a consulting firm in Cambridge that focuses on getting traffic and converting interest into commitment (sales or service). We are very impressed and wish we had known about them sooner. Check it out.
Tony
September 23rd, 2010 at 9:48 am
Tony,
I enjoy HubSpot’s blog posts, though I haven’t used them as a consultant.
Good luck with publicizing your fund analysis tool!
Susan
August 30th, 2011 at 6:30 am
[...] made me think about delivering content the way my readers want. I’ve blogged about this in “Great blog posts don’t matter…” Eventually I started an Investment Writing Facebook page. The Facebook page has become another [...]