Susan B. Weiner Investment Writing - Susan B. Weiner Blog

Grammar, punctuation, and word usage questions come up every day–even for someone like me who prides herself on being a good writer.

We can all benefit from online resources that help us figure out answers to our writing challenges.

My three favorites: GrammarGirl, OWL, and Google

I often Google my writing questions.

But sometimes Google’s results aren’t on target or the sources don’t seem reliable. This is when I turn to GrammarGirl and Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL). These are trustworthy sources that explain things clearly.

GrammarBook: A recent discovery

Jane Straus’ GrammarBook website was recently brought to my attention by Jill Brogan of Martingale Asset Management. I plan to visit this site more often. Although founder Jane Straus recently passed away, her husband plans to continue her work. (Note: This paragraph was updated on March 9.)

Subscription-based resources

I use the hard-copy versions of the following two resources, so I imagine they’re worthwhile for organizations with budgets.

• AP Stylebook Online
• Chicago Manual of Style Online

Your favorite online resource?

What’s YOUR opinion on the best online resource? Please answer the poll in the right-hand column of this blog. I’ll report the results in my April e-newsletter.

Your choices include the following:

• AP Stylebook Online
• Chicago Manual of Style Online
• Google
• Grammar Girl
• GrammarBook
• OWL (Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab)
• Something else (please specify)

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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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

SEO–search engine optimization–can help prospects for your investment or wealth management firm find your blog. That’s good. But taken to an extreme, SEO can sabotage your business development. This is what Claire Cain Miller’s “Web Words That Lure the Readers” in The New York Times (Feb. 11, 2011) made me ponder.

SEO that goes too far

Miller describes SEO gone wild. There are online articles that use “a wide range of behind-the-scenes tactics for getting search engine users to visit a Web site, like choosing story topics based on popular searches,” as Miller states. Additional strategies include “filling articles with keywords that people might search for, writing teaser headlines that people cannot help but click on and including copious links to other stories on the same site,” says Miller.

Taken to extremes, these tactics result in highly ranked articles with little useful content. This is not a good strategy for bloggers like you who want to develop relationships with readers. These articles repel readers. When an audience doesn’t find what it expects on a blog, it’s not likely to explore or revisit the site. This is no way to start a relationship that leads to new clients for your advisory business.

Use SEO in moderation

I’m not suggesting you ignore SEO tactics. In fact, they’re good in moderation. That’s how I use them.

Blogger Russell Dunkin has done a nice job of using celebrity names to attract readers to his firm’s blog. Here’s what differentiates him from the tricksters I discussed above: He provides meaningful content in posts such as “Jim Cramer is a clown” and “What do hot waitresses, dead cats, and Paris Hilton have in common?”

I like the suggestion of a Google engineer quoted by Miller. “…don’t chase after Google’s algorithm, chase after your best interpretation of what users want, because that’s what Google’s chasing after,” says Matt Cutts.

Social media may beat SEO as a tool

Promoting your content via social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook may be more effective than SEO, suggests Miller. SEO alone won’t make your blog post go viral on Twitter. “…the best way to get links on Twitter is to write a story people want to share with friends,” says Miller. Folks who share your posts may also refer you or become your clients.

How important is SEO to YOUR blogging strategy? What has worked for you?

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

Emerging Markets for Dummies author Annie Logue discusses China in her guest post. I’m happy to welcome Annie’s second guest post for this blog. Her first was “Talking to clients about social investing.”

She’s also giving away one copy of her book to one reader with an address in the U.S. who comments on her guest post. Be sure to input your email address, so she can contact you.

How can you say that China is an emerging market?

When I was working on Emerging Markets for Dummies (Wiley 2011), I had a question from my editor that probably nags at a lot of folks who are looking at international investing: How can you say that China is an emerging market when its economy is so big?

Well, yes, China is big. China has the third-largest economy in the world, behind the European Union and the United States, but it is nevertheless considered to be an emerging market. That’s for two reasons. First, China has the largest population in the world, so its economy per person is quite small. Divide China’s $8.2 trillion GDP by its 1.3 billion people, the result is a GDP of $6,700, ranked 130th in the world, right between El Salvador and Turkmenistan. Compare that to the United States, with a per-capita income of $47,400. (The US is ranked 11th internationally in GDP; Qatar is first at $145,300 – and it is also considered to be an emerging market because its leaders are working furiously to diversify the economy away from oil.)

To the average Chinese person, the country has a long way to go to be developed. Although the growth has been phenomenal, the nation has nowhere near the prosperity of the United States, Canada, or Japan.

Second, China’s infrastructure is still developing. For much of the 20th century, there was little spending on public works. In fact, some misguided political efforts such as the Cultural Revolution led to the destruction of perfectly fine schools and roads. Modern China needs roads, schools, electric power lines, airports, and all of the other niceties of a modern nation. The major cities are mostly set right now, but the nation’s vast rural areas are playing catch up. Beijing reaped the architectural rewards of the 2008 Olympics, but it has only 22 million people. More than a billion other Chinese are living in places without spectacular public parks and swimming pools.

When looking at China and India in particular, their national accomplishments have to be considered in the context of their massive populations. The CIA World Factbook, which is a great reference for anyone discussing emerging markets, says that only 61 percent of the population over age 15 is literate. To put it another way, India has more illiterate people than the United States has people.

It’s not easy to for an economy to be large enough to meet the needs of all of its people. China and India have a great deal of risk, despite their enormous progress. However, the creativity and hard work that goes into the attempt make for some great investment opportunities, even now.

I’ll give away a copy of the book to a random commenter with a US mailing address who responds to this post by March 1, 2011. Enjoy!

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

Can you find the typo in the following paragraph? If no one finds it, I’ll post the answer next week.

A strong fourth-quarter rally capped an impressive 2010 for U.S. stocks. The Morningstar US Market Index returned 16.8% in 2010, largely due to an 11.5% gain in the fourth quarter. A second round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserved fueled a fourth-quarter rally in U.S. equities.

This kind of typo is why I suggest that you “Forget your spell checker!“

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

Investment professionals, mark April 1 in your calendar if you’re interested in expanding your professional publications.

April 1 is the deadline for submissions for potential publication in the September 2011 issue of the New York Society of Security Analysts’ new online peer-reviewed journal.

The society says it is “particularly interested in articles on financial regulation and risk management.”

The journal is aimed at practicing investment professionals. Here’s how it describes its goals.

• Educate investment professionals on theory and practice in securities analysis
• Offer a forum for the latest in thought leadership in the investment industry
• Promote discussion among various groups in the industry: professionals, regulators, private investors, company boards of directors and CEOs, students, etc.
• Supplement the programs and professional development curriculum offered by NYSSA
• Serve as a career development resource for readers

Start writing today!

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

BlackRock is jumping into social media, as you’ll see in this video, which I discovered on Adam Verchinski’s Everyday Tenacity blog. You can read Adam’s post about the presentation and also see BlackRock’s PowerPoint slides on his blog. Adam is on Twitter as @EverydTenacity. Nice job, Adam!

BlackRock: The Power of Social, presented by Jonathan Haley from GasPedal on Vimeo.

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

“You” is one of the most powerful words in the English language. You’re much more likely to read a sentence that addresses “you” than one that starts with “we.” But sometimes alternatives work, as in a recent ad by Bessemer Trust, which uses “smart people” instead of “you.”

Do you think of yourself as one of the “smart people”? Bessemer Trust plays on its audience’s desire to be smart in its recent ad. If you still have The Wall Street Journal from yesterday, you can see it on page A5.

The ad starts with the following text:

THERE’S NO SUCH THING

AS SMART MONEY.

ONLY SMART PEOPLE.

THE MONEY JUST GOES

WHERE THEY GO.

Bessemer’s text hooked me. I’ll bet it also snared your attention.

The text benefits from being short and plain, in addition to working the “smart people” angle. It has a nice conversational tone. It sounds more like a blog post than an ad by a firm that was founded in 1907.

If you saw this ad, I’d like to know what you thought of it.

FEB. 11 UPDATE: View the Bessemer Trust campaign online

You can view the entire Bessemer Trust ad campaign on the website of www.munnrabot.com. Go to “current work” and then Bessemer Trust. Click on the ad that appears there to see more ads. Thank you, Orson Munn, for letting me know this!

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

A simple subject line can make or break the open rate for your emails.

Would you click on an email with the following subject line?

Subject: =?windows-1252?Q?Conference=20Planning=20Survey?=

I’m probably not alone in my instinct to trash this email. I figured it was probably the work of an unsophisticated spammer.

Looking at the snippet of email address displayed by my email service didn’t inspire confidence either. All I saw was “marketer-ese.” At best, I figured, this was an email from some market research firm.

However, I felt curious, so I expanded the email line. I discovered the email was from an organization I respect, but won’t name. The full email address was something like marketresearch@ORGANIZATION.com

Your bottom line: Pick your subject line carefully

If the organization had a better subject line, I would have opened it without thinking.  Something simple, such as “ORGANIZATION NAME wants your input” would have done the trick.

Have YOU ever deleted or ignored an email because of a poorly written subject line?

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are powerful marketing tools for financial advisors. But they could easily consume
you 24 hours a day. This is why I suggest you learn from 30-Minute Social Media Marketing by marketer Susan Gunelius.

Cover these four areas for success

Gunelius offers sample plans for achieving social media success in just 30 minutes a day. I particularly like her idea that you divide your time among the following four areas:

1. Content creation
2. Content sharing
3. Connections
4. Community building

If you touch all of these areas, you’ll develop a robust presence. Skimp on any, and your connections may suffer.

1. Content creation

Content creation refers to activities such as tweeting, blogging, and creating audio interviews, podcasts, and videos. Clearly a single blog post–and even audio and video–can consume more than 30 minutes, so Gunelius focuses on less time-consuming content.

2. Content sharing

For example, Gunelius mentions retweeting other people’s Twitter comments, inviting other people to guest on your blog, and syndicating your content to other publications or social media. For me, this ties in with making connections, Gunelius’ third category, and community building, her fourth category.

3. Connections

Gunelius suggest that you engage in activities such as sending Facebook friend and LinkedIn connection requests and adding social media links to your email signature. As I see it, if you lack connections, you handicap your chance of achieving your business goal.

4. Community building

For me, one of the most amazing things is the sense of community that I’ve developed through social media. So I think you’re missing out if you skip activities in Gunelius’ fourth category.

These activities include the following:

• Leaving comments on other people’s Facebook walls and LinkedIn profiles
• Participating in forums related to your business
• Publishing a poll on your blog
• Creating your own LinkedIn or Facebook group and inviting people to join

However, I know some investment and wealth managers are just too busy to engage in these activities. Plus, they’ve got compliance concerns, especially when it comes to commenting on other people’s content.

Too optimistic?

Gunelius is a bit optimistic about how much you can accomplish in one-half hour. As I mentioned above, creating a single piece of content can take much longer than 30 minutes.

On the other hand, some tasks can be delegated. There are ghost bloggers and ghost tweeters. In addition, tools such as HootSuite and blogging software make it possible to schedule a slew of communications at one go.

Another thing about Gunelius’ book, if you’re a social media newbie, you’ll get an easy introduction in 30-Minute Social Media Marketing.

Can you add tips?

How do YOU ration your social media time? I’d like to learn from you. Please share your tips below.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from McGraw-Hill in return for agreeing to write about it.

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.

Don’t write about something controversial as if it is an accepted fact.

“Research has shown that the most active managers can beat their benchmarks handily,” wrote Eleanor Laise in “The Return of The Market-Beating Fund Manager” in The Wall Street Journal.

Oh, really? Many financial advisors and investment professionals disagree.

Laise should have acknowledged that her statement was controversial. Her failure to do so undercuts the credibility of her article. Keep this in mind the next time you say something that isn’t widely accepted.

Laise could have rephrased her sentence along the following lines: “New research suggests that most active managers can beat their benchmarks handily.”

Research on active managers’ outperformance

Laise’s article alerted me to an interesting research paper, “Active Share and Mutual Fund Performance,” by Antti Petajisto of NYU University’s business school.

Here’s a provocative quote from Petajisto’s abstract:

I find that over my sample period until the end of 2009, the most active stock pickers have outperformed their benchmark indices even after fees and transaction costs. In contrast, closet indexers or funds focusing on factor bets have lost to their benchmarks after fees. The same long-term performance patterns held up over the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

My LinkedIn contacts responded with scepticism when I quoted Laise’s sentence. What do YOU think about the performance record of actively managed funds?

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Receive a free 32-page e-book with client communications tips when you sign up for my free monthly newsletter.