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

Excerpt from Wells Fargo Advisors ad

Financial advisors often struggle to communicate the value they offer to clients. I think Wells Fargo Advisors nailed it with an ad I saw in The Wall Street Journal (p. A5 on Dec. 29). The image above is excerpted from that ad.

Four things make this ad powerful, in my opinion.

1. Emphasis on the CLIENT, not the firm

More than half of the ad is taken up by a client photo. However, what the client says is more important than the photo, as I explain in point #2. Too many ads, advisor websites, and other marketing pieces emphasize the firm more than the client.

This emphasis on the client carries into more use of “you” than “we,” “us,” or “Wells Fargo Advisors.”

2. Emphasis on the BENEFIT, not the feature

The client says, “Confidence comes from knowing I have a plan for my future.” That’s a powerful statement with great appeal for many prospects, especially in a volatile year. The ad gives more attention to this benefit than to the feature, which is the plan.

3. Reassuring discussion of uncertainty

Uncertainty about the future has people on edge, but Wells Fargo Advisors is “With you when you need clarity in an uncertain world.”

The firm also has a reassuring tag line: “Together we’ll go far.” It’s reassuring, but it’s also vague enough to make it through compliance review. Nice job!

4. Effective use of numbers

“95% of Envision(r) Plan holders are able to live the life they planned.”

This is one of the client-benefit-focused statistics used in the ad. It’s powerful.

Plus, the statistic is given credibility by an external source: a survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

Communicating advisor value and Twitter

Thank you, Twitter friends, for getting me fired up about the topic. I jumped on this ad partly because of an online conversation about advisor compensation that included @MichaelKitces tweeting, “@nathangehring @MattBrandeburg @rwohlner @susanweiner I think primary reason we talk abt comp is b/c we’re bad at explaining our real value”

What about you?

What do YOU think of this ad?

Can you suggest a better or different way to discuss how advisors provide value to clients?

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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.

Adam Metz’ book, The Social Customer, targets companies with 1,000+ employees, but some of its social media information is useful for companies of all sizes. This is true of the chapter on “The Social Customers and the Law.”

Financial advisors tend to focus their legal concerns on laws specific to their industry. However, other laws also demand attention, most notably the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

DMCA “makes it easy for copyright owners, like your brand, to challenge any website owner (or social customer) to remove or take down any content that is infringing,” as Metz says on p. 226. Metz suggests reading “Fair use in a nutshell” by Lloyd J. Jassin to understand whether you can make a case for issuing DMCA takedown notice.

Here are more Metz recommendations for resources:

• FTC guidelines regarding endorsements (FTC File No. PO34520)
• Online Word of Mouth and Its Implications for Trademark Law by Eric Goldman, who writes the Goldman’s Technology and Law Blog.
• Glenn Manishin’s Managing Legal Risks in Social Media.

Don’t forget financial regulations

Financial advisors, your industry is highly regulated, so don’t forget the best practices for your industry.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book 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.

Google Analytics revealed my most popular blog posts of 2011. Wordle.net created the image of the most popular words in this top 10 post. Enjoy!

1. Writing resources for equity research analysts–There are some specialized resources for analysts.
2. My fill-in-the-blanks approach for structuring articles–Bloggers can use this powerful technique to quickly produce a post.
3. Career strategies for wealth managers without a book of business–My CFA charterholder colleagues contributed valuable advice to this article.
4. White paper marketing: Walk a fine line–There are three key characteristics of white papers.
5. Quick check for writers, with an economic commentary example–An easy-to-use technique for checking whether your writing is easy to read.
   

   Image created using Wordle.com

6. The 10-postcard approach to financial advisor marketing
   
7. Mark Tibergien’s one thing for financial advisors’ business improvement
8. Best practices for institutional asset manager websites
9. Financial advisor prescription by Statman evokes strong response
10. Mind mapping technology for financial advisors

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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.

Morningstar is a company that values good writing as well as robust content. So I’m delighted to have Ryun Patterson, managing editor of Morningstar Advisor, as a guest blogger with some great tips to help advisors improve their writing.

A Magazine Editor’s Top Tips for Improving Advisors’ Writing

By Ryun Patterson

As our team assembles Morningstar Advisor magazine every other month, I read and edit lots of investment-related writing. This experience (as with most reading) has given me some strong opinions on what constitutes good finance writing and what is, shall we say, suboptimal. One of Morningstar’s core values is “Investors Come First,” so I’d love to share some tips that advisors can keep in mind when they’re writing for their clients or the general public.

Do: Simplify

Advisors read a lot of technical writing, from white papers to prospectuses. This familiarity can lead to imitation, but unless you’re writing a white paper or prospectus, you should avoid the temptations of jargon and alphabet soup. Yes, it sounds extremely classy (fancy and sophisticated, even) to say that something is “accumulating size,” but it’s really just growing. And the allure of ROAs, ROEs, and ROICs is great, but your writing will be better understood, especially in shorter pieces, if you just spell these abbreviations out. You readers may not thank you for it, but they’ll definitely read the whole article instead of quitting in frustration halfway through.

Don’t: Assume

The ranks of advisors and investors has grown so much in the past couple of decades that investing writers have got to stop making assumptions about their audience. The use of figures of speech that are normally reserved for sports broadcasters is a prime culprit here. Football fans might easily understand “keep your head on a swivel,” but the audience for investment writing has grown to the point that this kind of language can now be a barrier to comprehension rather than a connection formed through a shared interest. This extends to commentary that extends to political and religious references as well; being “politically correct” doesn’t have to be a priority, but readers will lose sight of genuine wisdom if it’s cloaked in a contentious point of view.

Do: Explain

There’s a class of investment words that pose as regular words but pull double-duty in the investment world to describe complex ideas. One example pulled from Morningstar’s writing guide is the word “duration.” Because this word has the temerity to be both noun that regular folks use in everyday conversation AND a noun that represents a measure of interest-rate sensitivity, Morningstar writers and editors always write “duration, a measure of interest-rate sensitivity” on first reference, just to make it clear that this duration is not your standard one. A little bit of thought in this arena goes a long way, as do hyperlinks or referrals to sites like Investopedia or Morningstar.com’s investing classroom.

Don’t: Dumb Down

Advisors writing for their clients or other investors should embrace the chance to be educators. Topics like basic asset allocation are no-brainers for investing professionals, but the key to explaining these isn’t using phrases like “everybody knows that…” or, more extremely, “Only an idiot would…” Instead, use concrete facts and figures to show, rather than tell, your readers why investing basics exist. This kind of communication is the best way to form a resonant, lasting relationship with your readers. Nobody likes to be patronized, and investors that feel like alienated idiots are less likely to ask important questions when it’s time to make important decisions.

Recommended Reading

If you’ve got a day for reading and want to improve your writing, there’s no better book I can recommend than Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It’s less than 100 pages long, but it’s as essential for writers as Graham and Dodd’s Security Analysis is for investing professionals. It has never steered me wrong, and it can do a lot for any aspiring writer.

Ryun Patterson is managing editor of Morningstar Advisor magazine, the magazine of investment insights for independent-minded advisors. Advisors can get a free subscription by going to Morningstaradvisor.com and clicking the “Subscribe” link on the upper right-hand side of the page.

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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.

The last singles dance I attended taught me a lesson that has served me well with social media. The lesson? Don’t always trust your gut reaction.

My wedding picture, taken in the room where I met my husband at a singles dance

The cute man whom I glimpsed across the dance floor at Boston’s Parker House Hotel looked way too young for me, so I mentally crossed him off my list. There was no sense in trying to catch his eye.

However, I said yes when he asked me to dance and again when he invited me to escape the overcrowded room for a drink in Parker’s Bar. He seemed nervous over drinks – not the suave smooth-talker of my dreams. But we started dating, and he grew on me. Earlier this year we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

How does this story relate to social media?

I didn’t like social media at first. Twitter, especially, struck me as stupid. But I gave social media a chance. Just like I gave that young man a chance. Now I appreciate my many relationships fostered by social media.

Give social media a chance. You may find more positives than you expect.

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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.

This grammar rap video on Strunk and White’s Elements of Style cracked me up, so I’m sharing it with you. I discovered this on Grammar Girl’s website. Please note that Grammar Girl says you CAN split infinitives, despite what the video says.

The Elements of Style from Jake Heller 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.

I imagine a group blog run by financial advisors would face several challenges in producing interesting, high quality blog posts on a regular schedule.

Image: HikingArtist.com

These include the following:

• Coming up with mutually agreeable topics for blog posts
• Setting a schedule for publishing blog posts
• Getting posts written, edited, and approved

I have ideas about how to tackle the challenges.

Brainstorm as a group

Need topics that will satisfy your group as a whole? Try brainstorming topics in a meeting with the other blog contributors.

By the way, I’m assuming you need to satisfy the group because you’re blogging with other employees of your firm. If not, agreement may not be necessary, but group discussion is still a spur to creativity.

Create an editorial calendar

It’s easier for your team’s writers to contribute regularly if they have a schedule.

Here’s a sample editorial calendar for a group blog:

Notice how subject areas repeat on a regular schedule, making it easy for writers to know when their posts will run. Once they know that, they should be able to calculate dates by which their first drafts are due.

Create a process

You don’t want contributors to turn in their posts at the last minute. This is why you need a well-defined process with due dates. The process might include the following steps.

1. Submission of first draft for content review and proofreading
2. Rewriting, if necessary
3. Compliance review
4. Rewriting, if necessary
5. Publication on blog
6. Monitoring and responding to comments

Other tips for group blogs?

Please share your best tips for managing group blogs. I also welcome your questions.

_______________________________________________________________
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.

I’m thankful for the knowledgeable and talented professionals who have contributed guest posts to my blog this year.

Here’s a list of guest posts sorted by topic, including client communications, marketing, social media, and writing.

Client communications

• Math and the Gender Gap: Does it affect financial planning? by Laura Laing
• Why use a mind map with clients? by Alex Murguia

Marketing

• Articles You Publish in Financial Trade Publications Will Impress Prospects by Beth Chapman
• Blogging: why you want a better bounce rate by Tom Mangan
• Creating Pitch Books Without Losing Your Mind: Design and Content Management Tips by Margaret Patterson
• Easy SEO: How to Really Get Found on the Internet by Steve Tannuzzo
• Personalized Risk Management Planning–A Great New Business Opportunity by Michael T. Carpenter

Writing

• The ABCs of Creative Capital Rights by Wendy J. Cook
• Doctoring the Books – The Right Way by Laura Matthews
• A Magazine Editor’s Top Tips for Improving Advisors’ Writing by Ryun Patterson
• Subject Lines: Are you reading this? by Kristin Harad
• Using Clause Analysis to Fix Your Complex Sentences by Joe Croscup
• Using Story Telling to Educate Clients and Prospects by Chuck Rylant

Other financial topics

• What about China? by Annie Logue

I also hosted some wonderful guest bloggers last year. See “Guest bloggers: 2010 in review.”

This post was updated on Dec. 28, 2011.

_______________________________________________________________
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.

Jeremy Grantham of GMO is a thinker whose words command attention. Financial professionals will read his quarterly investment letters regardless of how well they’re written. But if an unknown strategist delivered the same content, she or he would not benefit from the same indulgence. In fact, few people might have advanced beyond the initial paragraph about his busy schedule. This realization prompted me to think about how I’d rewrite “The Shortest Quarterly Letter Ever,” Grantham’s December 2011 missive.

Headings: An easy fix for bullet point overload

The first two pages of Grantham’s four-page letter consists almost solely of bullet points. It isn’t easy for the human brain to process more than three to six bullet points.

If Grantham didn’t have time to do more than write bullet points, he could have asked a colleague to group his bullet points by topic under a heading. For example, he has a number of bullet points addressing the position of the U.S., which could have been grouped under headings such as

• Challenges faced by the U.S. and the rest of the developed world
• America’s competitive weaknesses vs. other countries
• American social weaknesses

My headings may not be perfect, but they offer more direction to the reader who skims the letter. Right now, the only headings seen by the reader are not informative: “Notes to Myself” and “Recommendations.” Based on these headings, I’d zoom right to “Recommendations,” missing the views that underlie Grantham’s recommendations.

Bold type: Another easy aid to reading

Bold type is another way to help readers distinguish what’s more important.

For example, the following is a sentence I might have bolded in Grantham’s letter:

When one of these old fashioned but typical declines occurs, professional investors, conditioned by our more recent ephemeral bear markets, will have a permanent built-in expectation of an imminent recovery that will not come.

However, this sentence is currently buried in a 15-line paragraph. However, I do like that the paragraph starts with a bolded phrase: “No Market for Young Men.” This phrase helps readers grasp the point that Grantham gradually builds toward in his paragraph. The graph that follows is also helpful.

Massive overhaul

If I had my druthers, I’d rewrite this piece into paragraphs. The piece would start with an introductory overview. It would use headings, and possibly subheadings.

Here’s my quick, bullet-pointed introduction to Grantham’s content, with an emphasis on his strongest point.

S&P Headed for a L-O-N-G Correction

The U.S. stock market could be headed for a 14-year correction, if historical averages for corrections following bubbles hold true. Other negatives for the U.S. include

• Demographics that also plague the rest of the developed world
• Inadequate savings
• The weaknesses in our infrastructure, education, and government
• Social issues, such as greater income inequality

In light of these and other factors, I recommend

• Avoiding low quality U.S. stocks
• Tilting toward safety
• Avoiding duration risk
• Moving slowly into resources in the ground

If you’re not a “Grantham”

If you write investment commentary–and you’re not a strategist of Grantham’s stature–please keep my suggestions in mind as you draft your quarterly market commentary.

You’ll find links to more investment commentary tips in “Resources for quarterly investment commentary writers.”

_______________________________________________________________
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.

BNY Mellon’s spoke about the Search for Global Relative Value During the Great Transition Age, 2009-2025, to the Boston Security Analysts Society yesterday.

I tweeted some of the bits that interested me the most. I was especially interested to learn that he holds no bonds in his personal portfolio.

If YOU attended the session, I’m interested to learn your thoughts 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.