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

Financial bloggers, investment professionals, and wealth managers can benefit from learning a few things that professional writers know.

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Everyone can benefit from a good proofreader and editor

It’s hard to read your writing with fresh eyes. This is why professional writers feel grateful when someone checks their work for them. If you’re on your own, put your draft away for a day – or even an hour – before rereading it.

Put the good stuff first

You need to snare your readers with the first paragraph, if not the first sentence or even the title. So, share information your readers will care about at the very beginning of your blog post, white paper, or other written communication.

Keep it short

Like you, your audience has too much to read. So keep it short.

Avoid errors of the illiterate

When you make elementary school students’ mistakes – such as confusing its and it’s – your readers question your expertise in other areas, too. An editor can help you identify your common errors, so you can review a checklist before releasing error-riddled communications to clients and prospects.

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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.

Indexes or indices? Which is the better way to pluralize “index”? This topic came up in an exchange with Theresa Hamacher, president of NICSA. She said:

When Bob Pozen and I used “indexes” in the manuscript of our book, The Fund Industry: How Your Money is Managed — and our copy editor changed them all to “indices” — I ended up going back to “indexes,” partly because of personal preference, partly because I believed “indexes” is more common in our industry. But I wondered whether was an industry standard. . .

In favor of indices

Indices is the correct way to pluralize index in Latin, according to multiple sources on the Internet.

Grammarist says that indices is the most popular plural form of index outside North America. So, should North Americans go along? I agree with Grammarist: “…while it’s true that indices is the correct plural of index in Latin, index is an English word when English-speakers use it, so we can pluralize it in the manner of our own language.”

In favor of indexes

Reader comprehension is my number one priority. I think the average American will recognize indexes as the plural of index. I’m not so sure what they’ll make of indices.

Garner’s Modern American Usage says it’s pretentious to use indices. “For ordinary purpose, indexes is the preferable plural…,” says author Bryan Garner. However, he notes that indices is preferred by some writers in technical fields. If performance measurement is a technical field, then perhaps performance professionals can make a case for indices.

Indexes won in terms of number of appearances on Google. The term appears about 112 million times vs. about 88 million for indices.

Please answer the poll in the right-hand margin

What’s YOUR preference–indices or indexes? Please answer the poll in the right-hand margin of this blog. I will report on the results in my newsletter.

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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.

If you’re planning your first webinar, don’t forget to plan for audience participation. People who participate learn more and will give you better evaluations. I first

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learned this when I developed and led custom workshops on “How to Do Business with the Japanese” back in the 1980s. My financial writing workshops have only reinforced this lesson. In this post, I’ll share some practical tips I learned preparing for my first webinar.

1. Ask up front for participation

People won’t make comments or ask questions if you don’t encourage them. Tell people at the beginning of your presentation that you’d like them to participate.

2. Tell your audience where and how to pose questions

It may not be obvious to your audience where they can type in their questions. Tell them where to go. You might even point to it in one of your slides.

3. Ask them questions

Prepare questions to ask your audience early on. This will get them involved. Plus, it will give you a sense of how they’re responding to your material.

You have options.

• Polls are easy for your audience to answer.
• Yes-no questions require only a little typing.
• More complex questions can also work.

4. Don’t expect instantaneous responses by your audience

It takes time for people to input their responses, even when they simply click a button to answer your poll. Don’t get caught off guard by this. Instead, plan some patter to fill the time as you wait.

5. Encourage participation by responding

If you ask for participation, but fail to acknowledge audience participation, your audience will stop responding. Plan to integrate audience responses into your presentation. Answer their questions and mention at least some of their responses to questions you pose. I took this one step further by basing a blog post on some of the responses I received to a question I posed in a webinar.

6. Have a colleague help you

You may find it overwhelming to sort through your audience’s input. So, don’t go it alone. Ask a colleague to view the audience’s questions or answers and feed them to you. I found this very helpful in reducing my stress while I was presenting.

Can YOU add suggestions?

If you can add suggestions for attracting audience participation, please do. I look forward to hearing from you.

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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.

Quarterly investment letters are central to many asset managers’ communications with their clients. That’s why I’m asking your help in defining what makes them great.

Please answer my six-question survey. I’ll report on the results in a future blog post.

You inspired me. Thanks!

Investment professionals care intensely about these letters, as I learned when I asked members of  my LinkedIn Groups the following question:

The responses to this “one word” question inspired this survey. I feel fortunate to belong to this community. Thank you!

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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.

Investment and wealth management executives like to talk about themselves. Who doesn’t? But this hurts their firms when it’s reflected in their marketing.

Photo: World Series Boxing

What financial advisors say about you vs. me–or we

A group of financial professionals helped me test my belief that talking about “you,” the audience, is more powerful than discussing “me”–or, by extension, “we,” the company that’s marketing to you.

Here’s the question I asked participants in “The Power of You: The Secret of Great Blogs that Boost Your Readership”:

Which introduction do you prefer? Introduction #1 focused on you, the audience or Introduction #2 focused on me, Susan. Explain your choice.

Prior to asking the question, I’d introduced my webinar in two ways. In Introduction #1, I’d discussed the benefits my audience would receive from watching my webinar. In Introduction #2, I described my blogging success and other credentials related to the webinar’s topic.

You may wonder how my two introductions relate to you, if you’re a financial advisor, investment manager, or wealth manager. In my experience, many financial websites – and other marketing pieces – use Introduction #2. They are about “we, the firm,” not “you,” the prospective client.

The results? A knockout by “you”

Respondents unanimously preferred the introduction focused on “you.” Here are some of their comments about why they preferred a focus on “you” over a focus on the speaker.

• When you spoke about yourself, I stopped listening
• You connects with me, lets me know whether it’s useful
• I don’t care about you, but I do care about what I can do to be successful
• “I” sounds pompous
• It’s not about the speaker, it’s about meeting the need of the target audience.

What this means for you

When writing marketing materials or client communications for your firm,

1. Use “you” more than “we”
2. Communicate in terms of benefits to your readers more than products, services, or characteristics of your firm
3. After you write something, ask yourself, “Why will my reader care about this?” If it’s not obvious, then delete or re-write.

Which do you prefer for your company – marketing materials that use “you” or “we”? Why?

Please comment on your opinions.

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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.

I found inspiration for a model sales letter in the introduction to “How to Get to the Top and Stay There: 10 Strategies for Developing a Multiplier Mindset,” a free report available from Dan Sullivan of The Strategic Coach.

The formula goes like this:

Paragraph 1: As a [fill-in-the-blank], you are exceptional…

Paragraph 2: Like most other [fill-in-the-blank]s, you know you could go further…

Paragraph 3: How do you transcend the obstacles?…

Paragraph 4: [Fill-in-the-blank] can help.

To read a good example of this formula, register for The Strategic Coach’s free report and read the section called “Why a Multiplier Mindset?”

Sample sales letter

Here’s a letter following the model. It’s for a financial advisor who works parents worried about providing for their children’s college educations.

You’re a smart parent who knows a college education is essential for your child’s success. College graduates earn $20,000 a year more on average than high school graduates. Plus, they are more likely to find a good job and keep it. The unemployment rate of college graduates was only 2.2%–half the rate of high school graduates–in 2007.

Like most other parents, you can’t pay your children’s tuition out of your paychecks. You know you must plan and save.

But how do you figure out how much to save and the best way to save? There are so many confusing options – 529 plans, Coverdell savings accounts, and more.

Having guided many parents through the process leading to their children’s college graduation, I can help. Please contact me at XXX-XXX-XXXX or info@XXX.com for your free initial consultation.

Why this letter works

This letter works because you

1. Flatter readers at the beginning, putting them at ease.
2. Reassure readers in paragraph 2 that they’re not alone, so they shouldn’t feel ashamed to acknowledge a problem.
3. Define their problem in paragraph 3.
4. Offer a time-tested solution in paragraph 4.

If you’ve been successful with a similar formula, I’d like to hear from you. I’m also open to suggestions on how to improve the formula.

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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.

Minimize your use of adjectives and adverbs to communicate more effectively, suggests Dianna Booher in Communicate with Confidence! Instead, rely on nouns and verbs to convey your message.

Booher illustrates the power of her recommendation by comparing the following two sentences:

1. Haste makes waste.
2. Too much speed in carrying out tasks results in extra time being spent to redo things that were done inefficiently to being with.

I think you can see the difference. This comes from Tip 110 of 1,254 tips in Booher’s book.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of Booher’s book in return for agreeing to write about it.

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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.

Mind mapping has rescued me many times. “A mind map can be a complexity buster, translator, connector and simplifier,” as mentioned in the online blurb for the article discussed below.

“Mission: Map a Better Client Value Relationship” describes how one advisor uses mind maps to help clients understand why they should pay for work other than money management. Essentially, creating a mind map helps clients to visualize the value of other services provided by their advisors. This article by Gary Klaben of Proninus appeared in the Jan./Feb. issue of the Financial Planning Association’s Practice Management Solutions magazine. I suggest you read the article.

For more on mind mapping, check out the following blog posts or learn to use mind maps as a writing tool in “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Lesson Writing Class for Financial Advisors.”

• Guest post: “Why use a mind map with clients?”
• Mind mapping technology for financial advisors
• Mind mapping for brainstorming as a group

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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.

I freak out every time I have to write a new presentation. Well, not literally, but my anxiety does run wild. However, I managed to tame my most recent jitters with an exercise from life coach Cheryl Richardson.

Photo: Joe's-photos

In “Break the Spell,” Richardson says,

“The minute you start worrying about something, stop and congratulate yourself for being so present and aware. Then, put pen to paper and list at least five positive outcomes you’d most like to have happen. Keep repeating these present-focused, positive statements throughout the day and notice how the energy starts to shift.”

Here are my five positive outcomes:

1. The presentation is well-organized.
2. Each member of the audience learns something that helps them write better.
3. I come up with new ways of explaining things to people.
4. My email list expands.
5. My presentation helps me land new clients.

This exercise calmed my nerves enough that I could focus on writing my presentation. I hope it helps you, too.

If YOU have a good way to control presentation-related anxiety, I’d love to learn your tips.

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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.

Financial writers and compliance departments are often at odds. But the two sides must learn to get along. Nobody wins if flat writing turns off prospective clients. Or if marketers create unrealistic expectations in the minds of current or prospective clients.

Photo: winged photography

“Weasel words” help writers and compliance officers coexist. Writers can often defuse compliance officers’ anxieties about guarantees by using words and phrases such as “may,” “we believe,” and “seek to.”

Disclosures are another tool. However, long disclosures are daunting. Sometimes I’d rather delete a topic than introduce a scary disclosure. For example, I’d talk about an investment strategy without referring to the mutual fund using the strategy.

Capitulation is the path taken by some. I don’t recommend that writers always cave in to compliance officers. Caving in is easy, but it doesn’t serve your material well. Sometimes compliance officers’ suggestions are based on their editorial preferences rather than a perception of legal or regulatory risk. When you point this out, compliance professionals are often open to negotiation.

Sometimes you can call in back-up. It’s helpful if a senior person in your organization backs you up by saying, “Our business is willing to take the risk of not making changes.” I’ve also achieved good results by presenting examples of similar companies with sterling reputations using the language questioned by my compliance officer.

I’m curious to learn more about how other writers–and compliance professionals–cope. Please answer the poll asking, “What’s your favorite way to make your financial writing acceptable to compliance?” You’ll find the poll in the right-hand column of my blog.

Here are your potential answers:

• Add disclosures
• Cave in to every request by compliance
• Insert “may” in sentences challenged by compliance
• Insert “we believe” at the beginning of sentences challenged by compliance
• Negotiate the most important points, cave in on the rest
• Say your business is willing to accept the risks of publishing without changes
• [Your own answer]

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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.