Guest post: “What’s a tomato got to do with getting your fund discovered?”

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Mutual fund marketing is the focus of this week’s guest post by Dan Sondhelm. His post originally appeared on SunStar Strategic’s FundFactor blog.

What’s a tomato got to do with getting your fund discovered?

by Dan Sondhelm

Have you ever grown a tomato? If so, you know it’s not as simple as just putting a seed in the ground. In fact, passionate tomato farmers often start their seedlings indoors several weeks before planting season. Once outside, they need a good dose of sunshine and the right amount of water, not to mention great soil, shelter from chill winds and a strong trellis. You get the idea.
Growing a fund requires similar specialized knowledge and attention. According to Morningstar, in the open-end mutual fund industry of over $7 trillion assets, the top 10 fund firms hold 58%. That’s one big tomato! The next 40 hold 28%, while you and the remaining 600 plus firms compete for the remaining 14%. And, fund flows follow a similar pattern.
In the past few weeks, I’ve been privileged to speak on panels addressing distribution for smaller funds. I’ve met dozens of smaller fund managers there. Some are managers with unique investment processes. Others are experts in their asset classes, still others have amazing performance. Yet, they’re frustrated by lack of fund flows, anxious about mounting expenses and hungry for ideas about how to get the recognition they deserve in this crowded market place. So, how do you differentiate your fund from the others and get discovered?

Like growing tomatoes, gaining visibility – and resultant sales – requires commitment. As a small firm, you’re competing for attention with firms who spend significant dollars on their marketing activities, both in the advisor market and at the retail level. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for TV commercials, glossy magazine style annual reports and sponsorships with major distribution platforms and public venues.

Making the Commitment to Grow.
Distribution is at the heart of the potential for success. But just getting on platforms is the equivalent of tossing your tomato seed in the dirt and hoping for the best. Successful distribution lies in nurturing the effort. Like adding water and light, protecting from the frost and spraying for bugs, growing your fund requires consistent attention. You have to ensure you’re in the right channels, and that advisors and investors know you, know your people and know your products.

We understand smaller firms are often made up of a handful of people. Not all firms can afford a wholesaling staff or have resources to sustain a significant marketing presence. So, how do you make it work?

Design a Distribution Strategy.
Write it down. Make someone accountable for each step. We all know that what gets measured gets done. Traditional marketing wisdom says you must address the four P’s: Product, Price, Place (Platforms), Promotion. This applies to fund distribution, too. But what about a fifth P, Performance? It’s true, not many investors will flock to a poor performing fund, but relying solely on performance is risky business. While performance may get you your 15 minutes of fame, performance chasers will drop your fund for the next hot item if they don’t really understand your investment philosophy and process or know the fund manager well.

Cover all the bases
Product

• Build a story around your investment process that highlights the opportunities of your asset class and process and differentiates you from your competition.
• Add personality by discussing your current sector strategy and top investment selections. Let investors know about the good decisions you’ve made in the past and the fund’s current positioning.
• And of course, commit to excellent performance.
Price
• Set competitive pricing – You’ll notice I didn’t say lower than average. Many managers think this is important, but many funds with lower-than-average expenses don’t sell. What does matter is how your fund compares overall to other funds that are selling.
• Set your share classes so that you are priced appropriately for the advisor types you are targeting. The preponderance of flows are going to no-load and load-waived shares. For smaller firms without existing relationships or sales teams, no load may be the way to go.
Place (Platforms)
• Select the distribution channels and share classes that make sense for your fund.
• Get on Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, and Pershing – these are the most appropriate for smaller firms with limited distribution. Then, establish a relationship with your account manager, who can guide you through the maze of opportunities available to reach platform advisors.
• Be realistic in your expectations. If you have no prior relationships with wirehouse firms, you are too small to meet their criteria and/or there is no demand from their representatives, it’s unlikely they will add you to their platform in the short term.
Promotion
• Establish relationships with advisor firm research teams to get and stay on their radar. Where applicable, find out and work toward meeting criteria to be placed on preferred/recommended lists.
• Take advantage of marketing opportunities offered by some platforms. Develop a strong relationship with your account manager so you are alerted to and aware of opportunities for proprietary mailings or sponsorship opportunities at local and national events.
• Consider Virtual Wholesaling – use third party endorsements and technology to communicate with advisors in a structured and timely way to attract and retain investors, while building your brand.
o Proactively engage the media. Let the financial press sell you; third-party endorsed news coverage in national and local business publications adds credibility.
o Leverage third-party endorsed reprints in your other sales and marketing efforts, in print, through social networks and on your website.
o Keep your website up to date with timely commentary and news coverage. Regularly post themes about your fund and the good decisions you made. If your site doesn’t allow you to add timely information, upgrade it. Advisors won’t come back if there is nothing new.
o Communicate. Regular communication with advisors is critical in order to keep your story top of mind. Consistently offering useful, meaningful information will position you in their minds as the expert on certain topics.
o Use monthly email newsletters to drive advisors to new content and fresh ideas on your website such as recent commentaries, Webinar promotions and media coverage.
o Host Webinars or conference calls for advisors on a quarterly basis.
o Take advantage of platform outreach programs to stay in front of their advisors; many of these are free.
o Develop a social media strategy to distribute timely information in the networks investors frequent. Social media allows you to listen to shareholder concerns and become part of the conversation.
Growth will happen if you take the right steps. Like a tomato, the more care and attention you provide, the greater the likelihood for success. Healthy growth depends a great deal on creating relationships. With today’s email, internet and social media opportunities, expanding your reach is easier than ever before. Make a commitment to building strong relationships where advisors and investors can learn to trust and respect your firm and its expertise.
Dan Sondhelm provides personalized services to money management firms and service providers, REITs, public companies and pre-IPO companies seeking to attract and retain investors. Dan is also the executive editor of the company’s online blog, Fund Factor.

Six tips for snaring reporters with your market commentary

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Chief investment officers, strategists, and portfolio managers sink a lot of energy and brain power into their quarterly market commentary. If you’re among them, your return on investment should include greater visibility in the media.

Here are six tips to help you achieve your publicity goal.

1. Publish your investment commentary – or at least some brief observations – prior to quarter-end.

Most newspapers publish their quarterly stock and bond market report the day after quarter-end. So they must conduct their interviews before asset management firms receive final benchmark returns and other analytical inputs. Journalists can’t wait for you to polish your commentary. Consider writing a first draft of your quarterly commentary two to three weeks prior to quarter-end, so you can send it to reporters on the timetable that works best for them, not you.

In calm markets, you may only need to drop in benchmark returns after quarter-end. This was often the case when I wrote economic as well as stock and bond market commentary with Columbia Management’s chief investment strategist. Even in volatile times, you’re unlikely to find yourself discarding all of your pre-quarter-end writing.

2. “Think different.”

Just as Apple successfully, although ungrammatically, markets itself as different from other computers, you should stress to reporters how your views differ from other investment commentators.

This is easiest when, for example, the crowd fears inflation, but you foresee deflation. But even when you agree with the consensus, you can distinguish yourself with a striking analogy, statistic, or sound bite.

3. Make it easy for reporters to grasp your market commentary’s main points.

Just like you, journalists are busy, so they may only skim your headline or first paragraph. Don’t title your piece “Fourth Quarter 2010 Commentary” or lead with “During the fourth quarter, the S&P 500 returned X.X%…” Instead, smack the reader with your most interesting point. For example, “Trading volume indicators suggest a less volatile 2011.”

Follow your provocative headline with a brief summary of your main points. A few bullet points may make your introduction easier to scan.

4. Connect electronically with reporters.

Your commentary will get stale if you wait to send a professionally printed copy via U.S. mail. This is why I recommend email and social media.

As for email, you’ll get better results if you ask reporters’ permission before adding them to your quarterly email. Plus, a phone call gives you the opportunity to start a personal relationship with the reporters by asking about their “beats” (the topics they cover) and what kinds of sources they need.

Social media are also a great way to circulate your commentary. LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can get broader exposure for your compliance-approved material with little additional effort or legal risk.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to post your commentary as your Linked In status update, as I explained in “How can I post my investment commentary on LinkedIn?”

5. Find reporters who are looking for you.

Your professional association may have a media relations manager who fields requests from reporters looking for sources. Wearing my reporter hat, I’ve often contacted the CFA Institute, Financial Planning Association, and National Association of Personal Financial Advisors for help finding sources. Some associations send email blasts to any members who sign up. Others hand-pick interviewees. Some handle PR locally; others work best at the national level. Contact your professional association to ask how its PR activities work.

6. Make it easy for reporters to work with you.

  • Reply promptly to journalists’ inquiries. They’re almost always in a hurry.
  • Give your full name, title, company name, city, state, and phone number in your emails to ensure any article gets your details right. This also makes it easy for the reporter to contact you with follow-up questions.
  • Listen carefully to reporters’ questions before answering them.
  • Offer to email related materials to the reporter. Sometimes a graph or table can earn you bigger play in an article.

What are you waiting for? You can start today by posting your firm’s third quarter commentary as your LinkedIn status.

Image courtesy of Sujin Jetkasettakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

Lessons from “Presentation Skills for Investment Professionals”

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You can never learn too much about how to give an effective presentation, especially about weighty topics such as investment management. That’s why I logged into “Presentation Skills for Investment Professionals,” a recent presentation to the CFA Institute by Dave Underhill of Underhill Training & Development.

Some of Dave’s advice resonated with advice I give my writing students. For example, don’t get deep into details before you tell your audience the value of what you’re discussing.

Boil down the tsunami

“Take a tsunami of data and boil it down to most important point,” said Dave. It’s a mixed metaphor, but I love his point. Look at the data and pretend you’re an audience member asking “So what? Why should I care about this?”

This is a topic I’ve addressed in “Focus on benefits, not features, in your marketing.” As I say in my writing workshops, your audience is looking for the WIIFM, which is short for “What’s In It For Me.”

Leave time for questions

Don’t make your presentations too long. Allow time for questions, suggested Dave.

Figure that one PowerPoint slide will 60-90 seconds to discuss. For goodness sakes, don’t READ your slides, as I did when I first started speaking in public.

Show, don’t just tell

Among the techniques that Dave uses to improve the power of his presentations are:

  1. Telling a story
  2. Using numbers, not just words — I suggest you use a graph, rather than a simple table, if your data lends itself to a more visually appealing display
  3. Using gestures to demonstrate your ideas

Go the extra mile

I was very touched that Dave took the time to email an answer to the question I’d sent in. It was a question without broad audience appeal, but he answered anyhow. That’s a classy thing to do.

To learn more of Dave’s tips, register to watch the replay of “Presentations Skills for Investment Professionals.”

Blogging buddies: Financial bloggers’ secret weapons

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A blogging buddy could save your blog.

You probably know a financial planner, investment manager, or wealth manager whose blog started off strong, only to peter away after a few months. If you work well with a coach or other outsiders holding you accountable, a blogging buddy can keep you on track.

How it works: Buddies 101

You and your blogging buddy set goals. For example, your goal could be to post weekly to your blog or to draft at least five posts per month.

Next, you schedule regular check-ins with your buddy to report on your progress. You can communicate by phone, email, or whatever works for you.

Often this accountability is enough to keep bloggers on schedule. If it’s not, you can schedule brainstorming phone calls or meetings to break through your roadblocks. Sometimes talking about a problem will help you find a solution.

Taking it to the next level: Buddies 201

Advanced-level buddies give you feedback on your drafts in addition to holding you accountable.

Your buddy’s value depends on their expertise. A fellow financial professional can critique the accuracy of your content. A referral source or prospect can assess how effectively your content communicates their WIIFM (what’s in it for me). A good editor can tweak your grammar, punctuation, and writing style. If you’re lucky, you’ll find all of these skills in one person.

Potential buddy bonus

Find the right buddy, and you may gain a guest blogger in addition to accountability and editorial input. Blog posts from a non-competing financial advisor can relieve the grind of producing compelling posts week after week. The same thing goes for blog posts from professionals in allied fields. In fact, they can even draw more traffic to your blog.

Leave a comment below if you’re a financial planning, investment management, or wealth management professional who seeks a blogging buddy. Perhaps you’ll find a buddy among those who comment.

Image courtesy of Kevin Dooley via flickr

Effective writing and blogging is faster with a plan

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Effective writing takes time. This is true even for short pieces such as blog posts. So don’t beat yourself up if you feel as if you’re rowing upstream instead of kicking up wake as you speed ahead.

It took me slightly less than an hour to type, input, and proofread “Poll: “Investable” or “investible”–which spelling is correct?” my Sept. 7 blog post. That’s fast. At least for me.

I was able to write this quickly because I had a plan, which included:

  1. Clearly defining my topic as “Which spelling is correct?”
  2. Knowing where I’d do my research–I would pull references off my bookcase and do Google searches
  3. Having a structure in mind: First, the case for one spelling, then the case for the other spelling, and finally asking for readers’ opinions–This structure would work no matter what my research showed

These tips also helped me to create 31 posts for my May 2010 Blogathon. I posted daily to my blog for an entire month, including a 10-day vacation.

What plan do YOU use to speed up your writing or blogging? If you lack a plan, then sign up for “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read.” You’ll learn a powerful process for writing blog posts.

Guest post: “How Seeking Alpha Can Build Your Professional Reputation”

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SeekingAlpha.com looks like a great way for investment professionals to share their opinions and market themselves. So when I met Geoff Considine and learned he’d done exactly that, I asked him to guest-blog about his experience.

How Seeking Alpha Can Build Your Professional Reputation

by Geoff Considine

Writing for SeekingAlpha.com has helped me develop my professional reputation and gain attention for my quantitative modeling software and consulting services. Financial professionals can build a substantial brand from SeekingAlpha.  Quite a few writers, advisors, consultants, and others have developed enormous reach on the basis of SeekingAlpha.  I am certainly not even among the most successful.

If I can do it, so can you, especially if you follow the six rules I give at the end of this article.

My experience publishing on SeekingAlpha.com

I have been writing for SeekingAlpha.com since January 2006.  At that time, I had fairly recently launched a software tool for financial advisors and individual investors and I was trying to drum up some attention.  All in, I have written 127 articles on SeekingAlpha.com, even though I have not written for them since September 2009.  I have written a lot over the last year, but I have developed a sufficiently deep audience that I have only been writing for advisor-focused publications such as Advisor Perspectives.  I am quite confident that I never would have been able to write for these professional publications without the experience and reputation gained from writing for SeekingAlpha.com.

Quantext, my small company, gets about 100,000 hits a month on its website in a good month.  I sell software and e-books, along with doing consulting on analytical models for portfolio management and asset allocation.  The only marketing that I have ever done for my business is writing—and SeekingAlpha.com was the only place that I published articles (aside from my own website) in the first couple of years of building out the software side of my business.

Once something is published on a site like SA, people will go back and look at what you have said in the past—it’s a fairly permanent record.  This can be great when your thinking is validated, but can pose reputational risk if you make some outlandish statement.  Back in 2007, for example, one of The Motley Fool’s best-known columnists came out and said that he risk measures such as Beta and volatility just didn’t matter at all, not matter what all the academics say.  His timing was very unfortunate.  Investors who ignored standard risk measures are likely to have suffered disproportionately large losses in the subsequent decline.  This type of reputational risk is quite easy to avoid if you stay away from making assertions in articles that strain common sense or that fly in the face of all standards of practice.

One of the ways to build credibility with articles is to identify thought leaders with whom your thinking is consistent.  One of my early articles looked at Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio using my portfolio analysis software.  My software identified a number of ways that Berkshire’s portfolio looked very attractive.  If my analysis had suggested that Warren Buffett didn’t know what he was doing, I would have had something of a problem.  I have also analyzed portfolios and strategies proposed by David Swensen (head of Yale’s endowment), Mohammed El-Erian (co-head of PIMCO), and Jeremy Grantham.

The previous paragraph notwithstanding, I am not suggesting that writers steer away from controversy.  If you can make a really solid case for a contrarian theme and publish it in an open forum, you can really stake out territory for your thought leadership.  One of my major early themes that I wrote about in 2006-2007 was that there were a number of really robust reasons to believe that market volatility would skyrocket.  This theme in a number of my SA articles got the attention of an editor at Kiplinger’s and resulted in an interview that appeared in the magazine in early 2008.  As the market conditions have evolved, my writing on this theme has continued to get me very positive attention.

If SA is so great, why don’t I publish much there anymore?  The answer is that I have found that my audience is mainly professional advisors, there are better publications to reach this targeted audience, and I get paid to write these days.  There is a significant opportunity cost for me to write a piece for SA.  If I have more time on my hands in the future, I would certainly put more pieces in SA.

How YOU can thrive on SeekingAlpha.com

There are a few guidelines that I would offer for financial professionals who want to use Seeking Alpha to develop their professional brands:

1)     Make sure that you have something to say, and good arguments to support your ideas

2)     Craft your writing carefully

3)     Use feedback on your articles to develop your writing style

4)     Respond to comments—be an active member of the community

5)     Write regularly and consistently

6)     Learn your special niche

Seeking Alpha can be a powerful channel for reaching your audience, but you need a long-term strategy for how to tap this channel.  If you simply plan to write one article, SA won’t do much for you.  If you write a consistent series of articles that is well articulated and make sense, SA can be enormously powerful.  When I started writing there, I thought of SA as a somewhat narrow channel for getting my ideas out there.  Whether or not I was correct then I am not sure, but this is certainly not the case today.  SA has enormous reach.

no, No, NO: My business card shouldn’t add me to your e-newsletter list

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“When people give you their business cards, you’re in a relationship, so you can add them to your e-newsletter list.”

Photo by Almoko


I disagree with the statement above. But I’ve heard it from many people.

Technically speaking, you may not violate the CAN-SPAM Act if you email everyone who gives you their card. But, in my opinion, you’re violating the spirit of the law. You’re also making me unhappy.

I use two techniques to keep my conscience clean.

When I meet people, I ask if I can add them to my e-newsletter distribution. I tell them they may enjoy the newsletter’s tips for client communications and articles on investment and wealth managers. For prospective clients, the newsletter is a gentle reminder of my availability, so they can find me once they need a writer.

If I obtain an email address, but forget to discuss my newsletter, I send an email asking if they’d like to subscribe. I include a link to a sample issue.

Rather than force people to sign themselves up, I offer to do it for them. “Just hit ‘reply’ to this message and send me an empty email. I’ll add you to my distribution.” This is a technique I learned from Andrea Novakowski, a coach. Interestingly, most people write a brief message in reply to my newsletter subscription offer.

Maybe I’m too conservative. I don’t automatically add my clients to my newsletter distribution. I treat them as I’d like to be treated.

Guide to e-newsletters

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If you have questions about e-newsletters, mosey on over to “The freelancer’s guide to e-newsletters” on Michelle Rafter’s WordCount blog. I’m quoted extensively in answers to questions including

  • What’s so great about e-newsletters?
  • How long should it be?
  • What kind of software can I use?
  • How can I get subscribers?

If you’re a financial blogger, you can recycle your blog posts in your newsletter, perhaps adding one unique bit of content for your subscribers.

It takes time to build an e-newsletter email list. Even if you don’t think you need one yet, start building your newsletter now.

Guest post: “Generate Quality, Low Cost Leads with Facebook Ads”

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Kristin Harad’s video series on marketing for financial advisors caught my eye-especially because she talks about niche marketing. I’m a big believer in niche marketing.  So I was delighted when she offered to write a guest post for my blog.

By coincidence, Kristin’s guest post arrived not long after a wealth management firm executive suggested to me that Facebook ads could be a powerful tool for financial advisors.


Generate Quality, Low Cost Leads with Facebook Ads

by Kristin Harad, CFP®

Adding new prospects to your sales funnel can be a costly endeavor for financial advisors.  Workshops, mailings and other tactics can be effective, but the cost-per-lead from these channels is often quite high.  Recently, I’ve discovered how to effectively use a new marketing channel that’s been right under my nose to bring in a steady stream of quality leads at an incredibly low cost:  Facebook.

Now, you probably know that Facebook has become the second largest Web site in the world and last month it was all over the news for registering its 500 millionth user.  But what you perhaps didn’t know is that Facebook also offers an incredible self-service advertising platform that is an absolutely amazing tool for laser-targeting ads to your precise audience.  There are four reasons I really love Facebook Ads:

1)  It’s really easy to create and manage ads.  No technical nor design expertise required.
2)  You can target practically any niche.  Target your ads by location, demographics and interests. You can reach your EXACT audience.
3) It’s highly effective. Put together a well thought-through campaign and you can move people through your sales funnel to becoming paying clients!
4)  It’s really cheap! You don’t pay anything for impressions and some of our ads cost just six cents per click!  I’m adding targeted prospects to my marketing database at a cost of just 83 cents each.

It’s fast and easy to start testing your own Facebook Ads campaign.

Start by going to www.facebook.com/ads where you can sign up online in just a few minutes and instantly begin creating ads that appear on nearly every page of Facebook.  It’s very easy to create the ads — you can make one in just a couple minutes and you don’t need to have any technical or design expertise.

Be sure to design at least five different ads so that you can test different ideas to see which performs best.  The headline and the image you use in your ads have the most impact on click-through rates, so write a few very pithy headlines.  Images of people generally attract better click-through rates.  The more often people click on your ad, the more it will be shown and Facebook will actually reward you with a much lower price.

Next, and most importantly, think carefully about how to target your ad.

Start with location.  My firm mostly serves families within 25 miles of San Francisco, so in the Location section, I target by City, then type in San Francisco and select cities within 25 miles.  Under demographics, identify who your best potential clients are.

Next comes age, relationship status, likes and interests. Since I work with expectant parents and young families, most of my clients are between their late 20s and early 40s, so I put 28 – 44 as the age bracket.  I choose ALL for relationship status, especially since many people on Facebook don’t state theirs.  However, many advisors base their niche off of relationship status, so it can be a really power way to target.  (If you are focused on couples who are getting married, think of the precise messaging you can deliver when you target people who are engaged!)  Then, you’ll come to the small Likes & Interests section, which is where the real power targeting comes from.  This identifies users by what they have placed on their own Facebook page, and you can target them based on practically anything!

As an example, I put in ‘pregnant’ and ‘pregnancy’ as two keywords.  Based on what I picked for location, age, gender and these two keywords, Facebook estimates that my ad will reach 2,200 people.  That’s 2,200 pregnant women between 28 – 44 in the San Francisco Bay Area — my exact customer demographic!  You can’t find that kind of precision anywhere else.  More importantly, now that I know exactly who is going to see these ads, I can write messages that speak directly to them.  For instance, “Pregnant in San Francisco?” or “What New Bay Area Moms Must Know.”  It’s pretty easy to catch my audience’s attention when I know exactly who they are.  Plus, I can quickly create other ad campaigns that micro-target other groups, like expectant fathers or parents of a kindergartner.

These ads work incredibly well for me.  Dozens of people click on them each day, visiting special pages on my Web site that I’ve set up for them.  About 1-in-5 visitors take a further action on my Web site, like subscribing to my email newsletter or signing up for the monthly events that I hold.   It’s critical that you design a Web page with a specific action in mind for these visitors.  Send them to your company’s home page and they will bounce off without spending two minutes on your site.  But, if you offer an informative and relevant free report in exchange for their email address, they will opt-in to your marketing database by the dozens!

That’s what makes Facebook a great way to fill the top of the sales funnel.  Is anyone going to click on a small ad and instantly purchase complex financial products for thousands of dollars?  Of course not!  But by structuring a well-thought out campaign that is designed to pull targeted prospects into the start of my sales funnel, I can begin to form a relationship with them that will evolve over the months ahead and I absolutely convert a portion of these leads into paying clients over time!

Finally, Facebook ads are incredibly low cost.  You can set your own budget, and I’m only spending about $25 per day.  You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, and the price is usually well under one dollar per click.  I think it’s a great marketing tool that is absolutely worth experimenting with, so give it a try today at www.facebook.com/ads.

About the Author:  Kristin Harad, CFP® is the President of VitaVie Financial Planning, a fee-only financial planning firm in San Francisco.  She offers a free video series on marketing strategies for financial advisors at http://www.next10clients.com.

Great blog posts don’t matter…

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…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. If you’ve found a LinkedIn group that gets good traffic, then share your post there.

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.

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.

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 “How to guest-blog on personal finance or investments, Part I: Your approach” and “Part II Blogs that accept posts from financial advisors.”

If you’re not using any of these methods, it’s time to re-think your approach to blogging.