InvestCloud Tip: Better Blogging - 4 Key Content Types You Should Be Using

NewThink 4/28/14 Better Blogging Effect – Rating the 4 Content Types In last week’s article, “Turning Visitors into Clients”, we discussed social media not yet being a big deal for our industry’s demographic, with the one exception of blogging.

According to one survey 85% of participants believe a blog helps establish a vendor’s credibility. The data shows that if your firm posts high-value, insightful content that others are sharing, a blog raises your company’s profile in the buyer’s mind substantially.

This week we will look at 4 types of blog content and the relative effectiveness of each in building audience integrity. It is based on traffic analysis of 422 blog posts published over a two-year span. The goal of the study was to find out what kinds of content drove the most traffic, both short and long term, and which kinds of content have the longest “shelf-life.”

The 4 types of Blog content examined were: 1) Topical - news as well as blog articles based on timely market events; 2) Promotional - posts about firm products or services; 3) Knowledge - posts that may be educational but without providing instructional advice (e.g. white papers, case studies, testimonials); 4) Instructional - how-to posts and ‘listicles’ (a short-form of writing that uses a list as its thematic structure, e.g. “5 Things to Look for in a Value Stock.”)

While clients find each of these content types valuable, as some are more time intensive than others, each must be considered based on the type of value they bring to your site. Here are the primary takeaways: Topical posts have a short shelf life. The analysis suggests that within weeks of the initial posting, this type of post will not likely be visited again. As common sense would suggest, posts that have a time-sensitive nature lose their value pretty quickly. But it is also the kind of content that suggests to your clients that your firm is “in-touch” and aware of current market activity. It is for this reason that InvestCloud suggests that a firm uses the most time effective means of creating it by linking to a current item of interest with no more than a paragraph of comment.

Promotional posts show a similar pattern. This suggests that it is important to evaluate these kinds of posts on the basis of the business effect. Do product or service inquiries immediately follow? Otherwise avoid these types of post as they

can damage any intent to show your firm as an objective voice. This is particularly true in an industry where fee and pricing relationships are often part of a firm’s branding message. A hybrid of this content type is the press release. While press releases are by definition promotional, if they are reserved for information that is newsworthy, they may be accorded of the higher value of knowledge or instructional content types that follow.

Knowledge posts have greater traction over time. The study confirmed that thought leadership pieces like white papers would generate more readers over time. The entire archive of blog posts geared toward sharing information and insights drew more traffic than all of the pieces published in the previous month.

Instructional posts had the strongest showing. While knowledge content is a long-term traffic driver, it was eclipsed by instructional blogs. Over the two-year reporting period, the traffic going to instructional blog content began to resemble a bell curve, with visits outpacing the rate at which posts were being added to the archive. Because people generally tend to go to the Internet to search for answers, it’s not surprising that Google favors solution-based, instructive content.

Conclusions: The practical implications of this for the blogging decisions of money managers and advisors are these: 1) Because of its short shelf life, if you are going to use Topical news based market content, plan on doing it with a low time cost “tweet” like approach – a brief comment and article link. 2) Regarding promotional content, do not do it too often. 3) For longer shelf life, knowledge and instructional content make your choices based on your firm’s internal resources.

If you have staff that can produce effective thought leadership content exploit that. For the instructional content, remember to keep it simple. Things like “The top 5 signs of a market bottom” or “3 Reasons we like ETF’s” etc. 4) Mix it up. If possible, if you can use all 4 types it can show your firm as having more depth and scope than any single type.

If you would like to have InvestCloud review your current blog or score your website using our 100-point cScore, or learn more about how our amazing applets can help you build an advanced portal for your clients, visit us at www.investcloud.com or click here to request a demo.