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.

Are YOU the one?

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Ever wondered if you could improve your financial or investment blog posts?

You can benefit from a FREE critique by a professional financial writer whose clients include leading investment and wealth management firms. That’s me.

Some of your colleagues have bravely volunteered their blog posts for my review. I’ve written about the strengths–and opportunities for improvement–in Nathan Gehring’s “And About That Financial Plan” and Jonathan Smith’s “Opportunity Arriving Daily” in the Discussion section of my Facebook business page.

When you read my recommendations, you’ll get ideas about how to tweak your own posts.

To volunteer for a critique

If you’re a financial advisor who’d like to volunteer for a gentle critique of a blog post you’ve already published, please email me at info@investmentwriting.com with
* Your name
* Contact information
* Link to your published post

My gentle critique of a financial advisor’s already-published post is intended to be a monthly feature in the Discussion section of this Facebook page. That means there are only 12 openings each year.

Feeling shy?

It’s no problem if you feel too shy to learn in public. You can sign up for “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Teleclass for Financial Advisors.” If you sign up by 12 midnight on AUGUST 31, you’ll pay the Early Bird rate.

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.

A top technique of financial advisors who blog successfully

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Financial advisors, don’t post it and forget it.

If the only thing you do with your blog posts is upload them to your blog, you limit your audience. Instead, recycle your content and make it available in other formats that your target market enjoys. Recycling is a powerful technique that helps financial advisors’ ROI on blogging.

It’s easy to expand your audience with a little extra effort, including

  1. Offering an email subscription to your individual blog posts–Many people still prefer receiving their reading matter via email instead of visiting your blog, Twitter, or an RSS feed. Google Feedburner is a popular choice for bloggers who want to offer this option. Feedburner delivers each post individually.
  2. Offering a monthly e-newsletter made up of articles from from your blog–This allows you to emphasize the posts of greatest interest to your target audience. You can also add content that appears only in your newsletter, to give blog readers an incentive to subscribe. You can use a service such as Constant Contact or MailChimp for newsletters.
  3. Packaging posts into an e-book or special report–This is how I create Investment Writing Top Tips, the e-book that my new e-newsletter subscribers receive in appreciation of their subscriptions.
  4. Post links to your posts via social media, including LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. You’ll find some of the details of how to use your LinkedIn status line in “Reader question: How do I post my investment commentary to LinkedIn?“
  5. Printing out appropriate posts to share with clients, prospects, and referral sources–If you’re meeting with a client whose main concern is saving for her children’s college education, you’ll make an impression if you can hand her some of your blog posts on that topic.
  6. Turning blog posts into audio or video–I expanded on my original blog post content when I created my audiocast on “How to Guest-Blog on Personal Finance Or Investments.” I may pick up some audience members who prefer to listen to content.
  7. Turning your content into presentations–I remember the first time I turned my former employer’s quarterly client letter into PowerPoint slides with graphs. It was the same old words, but the salespeople and relationship managers responded with such enthusiasm I felt as if I’d invented something brand new.

Do you recycle your posts in another way? Please share in the comments section.

If you’re not already reusing your financial blog posts, start today!

Three writing lessons from “One Trader’s Binge on Cocoa Wraps Up Chocolate Market”

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Some of us will read about hedge fund managers even if they’re written about in prose as dry as the Sahara. But many people won’t. This is why I’m discussing “One Trader’s Binge on Cocoa Wraps Up Chocolate Market” by Julia Werdigier and Julie Creswell in today’s New York Times (free registration may be required for access to the article). As I type this blog post, this article on the front page of The New York Times is its “most emailed.”

Photo by Profound Whatever

Here are three writing lessons from the article.

Lesson 1: Use colorful images. “To some, he is a real-life Willy Wonka. To others, he is a Bond-style villain bent on taking over the world’s supply of chocolate,” write the authors in the opening paragraph. This immediately draws in readers who may not care about hedge funds. Of course, the fact that hedge fund manager Anthony Ward is buying cocoa, an essential ingredient in chocolate, lends itself to tasty images.

Lesson 2: Explain numbers in everyday terms. “”By one estimate, he has bought enough to make more than five billion chocolate bars,” says the article. That’s a much more colorful image than “7 percent of annual cocoa production worldwide.”

Lesson 3: Get your main point across quickly. By the end of the first column, I learned that “.. hedge fund manager …named Anthony Ward has all but cornered the market in cocoa….and rival traders are crying foul, saying Mr. Ward is stockpiling cocoa in a bid to drive up already high prices so he can sell later at a big profit. His activities have helped drive cocoa prices on the London market to a 30-year high.”

Bonus suggestion: If you’re looking for writing tips, especially for short articles such as blog posts, analyze newspaper articles. The best newspaper articles offer great role models.

A great financial article isn’t enough

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A great financial article that you find online does NOT make a great blog post. At least not by itself. It simply gets you to the starting line of writing your blog post.

Photo by Diana the Math

It’s an excellent idea to link to a provocative or helpful article, as many financial advisors do. But your job is not complete when you post the website address to access a web page or an Adobe Acrobat file. You must also give your reader at least one reason to click on the link.

You can

  1. Explain why you feel the way you do about the link–You may agree or disagree with author’s point of view. It’s fine to link to articles with which you disagree.
  2. Briefly summarize the article’s relevant points–Many people will be too lazy to click through.

You may think it’s enough to share articles that you like because you’re giving readers a sense of who you are. But link-only communication works better on Twitter. It looks funny on a blog.

You needn’t invest lots of time to turn a link into a blog post. Imagine you’re talking with a client or friend about the article in your blog post. Write out your thoughts and you’ve got a blog post.

Before and after examples

I’ll illustrate what you can do by outlining a blog post based on “A Market Forecast That Says ‘Take Cover,’ ” a column by Jeff Sommer in The New York Times.

BEFORE

Here’s how the minimalist blogger presented Sommer’s article.

You probably don’t feel inspired to click on the link. You may even feel irritated that the blogger expects you to act on so little information.

Next, I’ll sketch an outline of how you blog the same article.

AFTER

In just three paragraphs the “after” example gives readers a sense of the blogger’s opinion. They may be intrigued enough to click through. Or, they may prefer to ponder the blogger’s point of view.

Make sure you express an opinion when you write a blog post that focuses on an article you admire.

My 20 seconds of fame on the ASJA home page

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The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) is an excellent networking organization. I’ve made some great friends through my membership.

A blurb about my blog appears for today only on the ASJA home page.Thank you, ASJA!

But I have been lax. I need to update the ASJA directory with my new blog URL, which is http://www.InvestmentWriting.com/blog.

If you’ve changed some of your URLs lately, are they up-to-date everywhere they should be?

First, pick your target market and niche

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Scattershot marketing of your investment or financial advisory services will sap your energy. Plus, it makes it harder for you to distinguish yourself from your gazillion competitors. This is why I’d like you to pick your target market —the group of people whom you target—and niche, meaning the services you provide, before you write any marketing materials, including your blog.

Don’t know how to choose your target market or niche? “Why People Buy What You’re Selling,” Chapter 2 of Michael Port’s Book Yourself Solid offers exercises that will help.

“What are your clients’ compelling desires?” asks Port in this chapter. Understanding the answer to this question is a key to your marketing—and blogging—success.

Knowing your target market, niche, and your clients’ “compelling desires” will tell you who to address in your blog and which benefits of your services you should stress.

Edited July 21, thanks to comment from Ben.

Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.

FINRA/SEC compliance guidance for bloggers

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Photo by Steffe

Registered representatives and registered investment advisors (RIAs) fall under two different regulators when they blog. Reps must grapple with FINRA’s regulations, while RIAs enjoy more freedom under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as I learned from Bill Winterberg’s guest post in December 2008. Do things right because “You can be sure that FINRA is going to start including social media reviews in their next round of examinations,” as attorney Mark Astarita said in “Advisors Allowed To Get Social.” That goes for the SEC, too.

However, if you treat your blog posts as sales literature or advertising, you’re unlikely to run into problems with your compliance department. This is true whether you’re a rep or an RIA. This has implications for your content, administrative processes, and recordkeeping.

You’ll find some guidelines below. Don’t rely solely on this blog post for guidance because I only skim the surface. Always check first with your compliance officer. If you’re the compliance officer, it’s important to monitor compliance developments for more details–and because standards may change quickly. You’ll find compliance resources at the bottom of this blog post.

Content: No recommendations

“The bottom line here is do not make specific recommendations in any of your communications.  You should keep your comments, posts, and interactions general in nature if you are referring to anything that is financially related,” says Stephanie Sammons, CEO of Wired Advisor, in “The Good News/Bad News of FINRA’s Social Media Guidelines Release.”

If you’re regulated by the SEC, you should observe the following policies when writing content, as summed up by Triplestop LLC’s Joe Polidoro in “Social Networking for RIA’s.”

  • Disclose all material facts
  • Don’t publish testimonials–When you wander off your blog, this includes LinkedIn recommendations, Twitter favorites, and the Facebook “like”
  • Don’t use “RIA” improperly

Polidoro also stresses that, aside from crafting your content carefully, you monitor your sites frequently so you can remove testimonials and other noncompliant content, keep records (see more details below), and develop and post your social media policy.

Some SEC compliance tips I picked up include during my dealings with compliance professionals include

  • Never make guarantees
  • Use “we believe” to make statements more palatable to your compliance officer
  • Avoid mentioning specific products, especially specific mutual funds, whenever possible, or you subject yourself to onerous disclosure requirements

 

Process: Preapproval preferred

Reps must get their blog content approved by a registered principal before they post to the web, according to Polidoro’s How FINRA Regulations Play Out in Social Media, At a Glance. RIAs have more leeway, especially if they’re at a small firm. I believe that larger RIA firms are likely to demand preapproval.

Recordkeeping: Archive your posts so they’re easily retrieved

FINRA wants you to keep your records for at least three years; the SEC, for at least five years. There are plenty of vendors that would like to provide you with an automated solution for tracking your social media. You’ll find some of them in the list of “Twitter and other resources.”

Reports, articles, and regulations on social media compliance

Here are resources that complement the blog posts I’ve mentioned above. If you’re aware of more, please let me know.

 

Twitter and other resources on social media compliance

Most of the people named below don’t focus on social media compliance. But they have put out useful information in the past. I expect they’ll do so again. Thanks to Bill Winterberg for adding some names to this list. Check Bill’s compliance list on Twitter in case new resources emerge.

This list gives Twitter names first. You can recognize Twitter names because they start with the @ sign. They’re followed by blog or website links. If the resource lacks a Twitter name, I give their real life name.

Do you recommend other resources on social media compliance for financial advisors? Please add them in the comments. I’m especially interested in resources for investment managers, wealth managers, and financial planners who blog.

April 2016 update: For a more recent post, read “Top 3 Compliance Concerns When Writing Your Blog.” In April 2016 correspondence, Cindi Hill confirmed that her advice is still current.

 

Financial blogging lessons from The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Tips for more compelling posts

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“The titles and the first few lines of your poem represent the hand you extend in friendship toward your reader. They’re the first exposure he or she has, and you want to make a good impression.”
— Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets


This Ted Kooser quote applies to financial blog posts as well as to poems. Financial posts and poetry aren’t often mentioned in the same sentence. However, both forms of writing will win or lose readers on the basis of first impressions. So, I’d like to share tips for financial bloggers based on the “First Impressions” chapter of Kooser’s book.

1. Use your title to set your readers’ expectations. Give up bland titles, such as “401(k) plans” in favor of titles that give your audience a reason to read. For example, my title for this post identifies my target audience—financial bloggers—and the benefit I believe they’ll receive—more compelling posts. “Titles are very important tools for delivering information and setting expectations,” as Kooser says. Instead of “401(k) plans,” consider something like “Three ways you can get more out of your 401(k) plan.”

2. Don’t lead with boring information. Put your background information somewhere other than your opening lines. Too often, as Kooser says, bloggers—like poets—start with “information that really is not essential but is there because it was a part of the event that triggered the poem. It’s the background story, and it may not be necessary for us to know it to appreciate the poem.”

3. Deliver on your promise. For example, if your title and first paragraph promise 401(k) tips, don’t switch midstream to discussing online checking accounts.

4. Write in a consistent style. If you drew in your blog readers with a warm, conversational style, you’ll lose them when you switch to a cold, institutional style. As Kooser says, “If a poem begins with three lines of strict iambic pentameter, a reader will be disconcerted if that forceful rhythm is abandoned in the fourth line.”

5. Be aware of your “voice.” Kooser describes “voice” or “presence” as “the person we not only hear, but intuit to be behind the words.” For example, I think my voice is friendly, conversational, and reflects a genuine desire to help financial advisors communicate better with their clients. Voice is communicated by your writing style as well as your content.

Try applying one–or all–of these tips in your next financial blog post!

Related posts
* Start with a good lead, or lose your reader
* Financial writers, lead with your message, not your source

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