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If you’re like any of the financial services firms that we work with, you’re busy: busy chasing down leads, building new products and business lines, meeting with vendors and partners, executing on your marketing strategy —in other words, you’re busy running your business. What is one thing you’re probably not busy doing? Updating the company blog. This is a missed opportunity.
As great as a regularly-updated blog can be for a financial company’s image and marketing, a poorly maintained or rarely-updated blog can reflect poorly on your organization as a whole. How many times have you visited a company’s blog only to find that the last entry was three years ago? How did this affect your view of the firm?
The problem many financial services companies run into with maintaining company blogs is that they represent a project that’s never quite “done,” and may provide no obvious or immediate “return on investment.” They represent an ongoing commitment to publish at least somewhat regularly, and require a decent amount of time, thought, focus, and planning to be done well. However, it’s clear that the benefits of consistent, quality blogging outweigh the costs.
Write about what you want!
Since they typically reside on your own website, blogs are one of the only places online where you have the complete freedom to focus on what matters most to your company. Unlike a PR campaign, an article submission, or advertising, in blogs you are free to place your priorities front-and-center. New product launch? Go ahead and talk about it! A major milestone for the company? Blog away! Is an obscure phenomenon in the markets grabbing your attention? Put your writing hat on and blog about it!
Built trust with investors!
Investors want to work with companies that are trustworthy, knowledgeable, and experienced. What better place than a blog to establish your credentials as an expert in your company’s area of focus? Consistent, quality blogging over time can even help build an audience for your views and, over the long-term, translate into loyal customers.
Related: Five Key Questions for Content Generation Success
Personalize your brand!
Who are you, really? What does your company stand for? Until investors can really get to know you, these may just be big question marks for them. Don’t be afraid to let blog visitors behind the scenes, or even be a little goofy (within reason). Whatever feels true to your brand, run with it, so investors can learn to associate real people and an authentic voice with your company and its products.
Drive traffic to your website!
SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is a real phenomenon! Fresh, original content is a surefire way to gain the attention of search engines and attract more eyeballs to your company’s webpage. Over time, some of those eyeballs might become regular visitors, and some of those visitors could even become paying customers.
What about compliance?
It’s true—as financial services companies, your communications are subject to greater scrutiny than many other industries. However, this is a solve-able problem! Make sure you have an established process in place for getting company blogs compliance approved and stick to that process. You’ll be amazed how fast your blogs go from draft to published once you have established a routine!
But it’s such a time commitment!
If blogging represents too sizable of a time commitment for your firm, that’s completely understandable. In that case you may want to turn to a third-party communications firm or copywriter who can help implement a blogging plan on your behalf.
Blogging: it’s good for you, good for website visitors, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s great for your company. There’s no reason not to get started today.