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Content is king and if you aren’t blogging, then you are missing out on a huge way to generate leads. Referrals are still a great way to generate business, but with the ever-changing industry, you also need to use strong inbound marketing tactics to drive traffic to your site and boost your site’s SEO rankings. So, how do you do this? A way to give your website the extra increase is to include a blog section on your site. Blogs provide even more resources and are an additional source of value that your visitors will appreciate. Check out the 7 reasons why your site needs a blog section.
Twenty Over Ten client, C.L. Sheldon & Company does a great job of consistently creating strong blog posts that speak to their very specific niche, which is active or retired military. When someone has a question about their finances and it involves the military, it is generally very catered, and they have established themselves as a thought-leader and expert in the industry by providing these useful blog posts.
Twenty Over Ten client Upland Financial Partners has a very specific niche as they cater to hunters and fine gun collectors, and the keywords are evident on their homepage.
The Twenty Over Ten WYSIWYG makes it easy to edit header tags and apply different header styles.
Twenty Over Ten client Drucker Wealth Management does a great job of sharing their blog posts on their Twitter page. It encourages engagement and opens your content up to be seen by a whole different group of people.
In the above image, we love the blog section that Brian Plain has created. He has a more down to earth tone and writes about topics that everyday people trying to manage their finances can really relate to! He doesn’t use big financial jargon, and it’s an easy read.
He makes his blog post relatable, by starting out about what it’s like to coach his young daughter’s soccer team, which in turn, goes into how you can take this approach to financial decisions. When you bring “real life” situations into financial ones, it makes it much easier to wrap your head around monetary decisions.
At the end of all of our blog posts, we always include a call-to-action with the opportunity to learn more or drop in your name and email address, connect with us, whatever it may be. It’s important that you are always working to get your leads to take that next step, however, you need to offer them something useful or enticing.
7 Reasons Your Website Needs a Blog Section
You may be wondering how will I ever have time to start blogging? It does require some extra effort, however, the payoff is beyond worth it. Check out the reasons you need to consider having one on your site and watch your page turn into a lead-generation machine.1. BLOGGING ESTABLISHES YOU AS AN INDUSTRY THOUGHT-LEADER
If you can establish yourself as a thought-leader in the industry, then you can really stand out from the competition. The financial industry has so much competition these days, that if you create a really strong blog section that many others have not done yet, you will immediately stand out. Additionally, creating useful and helpful content will make other companies and advisors more likely to link back to your material, thus spreading your information and boosting your rankings.
Twenty Over Ten client, C.L. Sheldon & Company does a great job of consistently creating strong blog posts that speak to their very specific niche, which is active or retired military. When someone has a question about their finances and it involves the military, it is generally very catered, and they have established themselves as a thought-leader and expert in the industry by providing these useful blog posts.
2. YOUR BLOGS CAN ANSWER CUSTOMER QUESTIONS
You can even use your blog section as a sort of “FAQ page.” If customers have common questions about a new update or platform, you can write about it in a blog, which in turn, will encourage interaction and grow trust.3. IT’S A GREAT WAY TO MARKET ON A BUDGET
Blogging is a great way to boost your rankings on a marketing budget. Running a business is expensive and many times, there is not a lot of money left over to contribute to your marketing, which is why this is such a great away to spread that budget as far as possible. Content can be created for a very small price, yet it can be used to not only provide information to clients and leads but also to introduce new products, services, an upcoming event, etc.4. IT BOOSTS YOUR SEO RANKINGS
Blogging is a great tactic for increasing your website’s SEO rankings. When writing a blog, be sure that you are utilizing several things that search engines will pick up on when they are crawling your website. Some things to keep in mind when writing your blogs to:OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOGS ON A FAIRLY CONSISTENT BASIC
This is a great way to get the most “bang for your buck” when it comes to the content that you have already spent time creating. If you wrote a really awesome blog last year and according to your Google Analytics, it generated a lot of traffic, you can reuse that content! Go through and update old links with some fresh content, check your keywords, titles, find out what is trending and somehow weave that into your blog where it is appropriate. You worked hard on this blog, and it will save you a lot of time and effort to simply update it and use it again.INCLUDE STRONG KEYWORDS
When using strong keywords, this can really boost your rankings and ensure that your firm appears on the first page of the SERPs. So, what is a keyword? Well, it’s found throughout your website, and helps to define what your content is all about. Using a word frequently throughout your websites and particularly your blog says a lot about your firm. They communicate to the top search engines what information is on your website. When a phrase is entered into the search box, search engines will pull the most relevant and useful websites to populate the search engine results page (SERP). The keywords help with this, so if you know that something is trending or being heavily googled, go back and see if you can put those keywords into your blog post. Something to remember though is to avoid keyword stuffing. This is when you use a keyword so many times that it comes off as “spammy.” When you do this, the search engines will actually penalize you, so be sure that you use them appropriately.
Twenty Over Ten client Upland Financial Partners has a very specific niche as they cater to hunters and fine gun collectors, and the keywords are evident on their homepage.
LINK TO EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL LINKS
Linking is a great way to boost rankings, and you can link both internally and externally. When you link internally, it simply leads to another page on your website, so this is a great way to direct your readers to landing pages, contact pages, or any other place on your site that will offer them information. When visitors spend longer on your website, that always boosts your SEO rankings. When adding external links to your blogs, be sure that you are linking to legitimate and trustworthy sources. Ensure that they are trustworthy and informative. Linking to a relevant, popular and informative source will increase your SEO rankings much more than if you linked to someone who does not display quality information or is not well-known. Additionally, this is a great way to form relationships with other companies because when you link to an outside source, they will know that you are linking to them. This will make them more likely to link back to your website and can improve your chance of being picked up by search engines on another site. It’s kind of like networking online through linking!USE ALT TAGS ON IMAGES
Don’t forget about using your alt tags when you include images, as this describes what is on the image and the function of it for the page. Search engines are not very good at reading images, so having this wording on the backend is incredibly important.MAKE SURE YOU USE APPROPRIATE TITLES AND HEADER TAGS
One of the main parts of the page the search engines are crawling first is your titles. So it’s extremely important to consider what titles you want to use for your posts BEFORE publishing. This is a very simple way to show them what the blog will be about, so it’s important to make your titles strong. What are some ways you can make your titles stand out?- Keep it short and sweet, but also use strong words.
- Tailor the title to target your niche audience.
- Use language that makes readers take action.
- Don’t forget about your strong keywords.
- Include numbers in your title.
The Twenty Over Ten WYSIWYG makes it easy to edit header tags and apply different header styles.
5. YOU CAN SHARE YOUR BLOGS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media pages are becoming more and more popular for financial advisors as it’s a great way to network and communicate with another group of followers. In order to really stand out on social, it’s important to share a variety of strong content on a consistent basis. What’s one way to do this? Sharing blog posts. Simply share a link to what you have written with an image and a few sentences, and this is a great way to establish yourself as a thought-leader while also driving more visitors to your website.
Twenty Over Ten client Drucker Wealth Management does a great job of sharing their blog posts on their Twitter page. It encourages engagement and opens your content up to be seen by a whole different group of people.
6. YOU CAN REALLY SHOW YOUR PERSONALITY IN YOUR BLOGS
In an industry becoming more and more saturated with financial advisors, it’s so important that you really work on “humanizing” your brand. Let’s people see the face behind the name, as this is a way for prospects to become more comfortable and get to know their advisors before even working with them. While it’s important to include blogs that offer additional resources and advice, it’s also a time to really show your personality and even add some fun to this section. Maybe your firm had a really great family-oriented event over the weekend and you wrote a quick post about what it entailed and also included pictures. Did your company have a day of service, and you wanted to recap that with pictures? Whatever it may be, it’s a great time to show off your personality and show that there are fun activities interspersed between all that hard work. When it comes to blogging, you can write more informally and share personal stories, like you are simply having a conversation with your clients. As research shows, sharing personal information makes us more vulnerable, which allows for rapport-building, and ultimately trust to develop over time.
In the above image, we love the blog section that Brian Plain has created. He has a more down to earth tone and writes about topics that everyday people trying to manage their finances can really relate to! He doesn’t use big financial jargon, and it’s an easy read.
He makes his blog post relatable, by starting out about what it’s like to coach his young daughter’s soccer team, which in turn, goes into how you can take this approach to financial decisions. When you bring “real life” situations into financial ones, it makes it much easier to wrap your head around monetary decisions.
7. YOU CAN USE THIS AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GROW YOUR EMAILS LISTS
In other blogs, we have talked about the importance of a strong call-to-action button and including them in your blogs is a great way to lead readers to take that next step. So, at the end of a blog, you can include something along the lines of, “Want to receive great content with additional industry tips? Sign up for our newsletter.” When readers choose to receive emails, you can send links, newsletters, upcoming information, whatever you feel will interest them, so this is a great way to grow your email lists and start a relationship with your readers and prospects.
At the end of all of our blog posts, we always include a call-to-action with the opportunity to learn more or drop in your name and email address, connect with us, whatever it may be. It’s important that you are always working to get your leads to take that next step, however, you need to offer them something useful or enticing.