content management

Writing Market Commentary to be Read

Posted by Anu Heda on Jan 16, 2013, in Thoughts , tagged with ,

We’re fortunate to be currently leading one-on-one interviews with financial advisors on behalf of a long-standing client. We always enjoy these discussions as a good way to vet the execution of strategic sales and marketing plans.

In a conversation yesterday, an advisor and I talked a lot about content, detailing what makes for good and bad commentary. He’s a savvy advisor, serving his clients for over 15 years and had myriad examples starting with “this is great” and “these guys waste my time with…”.

Reflecting on that conversation, I distilled two ideas to share broadly (others stay privy to our client, sorry).

  1. Add bullets to the top of any commentary longer than 3 paragraphs. I noticed as we walked through positive examples the role bullets play in his decision-making process (whether to read or not).
  2. Make sure the graphics and charts belong. He wanted information and data that told something interesting, not  supportive. He thought, numerous times, an author included a chart to prove his opinion. He’s not looking for asset managers to show their work or use backwards-looking data to prove a case.

We find many more asset managers (relative to years’ past) relying on commentary to influence their prospective clients. As they do so, it’s crucial to produce content as client-friendly as possible.

Vanguard Making Use of Old Content

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Oct 12, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , ,

This is outstanding:

Vanguard references an article it first published in 2009.

The reason? Vanguard re-used a solid piece of content it initially produced almost two years ago.

In the constant battle to create more and more new content, firms too often forget that they’ve produced tons of great material in the past. Most of it is buried, never to see the light of day. Often this is because firms simply don’t have good organizational memory on what they’ve previously created.

But there is definitely ongoing value in certain less-than-new pieces. It’s good for clients and easy for the firm. Nice job here by Vanguard.

Content as Journalism, not Marketing

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Sep 22, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , ,

Asset managers typically have experienced writers on staff. Yet most of our clients struggle to consistently produce as much compelling content as they’d like.

In most cases the challenge is not a lack of ideas but difficulty in execution. We hear things like:

  • There are tons of opinions floating around this place. We just can’t harness them all.
  • We have great ideas, but all of those ideas ultimately turn into 10-page PDFs.
  • Our process for producing a piece of content simply takes too long.

When I look at these issues, I think about newspapers, magazines, and blogs. These entities live (and die) by their ability to consistently create compelling content, and succeed only by overcoming the problems voiced above.

That leads me to ask: what if investment firms treated content-generation as journalism instead of marketing?

Consider that there are important differences in the ways journalists produce content when compared to marketers. There are editorial structures, processes, and a pacing associated with journalism that simply don’t exist within asset management marketing teams, even if some of the same skill sets do.

Why not incorporate these advantages? Have 1-2 people serve as “staff writers”, and make it their full-time jobs to create a constant stream of content. These writers could:

  • Attend all important firm events (conferences, conference calls, Webcasts, sales meetings)
  • Interview all portfolio managers on a quarterly basis
  • Consume industry press and competitors’ content

Then let the source material guide the output – in some cases short blog posts, in others long-form papers. A journalistic mentality means you let the idea and process dictate the nature of the output. Even with a dose of attrition (pieces that ultimately fail), I think content production would improve for most firms.

Asset Managers as Content Aggregators?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Jan 27, 2011, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

Many of our asset management clients face a common issue – they don’t generate as much high-quality content as they’d like.  It’s a frustrating issue for marketing teams and most often chalked up to a lack of resources.

As I read about some recent developments at Seeking Alpha, a thought came to mind – should asset managers invest more effort in content aggregation and less in content creation?

Seeking Alpha is among the better known and regarded financial blogs out there.  The site publishes 250+ articles daily, drawn from a pool of 3,000 (non-proprietary) contributors.  Some of the authors, who include financial advisors, and individual articles get quite a bit of attention (upwards of 50k followers and 30k page views, respectively).

What’s interesting is that Seeking Alpha has accomplished this having paid exactly $0 for content.  $0.  For 250+ articles per day.  My takeaway is that being a content aggregator has advantages over being a content creator.  Three broad reasons why:

  1. Relevant third-party magazines, newspapers, and blogs produce much more content than individual organizations.
  2. All things being equal, more content should mean more traffic/attention for aggregators.
  3. There may be economic efficiencies in pooling strong external content versus creating proprietary material.

Given the challenges in producing proprietary content, should asset managers consider content aggregation as a strategy?  I think yes.  Would researching, licensing, and packaging 30 top-notch articles from external sources be more fiscally efficient and valuable to clients than producing 30 internal pieces?  I think maybe.

That’s enough for asset managers to at least investigate aggregation as a part of their content strategies.

4 Web Tips for Asset Managers from Gawker (Part 2)

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Dec 06, 2010, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , ,

In a post last week, I suggested that pending design changes to Gawker’s popular blog family offer up 4 good ideas for asset managers and their Web sites.  The previous post covered two of those ideas; and without further ado here are two others:

  1. Appointment Viewing Works: Having experimented with pre-scheduled content and “theme” weeks, Gawker has found that they do well at attracting readers.  In the past I’ve advocated that asset managers too embrace programming practices from the media – preset publishing schedules that can be promoted in advance, serialized content that can stretch over time.  Gawker’s data validates that this works.

    2. Each week's Economic Calendar drives people to pay attention to information as it is released.

  2. Video is an Advertising Prerequisite, Too: The Web has gone way beyond static banner ads.  Gawker notes that 30-50% of potential sponsors have video ads to run online.  While asset managers have integrated more video into their Web sites, how fast can they start using video to support their online advertising as well?

Yes, Gawker is not an asset manager.  Content is their product.  But what they’ve learned in repeatedly trying to engage more people with their content parallels the similar challenges of asset management marketing and eBusiness teams.