Why the Best Financial Services Brands Blog

Blogging - the act of creating short-form content posted to your website’s “blog” page - a part of your website that should be regularly updated and therefore found online easily. That brings me to a big part of what the point of a blog is - online visibility.

1. Online Visibility for Financial Services

Online visibility is exactly what it sounds like - being able to be found and seen on the internet. This could mean your business pops up a lot in search engines, on social media, on other people’s blogs as a guest writer, etc. Business blogging is one way to help get your business in front of people looking for your products or services on the internet.

Don’t believe us? Did you know that companies that blog generate 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and get 67% more leads than companies that don’t blog?

2. Blogging tips for the Finance Industry

Spend time researching your buyer personas

Knowing who your buyer personas are is a key step towards building a successful blog.

“A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers (considering their goals, beliefs and most importantly, pain-points).”

Without knowing who your ideal customers are - their backgrounds, challenges and integrating that research across your entire marketing funnel - you risk stifling the growth of your business.

GT247 is SA's #1 low cost online broker, making online trading easy. Click here to see our case study on GT247’s new website and blog layout. 

For more on how to build a stronger digital strategy, read our blog called, "Best New Digital Strategies For Financial Services"

Create a content calendar but remain flexible

It’s important to plan your content in advance. However, it is equally important to remain flexible so you can 'newsjack' an emerging news story or trend. Sign up for Google Alerts and choose keywords relevant to your industry and keep an eye on leading industry publications for newsworthy pieces you think would interest your audience. Keep up with trends, latch on to the hashtags, get creative with your content and get engagement.

Avoid financial jargon

Jargon scares people. They get confused, and it’s off-putting. This does not mean that you should fill your content with slang or sloppy English. Write accessibly, and in a way that is easy-to-understand.

Focus less on products/services and more on trends

Face it - people aren't entertained by your service offerings. Therefore, it's far more effective to tackle more broadly appealing issues like: "How to get more bucks when someone makes your car goes bang - tips for selecting the best car insurance plans." Content like that is what we call 'native' meaning it doesn't sound like an ad and is much more appealing. You can still weave your products into the piece but let the focus be on how you can help and educate (after all, it sits on your website where people can see your services anyway.)

Tap into in-house knowledge

Take advantage of people in different departments within your company who have a wealth of knowledge about the industry, clients, thought leaders, trends, and insights. As marketers, we don't always have the technical know-how or even data to back up a blog post or longer-form content we want to write. Tapping into in-house resources is something that can effectively fill that knowledge gap.

“Don’t be afraid to be ballsy in terms of bold headlines/ titles - providing they are true to content. Sometimes I feel like a tabloid editor when searching for a good headline but it really is important to gain that all-important reader attention - and our metrics prove this.” Mark O’Byrne, Marketing Director at Goldcore. (Nearly 35 000 followers on social media at the time of writing)