Newsletter – Blogging, Twitter and Frequent Flyers!
Blogging for Financial Services Professionals - This blog post demystifies blogging and details how you can commence simple blogs that will improve your communication to clients and prospects. There is no doubt that the old non interactive ‘brochure’ style website is close to extinction. Google all but ignores them and prospects and clients can’t be impressed either. To refresh your website you need good content so get blogging!
Twitter For Financial Services Professionals - Looks into the world wide phenomenon of Twitter. Growing faster than Facebook with thousands of tweets (messages) sent every second. A great tool for finance professionals to communicate with clients and prospects, and to seek terrific information. We also include a nice helpful list of the ’Do’s and Don’ts’ of Twitter.
What the FOFA is Going On! - Now this was a bit of an experiment using Storify, a simple free web based program to create a story using information off the web. This blog post is no more than a collection of tweets that I simply ‘dragged and dropped’ into one place. The story itself proved popular on Twitter and does highlight how Twitter has become a source of news.
A Story about Frequent Flyers
A blog post via humble savers titled How to Value Frequent Flyer Miles – Cash or Fly was posted on March 5. This was an old post that I refreshed by adding a basic calculator that helps people work out the value of frequent flyer miles (points). For example, should you exchange your points for a flight or say a gift card? The calculator does it all for you.
The real story is about how the blog post was marketed. The post was put up onto the website and the usual tweets and Facebook links went out – All very simple. Next we investigated a couple of Frequent Flyer forums; yes they do exist and are quite popular. Through two forums I mentioned that we have this calculator and provided the link, very easy!
To date, there has been over a 1,000 page views with visitors via Twitter and Facebook but the forums were the stand outs. However, the nice surprise was the number of visits that came later and into the website directly. Now it’s hard to know exactly what happened (Google Analytics does have limitations), but it’s reasonable to believe that lots of visitors copied the link and emailed the link to friends and family who also visited the website – Very nice!
What else happened is also interesting. In a short space of time the article became popular with search traffic. Type in ‘cash value frequent flyer points’ or something along those lines and more than likely you’ll see the article on the front page of Google search – Beautiful. This increases the traffic to humble savers; we gain more Twitter followers and subscribers. The popularity also helps other content on the website to rank better in search results.
Now consider the typical person interested in frequent flyers. Tend to be upwardly mobile, have a bit of money, need some help with superannuation and yes life insurance could come in handy! Sound like your clients?
Why should this Frequent Flyer story be of interest to you? This type of blog post creates interest – far more interesting than the latest quarterly investment report slapped on a website in the form of a PDF. Blog posts are easy to distribute, simply click here click there and off they go. And Frequent Flyer style blog posts helps you to get found on the web as Google and the public like interesting and helpful articles. Remember, Google didn’t become the dominant search engine by taking people to boring brochure style websites.
Time Running Out
The offer for a website review at only $300.00 is fast running out, ends March 31. The review is comprehensive and will immediately improve your website positioning. The review will also help you to make a good first impression, after all your first impression is likely to be via the web. The review will highlight how your website is currently ranking for key search words and what simple things can be done to pick up more traffic.
More Support
Training - To help your business to make a start with web and social media marketing, we can attend your office and give everyone an overview of all things social media including blogging, Twitter and Linked In. The main benefit from the training is that it takes away the mystique from social media.
Project Manager - Managing your website and social media can be difficult often because of the communication break-down with web designers. We can take on the role of the project manager and get your business on the web and being social while you focus on running your business. For all inquiries, simply click on the contact details below.
Interesting Articles
If you want more reading, here’s a few to look at:
- Why Relationships Matter and ROI Doesn’t – A bit controversial but you should read it. Make sure you read the author’s first article (it is linked) that caused a bit of a storm
- When Social Becomes Business As Usual - As the name suggests, it’s all about the social (media) world becoming normal. I like it because it highlights what to me is really obvious, the new social tools just enable us to do what we have always been doing and that’s being social. Once we stop seeing them as new and fancy they will become terrific business tools just like the telephone.
- Infographics on Pinterest - If you learn more through great diagrams with facts and figures, you may prefer to visit the Infographic Board at Pinterest. There’s a great 4 min video clip as well – If that doesn’t get you in the mood for social media, check your pulse!
One Last Tip - Liam Shorte also known as @SMSFCoach recently ran some seminar presentations and I attended one. After a brief chat Liam decided to put his presentation onto Slideshare, a free website to share presentations. In a couple of tweets, the link is easily shared to his Twitter followers and some kindly re-tweet the links. In less than 24 hours the presentation has had over 60 views.
No doubt the links will also be emailed to clients, prospects and centre of influences that will increase the number of views and cement Liam’s standing as the SMSF expert. Now, how many presentations do you have sitting around? When was the last time you had over 60 prospects in less than 24 hours for the sake of a couple of clicks? To view the presentation, click the link - SMSFs – What’s The Big Deal?
Colin Williams
Click and subscribe to Humble Financial Services
You'll also receive the 18 Page guide
'Why Social Media is Ready Made for Finance Professionals'
Be Social – Connect
Email Subsciption
