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Ideas to help financial services marketers maximize the value of their thought leadership.
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3 Lessons Financial Advisors Can Learn From Mary Tyler Moore About LinkedIn
I was born in 1979, two years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show went off the air. So I didn’t get to experience first-hand the impact that the landmark sitcom had on the entertainment industry and, more importantly, on attitudes about single, career-focused women and...
What Trees Falling in Forests Have to Do With White Papers
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” While we wait for philosophers to answer that question, I think it’s time to introduce a new mental conundrum: “If a white paper gets posted only to the Resources page of a company’s...
17 Financial White Paper Ideas for 2017
NOTE: For an updated, 2019 version of this post, "19 White Paper Ideas for 2019," click here. A common New Year’s resolution made by financial services professional is, “In 2017, I’m going to write more white papers to build my brand and establish myself as a thought...
Three Tactics Financial Writers Use to Generate White Paper Ideas
Every great white paper in the financial services industry starts with one great central idea or thesis. Unfortunately, the corollary to this also is true: if you don’t have a strong unifying thesis at the outset, your white paper is probably doomed. The purpose of a...
Turning Data Into Financial Thought Leadership
Given the explosion of data gathering and analytics over the past decade, you might assume that we are living in the Golden Age of Thought Leadership. After all, using data to reveal and explain surprising or otherwise interesting insights about market trends and...
Three Reasons to Narrow the Scope of Your Financial White Paper
Before you get started on your next white paper, there are several pieces that you need to have in place. The most important of these is a clearly–and narrowly–defined topic and scope for what you will cover in the white paper. I have written white papers for...
When Robos Attack – Using White Papers, Newsletters, and Other Financial Writing to Protect Against Robo-Advisors
Every day there seems to be news about another asset manager announcing that it is launching a robo-advisor service. From disruptive startups like Betterment and Wealthfront to traditional asset managers such as Fidelity and Vanguard, everyone seems to be “going robo”...
Making it Work: 8 Questions to Ask Yourself When Hiring a Ghostwriter
So you’ve decided it’s time for your firm to hire a financial ghostwriter to work on your white papers, blog, newsletters, or other thought-leadership efforts. Now what? Finding a writer who understands the technical aspects of your industry and can capture your...
Six Signs That You Need to Hire a Financial Ghostwriter
How do you know when it’s time to hire a financial ghostwriter to help with your thought-leadership efforts? Maybe you saw your competitor generating a lot of attention by posting a thought-provoking white paper on their LinkedIn page. Possibly you’ve seen a...
Looking to Cross-Sell? Why Newsletters Trump Quotas
Cross-selling has long been the Holy Grail of marketing in the financial services industry. But thanks to the recent scandal at Wells Fargo, in which employees at the banking behemoth allegedly opened 2.1 million fake accounts for clients in order to meet sales...