Susan Weiner, CFA, of InvestmentWriting.com is a writer-editor for leading U.S. investment and wealth management firms. She shares her tips for powerful writing that attracts new clients and deepens your relationships with existing clients.
Q. How can you engage clients with effective and concise writing?
A. The best way to grab your clients’ attention is by writing content that satisfies their needs and is easy for them to understand. This also inspires clients to act on your message.
Start by asking yourself these questions:
• Why are my clients in a relationship with me?
• What problems do I solve for them?
• What keeps my clients awake at night?
When you address these questions, you tap the power of your clients’ hopes, dreams, and fears.
Choosing a good topic is only part of battle to attract clients. Writing that’s muddled or wordy will repel them. In contrast, writing that’s concise and clear will attract clients.
Starting with the “big picture,” draft an introductory paragraph that’s like a blueprint for the structure of your article. This will make it easy to edit the rest of your article to focus on relevant information. It will also make your article easy to scan. Many of today’s readers are too busy to read every word.
Your introduction should also include the WIIFM—”what’s in it for me.” In other words, explain how your topic benefits your readers. Otherwise, they may skip your article for something that helps them more directly.
Q. How can you deliver timely, accurate, and consistent content on investment issues?
A. It’s not easy to deliver timely, accurate, and consistent content—especially not on a tight schedule. If you have a process, you’ll waste less time making decisions or correcting mistakes. This is why my book, Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, provides a step-by-step process for generating ideas, organizing your thoughts before you write so you can write more quickly and effectively, and editing your writing so it’s reader-friendly and appealing.
If you write standard reports on a regular basis, consider developing templates for those reports. This is particularly helpful if you rely on subject-matter experts who aren’t professional writers. A model report ensures that they cover all of the necessary content. It also reduces the need for them to think about how to organize the content. In addition, a standardized report makes it easy for readers to compare reports across different products or time periods.
However, too much standardization can cause problems. It can make reports boring. It may also force the writers to emphasize information that isn’t significant for a specific product or time period.
Two more tools can help with accuracy and consistency: a style sheet and a checklist of common errors. A style sheet presents your organization’s choices for spelling, grammar, and other aspects of writing style. For example, do you abbreviate “United Kingdom” as “U.K.” or “UK”? A checklist of common errors helps your writers avoid mistakes that damage your firm’s credibility.
Enlisting a colleague and using other proofreading techniques, including having your document read out loud by Adobe Acrobat Pro, also help.
Q. How can you extend the reach of content into different mediums, across articles and editorial as well as digital and multimedia?
A. Revising your content for use in different media is essential. It can extend your reach without exhausting your organization’s resources.
Your audience includes people with different learning styles and preferences. Some—like me—prefer the written word. Others prefer to consume information using audio, video, or other visual formats. Offering different formats will deepen your relationships with your clients and prospects.
Don’t start from scratch when you first venture into new formats. Instead, start by adapting your existing content. I remember the excitement of the salespeople at my last corporate job when I first adapted market commentary from a letter format to PowerPoint slides. For them, it was a brand-new tool in their sales arsenal, even though the content wasn’t new to me or the letter’s readers.
However, a writing style that works for a long article must be modified for shorter attention spans and other constraints when you use other media. Learn about the demands of different media and audiences. Tailoring your content will yield a winning investment.
