Credit: Shutterstock photoBy SA Author Experience :
(Editor's Note: "Marketplace Success Tips" is a monthly series dedicated to helping Marketplace authors, and all Seeking Alpha contributors, get more mileage out of their presence on the site by offering useful tips on gaining visibility, building a following, fostering reader engagement, and creating thriving communities and stimulating conversations. Robyn Conti is Marketplace's Contributor Success Strategist, and in that role, she is responsible for working with Marketplace authors on driving the success of their subscription services through improvements in their marketing and content strategy efforts.)
SA Blogs are a frequently overlooked yet valuable tool in your "marketing arsenal" for your Marketplace service. They accomplish a few important things:
They cultivate a sense of community and engagement even before someone signs up as a subscriber,
which makes it easier to bridge the gap and convert readers from followers to subscribers, and
provides an opportunity to bring in new readership if you're consistent with publishing them.
Another key benefit is your real-time followers get email alerts whenever you publish a Blog if you're on the Marketplace. In essence, that means you can "reward" them by giving them an opportunity to get a "first look" at the content you've posted there.
Some Marketplace authors have successfully built their following, drawn attention to their services, and grown their subscriber base using Blogs. Based on their success, and our knowledge and experience of what works, we came up with a list of best practices to share with you. Please feel free to leverage these, and consider posting your own Blogs to generate more interest and awareness for your Marketplace service, and hopefully, take your business to the next level of success.
Without further ado, here are the best practices:
1. Consistency of publication is key: At minimum, aim to publish a Blog 1-2 times per month. That said, a few times a week offers opportunities to bolster your visibility and stay top of mind with readers.
2. Transparency is important: Blogs are a great way to offer readers:
Key insights about your investment approach
Your thoughts on the markets
Explicit investment ideas
How your service works
Portfolio updates
Snippets/excerpts of offerings previously only available to subscribers, etc.
Spotlight your Author's Picks
All of these are key opportunities to generate interest in your Marketplace service and pique readers' curiosity about what they're missing out on if they're not a subscriber.
3. It's better to strike a balance between value-add content and pure promotion: Using Blogs to provide additional value to readers in the ways described above is far more effective than using them as a promotional tool alone.
You can boost readership and followers, and potentially entice readers to subscribe by showing how the content is related to your service and the expertise you offer there:
Whenever you post a Blog, ask yourself:
How does this post relate to my service (beyond promotion)?
Am I giving away something here that "rewards" real time followers?
What value am I adding here?
How does this showcase my investment approach and/or value proposition and unique expertise?
4. Use Blogs to "reward" followers: As mentioned in the introduction, consider delivering unique or timely or topical content that readers can't get anywhere else, or that was previously only available for your subscribers. In addition, this is an opportunity to make your followers feel like they are getting something exclusive for choosing to receive an alert every time you post something on Seeking Alpha. Readers love exclusivity, especially if they can get it for free.
5. Foster engagement where possible: Getting comments and interacting with readers is an important component of Blogs, as it is in your public articles. This opportunity to create engagement with your readers may even be more important as more content goes behind the Pro paywall. Blogs offer another avenue to "keep the conversation going," and connect, build rapport and relationships with readers.
6. Don't create content for the sake of creating content: While Blog content does not have to meet our editorial quality standards, it's still important to keep those standards in mind to make sure you're delivering something that readers can use. Is the content convincing, actionable, and well-presented? In other words, make sure your Blog content is meaningful and value add, and that it has a purpose (even if it is purely promotional). That said, there should be a balance between being promotional and spammy. Obviously, you want to err on the less spammy side.
7. Good titles are important for garnering attention: Just like with your public articles, good titles matter. Consider telling readers who the post is for, why it's important to them, what stock/sector/event you're covering, why they should care, etc.
We hope you find these tips helpful. And if you have any additional suggestions about great ways to use Blogs that we didn't cover here, please feel free to share them.
See also 'Oo-Oo That Smell' - Financial Advisors' Daily Digest on seekingalpha.com
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
