Creating your own, original content for your financial planning website is one of the best ways to let your target market know what you’re about and how well you understand their concerns and questions. Yet one of the big problems that financial planners face is what to write about.

I’m the first to admit that working out what to write about can be just as hard as actually writing. I’m guilty of spending hours on keyword research as an awesome procrastination strategy to avoid writing any content. And I know I’m not alone.

With this in mind, here are my thoughts around how to easily generate content ideas that you can use with your financial planning website.

Listen To Your Clients

This is my number one strategy for generating content ideas – listen to the questions your clients are asking you.

I work on a simple assumption – if your clients are asking you a particular question, other (potential) clients are probably asking it as well. And if they’re asking it, they’re probably searching online for it.

So make some content – an article or video (or both) that answers their questions.

When I worked as an adviser, some of the things my clients used to ask me about were asset allocation, how much they could contribute to super, whether salary sacrifice was a good idea, what insurance they needed – there are four simple article ideas already.

All you need to do is every time you’re meeting or speaking with clients, write down the questions they’re asking. Every week, look over your list of questions and pick one or two that you can create content for. Bonus points if the same question gets asked multiple times by different clients.

What Are The Financial Press Writing About?

Every Monday, our newspaper has a money section which contains a number of articles about personal finance. Sometimes these articles generate ideas for me to write about.

Do you agree with what’s written in these articles? Or disagree?

Your clients want to know what your opinion is on subjects. Don’t be scared to have one.

Next, head along to your local library or newsagent and have a look at their personal finance magazines. Have a look at what articles are popular, or what themes are written about over multiple editions and add those to your list of potential article ideas.

While you’re at the library (or local bookshop), have a look in the personal finance section and see what books are popular. You’ll be able to find article ideas from those.

Take a look at the best selling finance books on Amazon. Select a book and use the “Look Inside” feature to look at what is in the book. This will usually let you look over the table of contents – you’ll get some content ideas just from reading the chapter titles.

Also, check out the reader reviews of finance books on Amazon. You’ll get a feel for what they like (and don’t like) and what questions they have that may have remained unanswered. All these are really good content ideas.

What Questions Do Your Ideal Clients Have?

Hopefully you’ve taken some time to define your ideal client. If you have, you’ll have a good idea of the financial issues they are dealing with and how your financial planning advice can help.

The next step is to write articles for your ideal clients that answer their questions.

Maybe there are things they haven’t even thought about that you know they need to consider. How about writing an article about “Why every person in their 40’s needs to check their super statement” or “How not to lose your home – why insurance matters.”

When you think about it, there are many different articles you can write that will speak directly to the needs of your target market.

Forums

Some people love to ask questions on forums. These can be an amazing place to learn more about the sorts of questions people are asking and also to see what kinds of answers they are getting.

The Personal finance sub-Reddits are a lot of fun to read – r/AusFinance is a favourite of mine.

Whirlpool also has an investing forum that has some great questions.

You may see some questions get repeated over and over again – that’s a good sign that a lot of people are looking for answers. If it’s something your ideal client would be thinking about, write an article.

Next Steps

Take one of the ideas above and execute on it. Do it!

I haven’t talked about how to evaluate the search volumes for your articles because that will be another series of articles I’ll be writing soon. For now, the search volumes are less important than actually just writing.

Write regularly, make mistakes, get better at it. There’s no shortcut to success with content marketing.

What are your thoughts? How do you find article ideas?

Leave a comment below.