Johnny, the floor is yours. All right. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to the Marketing Playbook Trilogy. My name is Johnny Swift. I'll be serving as the emcee for today's session, which begins our third and final masterclass for 2022. The focus of this three-part masterclass is on custom content, and today's segment will focus on what it is and why it matters. So NAPFSA's 2022 Marketing Playbook Trilogy is anchored by Marie Swift and myself. Many of you know that we're a mother-son team from Impact Communications, and each of the masterclass trilogies so far has been co-coached by a special guest. In the first masterclass, we were joined by Claire Aiken of Indigo Marketing Agency, and in the second session, we had Alex Cavallari of Seven Group. And in this final masterclass trilogy of the year, we're going to shake things up a little bit and have more than one guest contributor. And as you can see from the slide here, for this masterclass on custom content, we're joined by Jody Jacobson and Natasha Knox, as well as Rita Chang. So thank you all for joining us. And the goal of the master marketing classes is to take you from theory to practice, and for NAPFSA members, attendance is complimentary. And this slide recaps what we focused on in masterclasses one and two, and is just here for posterity. But you can kind of see how we've built out the knowledge bank for you this year by focusing on a pull strategy in the first masterclass with gated lead magnets, followed by push strategies through email marketing and social media. And now we're capping off the year with a final set of pull strategies with custom content that's totally free and not gated as a way to draw in not only the right people, but the right search engine results to you and your firm. And unlike past sessions where we used GoToWebinar for some sessions and Zoom for the final session, all three of the sessions in this masterclass will be on Zoom. So again, this final masterclass will focus on using custom content, a.k.a. inbound marketing in your marketing plan. And you can see the dates here. You're not going to want to miss a single one of the sessions in this masterclass, but you can always watch the recording if you need to catch up on a module. On September 28th, Marie and I will be leading the segment on how to create audio, video, blogs, news releases, and other forms of ungated content to attract attention and feed into your website and email and social media campaigns. And then on November 2nd, we'll invite any of you who have created some kind of content, a video, a podcast, a blog, a news release to share with us in a special 75-minute interactive session. For posterity's sake, here's what we covered in masterclass number one and number two. If you need to refer back to those slides or the NAPFA website, you can find the information there. You all know Marie's story by now. She's been working with NAPFA and NAPFA members for many years and in the independent advisor community for 30 years. And you all should know me by now as well, but I just want to quickly highlight that I just had an article published in the last issue of NAPFA Advisor Magazine on creating ideal client personas and case studies. So go check that out if that sounds interesting to you, but let's spend a moment introducing our new panelists for this masterclass. Marie, would you like to introduce our guests? I would love to. So Jodi Jacobson is here. Jodi is a gem. If you don't know Jodi, she is the founder and CEO of the Human Skills Institute. And I won't read through her bio because she is so accomplished and you can see all of the bullet points here. But I will just mention that she is a consultant and executive coach who works exclusively with financial advisors and allied professionals and businesses. And so you can see how she is focusing her time and energy in our community. And her upcoming article in NAPFA Advisor Magazine should also be a great resource for you on how to align your offers to your purpose. Next up, we have Natasha Knox. And Natasha is an amazing practitioner. She's a financial planning practitioner. She hails from Canada. So we're going to get a little bit of that flavor today. She is the founder of Alafia Financial Wellness, as you can see on the slide, and a long list of accomplishments. She's been published in many prestigious outlets. And she has 18 years of experience working in financial services and also with behavioral therapy, financial therapy, and so forth. And last up, Rita Chang is here. So many of you will know Rita. She is the founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth. And she works with corporations and institutions, as well as families, entrepreneurs, and executives as a financial planning practitioner. She's been in the industry serving clients for over 20 years. And she has been published in a lot of great prestigious publications. You can see some of them here, CNBC, Kimmel, New York Times, and more. And so we're going to be hearing from these three powerhouse individuals, as well as Johnny and I will be chiming in along the way. And the way we decided to split up our time today is to have Jody and Natasha take us on the first leg of the journey so they can talk about how they see and use custom content, why it's effective to pull the right clients to you as a practitioner. And then I will come in on the back end with Rita. And Rita and I are going to tag team and share our insights and opinions. And Johnny will answer your questions or post them to us along the way. So with that, let's get started. I'm going to hand the baton over to Jody and Natasha. Thank you so much, Marie. I have to say, I live in the California desert. And for some reason, at this very moment, we're having a thunderstorm roll in. So if for any reason, you can't hear everything I'm saying, somebody please chat for me, and I will let somebody else take over with my slides here. This maybe happens once a year, and as luck has it, today is the day, what can I say? So that said, I'm really delighted to be a part of this, because as a strategic consultant, I'm often helping advisors to align or realign their content to who they are when they're at their best, so that they can really do what they love doing and be who they are as their most authentic selves. And your ungated content is an absolutely essential place where that begins. And it really is a part of being a fiduciary planner. And it's a highly ethical act to provide a degree of service and transparency about who you are and what you offer without requiring anything monetary in return from the very beginning. So I truly do see it as a fiduciary act. And Johnny, if you'd just go ahead to the next slide, that'd be great. You want to make sure, however, that you do design it to provide you with a fair exchange of value. So let's go to the next slide. You want to make sure that you are speaking in the most authentic way that you can to the people who you want to work with the most. So really, you can think of your ungated content as a magnet to help pull people towards you. And not just everyone and anyone, but the people that you're most meant to serve. Because when you serve the people you're most meant to serve, you do your best work and you have the most fun and you're the most engaged doing it. So as I said, much of my work is about helping advisors to sort of reconnect their being and their doing. And I call that being very strategic. You want to make sure that that ungated content is an invitation to engage with you at a deeper level. But at this point, you're really not asking for anything in exchange except their attention, their time and their attention. And so I created this visual. I love this sort of traditional way of looking at how you get people into what's called your sales cycle. I mean, your clients have a buying cycle as well, which you need to understand. But your gated content is an invitation to be in a conversation with you, whether you actually are having a conversation or just having the conversation sort of passively through content that you've created. But if you imagine your sales cycle as a funnel that's wide at the top, it brings people in. Or you could imagine like there's a little magnet at the top, which is what this ungated content is. So you want to make sure that you're strategic and you connect whatever you decide to create as ungated content, that it serves as an invitation, that it sparks curiosity towards learning more about what really your ideal offers are. So let's go on to the next slide. So why am I saying to really be yourself from the first contact? Anybody who's been in any kind of relationship, a friendship, a marriage, a partnership of any sort, you know that if you're not yourself from the very beginning, then you just sort of get stuck pretending to be somebody you're not. And it just creates stress. It's so much easier to stay engaged with the marketing process, with attracting prospects, if you are yourself. Now, I'm not talking about TMI. You can choose which parts of yourself you share. But if you're not yourself from the beginning, it's really, really hard to get back to that. I mean, I work with a lot of advisors about how to do that. And it's just so much better being your truest self from the beginning. And you, as the late great Ed Jacobson used to say, you do you best. Nobody does you as well as you do you. And nobody does anybody else as well as they do themselves. So it's better not to try to be somebody else. And the fact of the matter is there's so many different advisors out there and so many different coaches and consultants out there because there are people who need you and your way of delivering what you do. So what I'm saying is not just your gated content, any content you create, any videos you create with with Johnny and Marie, be yourself because you do you best of all. OK, next slide, please. And so I mentioned that magnet. And this is really just to give you a graphic to sort of anchor why being authentic matters so much when you are the real you, when you let people see that through your content, through the first conversation you have with them all the way through, you create a magnet for those people you're most meant to serve. And none of us are meant to serve everybody. We do our best work with the people that we connect with best and who connect with us best and who we understand the best. And then I have one more little graphic that because I like giving pictures to convey these concepts, it helps anchor it. So what authenticity cultivates from the very beginning is you start creating shared meaning. You understand what your ideal client wants. And the more you interact with your ideal clients, the more you understand what they want. And I know that Marie has done some other wonderful programs. And so she's talked about you have to market to what people want. Then you can deliver what they need. But your marketing has to address what they want. And I think the next slides I'm going to give you, well, before I give you some examples of that, how do you decide on that content? Well, again, it gets back to who you are, what's your confidence zone, some people like speaking, some people like writing, some people like teaching, some people like social media, some people can't stand social media, which kind of gets around to what format your ideal clients like best, because you can create the most wonderful content. But if if the people you most want to connect with aren't looking in the places where you're putting it, then they're just not going to find you. And so next, I'll give you some examples of what kinds of unneeded content you can create. You can do it through speaking, writing, as I mentioned, social media, news media. And Natasha Knox, who's a brilliant and very creative planner, has discovered and she loves working with news media. And she's going to explain that in just a couple of minutes. But there's web, video, if you like doing that, if you prefer talking to writing, any number of ways you can do this key is understand what your comfort zone is, because you're least likely to procrastinate, avoid, put it off into the future. You know, the best the best content is done content. When I was working on my dissertation, I had the mantra in my head, the best dissertation is a done dissertation. It does not have to be a masterpiece. It's much more important that it be done. OK, so now I believe we're going to get into just a couple of examples, so I'm starting out with an example that we talked about when we were planning this. This is something that that I do as as a coach and a consultant. Chemistry is everything. Making sure that you're going to be comfortable in the relationship is very important. Planners do this, too. You offer complimentary get get acquainted call. Now, we we we talk very seriously about is this truly ungated content? Because in order to send a calendar reminder, which, believe me, you want to be able to do if you're offering somebody a complimentary call, you need to get their email address. The the reason we're considering this ungated is because you also have to make a commitment then that you're only going to use their email address to send them a reminder for the call. You're not going to go ahead and just add it without permission into your marketing CRM, into your email distribution list. So so we decided that it is a valid, ungated form of content marketing. And then we'll go into another one. I mean, how you present yourself on your website is another very important example. This is a website of of a client of mine who is actually a compliance consultant, and she includes a tremendous amount of very informative materials on her website. And they're written on all of these that I have on the screenshot are written by members of her team. I just don't happen to have one that she wrote. So that's ungated content. Anybody can go to her website and read those. And it's very valuable information. And then I have another example. The next one is also related to how you present yourself on a website. Some of you may know Susan Zimmerman. She's one of the early pioneers of financial therapy. Natasha is is a second generation leader in that field. And what I love about this example is Susan put this puts this on her website and she looks very professional and she's dealing with very serious topics. But in the next picture, you'll see that she's already presenting a mental model of doing this difficult work, but that it but that it's going to be enjoyable. It's going to be inviting. And I consider that a form of ungated content because she's providing a wealth of information. And she's also she's also helping prospective clients understand that she's going to be warm and accepting and that they could talk about anything with her because if she can be this self-deprecating, you know, they can share anything. And then one more example, and then I'm going to I'm going to hand the floor over to Natasha to talk through these, I just want to foreshadow these, Johnny, real quick, and then we'll go back to this slide so that Natasha can talk about it. I mentioned that she has a very effective strategy of being a great resource for news media and SEO search engine optimization is very important for that. And she has that behind these articles so that other news media can find her to talk about timely content. And just the next few slides are some screenshots from her website. And Johnny, we could go through those pretty quickly and then come back to this one, please. So if you just go back, just please just go back one quick. So she has a beautifully designed website and she shares a lot of information. Next, on the next couple of them, you'll see that Natasha very intentionally, very authentically and very effectively does she walks the talk of serving a diverse clientele. And that starts with all the content and information she puts on her website. So in the next few slides, you'll see how she used graphics. This is she can tell you about this cost estimator. It's very educational. It's totally ungated. But you see in the in the graphic on this one and then on the next couple of slides that it's very hard to find decent stock photos if you really want to appeal to a diverse client base. I mean, they're sort of stereotypically positive and not true to life and people aren't going to see themselves in them. And stock photos, if you can avoid them, aren't that great. So I'm going to hand the floor over to Natasha so she can just go through her own example here and talk about how she has so effectively become a resource for media and also how thoughtful she's been about attracting her ideal clients and making sure that a diverse population of clients know that she's there for them. Thank you, Jodi. I think the first thing I really want to share is that it's been a journey for me from just writing anything for anyone that would ask me to write something financial related to realizing, and because I'm very in tune with my Google Analytics, so I know where my traffic is coming from. I know when I put writing out there, what the impact is. I'll occasionally look at my LinkedIn. I'm not super active on social media, but LinkedIn does tell me if there's been some sort of correlation between something that I've put out there and sort of the number of views I get that tells me that it's getting some attention along with Google Analytics. And so what I realized is that depending on what I was writing and where it's published, it would attract different flavor of clients. And my business is very much about financial planning, but it has that behavioral, emotional, and relational component to it. And at this point, that's really what I'm hoping to attract into my financial planning practice. So if I'm going to write something, and I'll be honest, it's actually really hard for me to write. So if I'm actually going to write something, I want to post it somewhere that's not just my website because no one's ever going to see it. So the amount of energy that it takes for me to put a piece together, I want to get sort of as much value from that as possible. So my journey sort of started with Elevate Network because I had a membership with Elevate, and that gave me the opportunity to submit articles. So you'll see that some of my early articles were through the Elevate Network. And that just allowed me to get published on a platform using my own voice about subjects that I cared about, and that I think my ideal clients wanted to hear about from me in my own voice. And what was really great is that they actually would sort of scrub my articles and sort of, you know, add their own little sort of style overlay. So I actually found that incredibly helpful. It's useful if you're open to that. They also have a seat on Forbes. So that's actually how I was able to get published in Forbes is it was an article that I thought would be interesting to readers of Forbes. It was a perspective that I felt that I could share that might be useful to put out there in the world, and it was accepted. And so I just wanted to let you know that is how I was able to accomplish that. The Global Male Contributor status came later, it came from, I think, just being really open to being able to give my opinion, maybe able to say things that perhaps other planners might not say, or perhaps give a different perspective. And so I was then invited. And even then, I only ever write on articles where I can incorporate a behavioral, emotional, or relational component. So whatever it is, it has to incorporate that, or I'm not writing it because it doesn't align with the purpose and mission of my business, and it's not going to speak to my ideal client. Since then, I have written for MoneySense, and that opportunity came about through a professional membership that I have with the Financial Planning Association of Canada. They have a spot on MoneySense, and from time to time, they throw out article ideas of things they'd like us to write on, and I saw something where I had the opportunity to sort of put my own little flavor in. So I put my hat in the ring and wrote for them. So there have been different paths into these different opportunities. As you can see, it's not just a one-size-fits-all strategy. I've also been willing to go on podcasts, willing to be a panelist here, and I will share that it is not easy for me. It requires sort of living outside of my comfort zone, but it's really worth it, and what I love about being a panelist or being on a podcast is that it gets me over the blank page sort of paralysis that I have, even with MoneySense or the Globe and Mail. They usually ask me a question, and that's a really great starting point for me, and I think the final thing I'd like to share is that I don't necessarily have to do all of it alone. So my articles for Elevate were sort of scrubbed and edited. Anything I write for the Globe and Mail is scrubbed and edited by their editors, so that really helps me get past the perfectionism and the paralysis. I have friends in the industry, and we will read each other's articles and give feedback. I'm great at editing other people's stuff. I can't seem to edit my own for some reason, and vice versa, so we help each other out in that way, and that is all I have to share for now. Well, we have a few questions that have come in, so we might as well tackle those on now before we move on to the next segment, but the first one was just simply, what is gated content? Obviously, today we're focusing on ungated content, which is just publicly available on your website or on the web where people can access, and as Jody said, just kind of give their time and their attention to that ungated content. So gated content is something that usually lives on your website where people have to give up some of their information in order to access the content, most likely their email address. That's gonna be really valuable for you. In a lot of cases, it's just name and email address, maybe phone number in some cases. So the first masterclass of the year was a session on lead magnets, which in most cases are gated content. So we talked through different forms of lead magnets like white papers, webinars, quizzes, checklists, other gated content on your website where people have to give up their name and email address and maybe some additional information in order to access. So I think it's great to have a good mix of both gated and ungated content, but that's just a little precursor for you there. And the next question is, are there ways to research what our ideal client prefers and are there surveys out there? And Jody, I'm interested for your take on this, Natasha, you as well, but I would say that it's best to just ask your clients in client meetings, whenever you speak to them on the phone or in person, ask them what kind of content they prefer, what form, what type of content most resonates with them. You could set up a survey and send it out to your client base through a platform like SurveyMonkey, but for some people that's a little bit too formal and you might just wanna ask in those client meetings. Anyone else have anything else to add there? I have some thoughts. Yeah. I have not noticed a pattern in how my ideal clients like to consume information. So occasionally in working with a client, there may be something that I want them to read or listen to, and I will always ask them, I'd like you to learn more about this. I have some ideas for you on how to learn more about it, learn more about it, some good quality sources of information. How do you prefer to consume information? Do you want short form, i.e. articles? Do you want a book? Do you want a podcast? Do you want a video? And at this point, these are actual clients. So they're already in my ecosystem and I'm working with them and they're pretty great. And actually the responses are across the spectrum. Someone to watch content, someone to listen to it, someone to read it, someone to book, someone just likes snippets, someone a lot of visuals. So that's been my experience and I try to be adaptable, but as far as using that as a strategy for how I put myself out there, that then tells me that actually I have to have a lot of different formats, not just my preferred format. Like my preferred format is short form written. So I'd rather read an article. That's my main format that I like to consume information, but I'm on podcasts. I am on live streaming. I write stuff. So the only thing I haven't done is written a full book yet. Jodi, anything you want to add? Yes, thank you. I just wanted to offer, I do a tremendous amount of work with advisors around the issue of target market. And I've actually been interviewed by Marie, I think about the target market. And I have a really nice one page, step-by-step how to identify your ideal target market. I'll give you a clue. The best place to start is with, is by identifying the clients you currently work with, who you absolutely love working with. And just make a list of those people and start exploring what you know about them. And why did they come to you in the first place? What did they want at the very beginning? And you can ask them, have a conversation with them because you probably know them better than any of your other clients. And they'd be delighted. I have never seen this fail. They would be absolutely delighted to talk with you about this. All you have to do is let them know that, you have people you would love to clone. And you would just love to be able to fill your book of business with people just like them. And so could they help you kind of understand what people just like them want? Where do they go to look for it and all of that? You can do some internal market research. You don't have to spend money going outside and looking at demographics and all of that. You know who you love working with. And if you already have a nice book of business, just go back and find out from them. Great advice. All right, let's answer this last question before we move on to the next section. So someone said, I keep receiving offers from professional writers to provide posts for my blog. Some of them are somewhat relevant to finance. Others are tangential. Most of them offer to do so for free. What risks are there in doing so? Are there any advantages to taking them up on these offers? I wanna give my quick take before I pass it off to the other panelists. But I would say, well, the reason they're offering to do this is because they're gonna get SEO value from publishing on your blog and on your website through due to cross-linking and back-linking to their website is probably what they're gonna ask for for providing that content to your site. I would say unless the content and the piece is really relevant to your audience and if you're not a big fan of writing yourself and you're lacking written content and stuff like that on your blog, I would say it's best not to take these people up on these offers and best to avoid these because you wanna be the expert providing that commentary on your blog and on your website. So unless you dread writing content for your blog and it's difficult for you or unless the content is really, really valuable and gonna be valuable to your audience, I would say avoid that. Any agreement or disagreement there from our other panelists? Can we give a thumbs up? Yes, yes, huge thumbs up. It's a hard no for me. My website doesn't even have a blog right now because my writing is not totally consistent, which is why I have it in this format. And absolutely everything on my site is my voice and it's my expertise that is coming through. And I think that anyone on this call should consider that that might be what they want for themselves as well. Yes, and if I may add, I completely agree with both of you that the thing is, I mean, let's face it, everybody's trying to sell something these days. And while maybe this is useful for people just starting out, it's so much better to speak in your own voice. Your blog posts can be very short. For me, when I started writing, I come from an academic background and it was really hard for me to write blog posts because academic writing is upside down, all the justification before you ever get to the point. And so I found somebody who could help me relearn how to write in normal human language. And it's just better. Perfection, perfection isn't the goal. People know when they're getting canned content. It's much better to be imperfectly yourself. And Holly, I know I can see you're the person who asked this question, and I know that you have a lot to say that people need to hear. I would just do it. If you wanna buy into a service, make sure it's one that you can edit and write your own preamble, and then maybe pick and choose some articles that are relevant, but always, always share your view because it's so valuable and your people will, it's a gift. Use it, give it. Amen to that. Okay, so Johnny, you're on mute. Would you like me to take the next slide? You're gonna hand it off to me anyway. I was gonna hand it off to you. And I am eager to jump in because we have anticipated some of the questions that have just been asked. So Rita and I are gonna go through some thoughts that we have prepared, and then we hope to have some extra time at the back end of this presentation to take additional questions. But I think it's helpful to just review again what custom content is and is not and why it matters. So again, it's based on that law of attraction, like Jodi was talking about, like Natasha was sharing, like Johnny mentioned. And yes, it's designed to get the word out broadly, but it should be targeted in a way that it actually attracts the right people and it repels in a nice way, repels the wrong people, right? So that's what good marketing is. It attracts the right people to you and it repels the wrong people. Now, it should also make you more referable because sometimes it's easier for your clients and strategic partners to actually refer others to your content than your services or to you. So think about that as you create content. Let's move on to the next slide and talk a little bit about Uniquely Yours. So custom content is just that. It is unique to you. It's your voice, it's your content. Nobody else can say it quite like you. Like Dr. Ed Jacobson said, Jodi, I loved Ed, still love him, hold him in my heart. You do you best. And I had Ed say that to me many times. So the custom content that you create can be press activity, news releases, anything that has your voice in it. And you can have that content published on a third-party site in order to get more eyeballs on it, to get more clout, but it could even be your photos. And in a little bit, I'm going to show you some photos of Rita where she has been courageous in showing her true self and putting herself out there in a kind of a vulnerable way. So your voice, your face, your content, and there's this term that's floating around, it's called pro-personal. So it's that mix of professional and personal where you're willing to let your guard down just a little bit so that people can get a glimpse of who you are when you're not in the office or when you're in the office and people who are not clients may not be around. What is your team doing? What is your character and culture of your firm? So make that evident for people and you'll find that you'll attract more of the right folks to your firm. So let's bring down these visuals. These are some examples of how character and culture can be made real, more visible online. And we live in a digital world where everything is online and sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes a bad thing, but it is the way that we are right now. We all have these devices in our hands and with us and hopefully we get away from our devices sometime, but we look at how some of these other firms on the screen here, for instance, Abacus Planning Group, Cheryl Holland and her group, they make their character and culture real by showing sabbaticals, people on sabbatical, their team going to do good works in the community. When they're hosting a professional mixer or client appreciation event, they show their character through photos and short snippets on their blog and on their social media. On the right, you'll see Intercontinental Wealth Advisors. They're a totally different firm than Abacus is. They're in a different part of the country. They serve a multinational cross border clientele and they have different types of clients and they are different individuals and different professionals. So again, they're making that connectivity with people through photos and people are just hungry, I think, to have that more meaningful connection today because it can be just kind of a disjointed, discombobulated world with all of the disruption that we have. So let people see who you are through photos, not just words and videos. So now let's look at the next slide and we're gonna see how Rita, you have done this so beautifully on your website and different posts that I saw through Published articles even on the New York Times. I love these photos because it makes you Attractive to me. I like your vibe. I want to know you you've got an engaging smile You've got a cool family and you're willing to be out there with some family photos and just you and your normal life So Rita, let me throw this to you How do you choose which photos to share and how do you decide how vulnerable to be online? Well, what's interesting? I don't necessarily have so many photos of myself But the reason why I think it's important to have this professional or be professional is because People do business with those they like and trust and what better way for people to to build trust Than to share a little bit about yourself so that they can relate and connect with you. So I'm from Generation X I'm not a millennial. I'm not a boomer. I'm an Xer I'm caring for my eight-year-old and my eight-year-old dad and that picture to the far left Um, that is me where my daddy is holding me There's not that many pictures of my dad because my daddy was always behind the camera but I actually wrote an article for CNBC for Father's Day to Share what I learned about personal finance from my dad and my dad actually is he was not in the business But my dad's journey to America and what we learned about money Prompted me to become a financial planner. So I share because I want people to know a little bit about me So, let's go to the next slide and we have yet another photo and this photo I don't know if they asked you for this or if you volunteered this but instead of having just like a stodgy old headshot You chose to show a little bit of your character and values doing something with Maryland pride any comments on this? Absolutely. So I have a lot of Maryland pride. I went to University of Maryland I earned double degrees. My son earned double degrees. My husband went to Maryland. My daughter went to Maryland We have a lot of Terrapin pride and it was the pan We are still in the pandemic understand, but this was the deepest darkest days of the pandemic And I was like, you know what? I am gonna do this virtual 10k and take a selfie and that's what this is This is a selfie. I just ran a 10k Maryland pride. I'm a little bit sweaty, but I don't look ugly And I was like, that's it. I'm gonna put this out there because I want people to know that I Have Maryland pride. I love to break a sweat and I just want people to know and see my smiley energetic personality. I Love it and notice two of viewers today that she has in the text Something about her leadership roles the CFP board the AARP freedom financial campaign and the when when women's Initiatives so you can do a lot through a good headline a good photo and some great text Let's go to the next slide Johnny and we're going to talk a little bit about Expertise and why showing your expertise matters So what could be better than this look at this Rita in the New York Times and all these other publications? So Rita, I want to know how do you decide we heard from a top Natasha? How do you decide though whether to publish your content on your website or blog? Something that you own versus a third-party content provider like these Well, I it was so amazing and inspiring to hear from Natasha like Natasha I feel that sharing my content and this is hard for me to say But I think it's okay to say this and my expertise or wisdom our personal journey on Trusted third-party sites will help more people. I believe at my core financial planning transforms lives I believe at my core that I know I can have a greater impact By increasing access and awareness to competent ethical advice. So I'm like, hey, I'm just going to share So we look to the left where it says long-term care insurance can be costly but effective my kids will say mommy You look beautiful, but you look so sad. What is wrong with you? That is December 2015 the first Christmas without my dad. I developed a relationship friendship with the reporter He asked for insight about long-term care costs and I said, you know what? I will share this is okay Because this is my family. I did not violate con a Confidentiality, I did not get in trouble with the compliance department. I'm like, I'm gonna share my story So that's the story on the far left to the right. It's the same reporter five years later check in with me and my mommy My mommy is thriving Despite Inflation and so that's what we talked about. So I make myself a trusted resource to the media I really care about them having access to information and to be honest if I'm not quoted I'm okay with that I help them get the right people for their story Amen to that So in the next slide we see another example and this is where you've actually written an article and had it published on Kiplinger And you've been published a lot of places and sometimes you're quoted in a story Sometimes you write the article just talk to us a little bit about that dynamic Sure. So a lot of people asking about my writing and what people may not know about me is I'm actually a career changer My first job I wrote a newsletter for English-speaking investors in Tokyo, Japan So in that job, I had to read a lot of financial statements My spoken Japanese is not very good, but I can read and write it better than I can speak it And so I had to write quick summaries. So I learned to write on the clear concise manner But when it's time for me to come stateside, I really focused on building my practice But then I realized you know what I probably now that my kids are getting a little bit older I've built these relationships, you know, I'm gonna start writing. I feel like It is okay for me to share my voice In fact, a lot of people tell me that they like hearing my voice So Kiplinger approached me and asked me if I wanted to start writing for them and it is an amazing partnership I've actually been writing with them Since 2015 my first article I wrote about was what it was like to be sandwiched and so Sometimes I may be quoted in an article and other times I might you know Write an article it just kind of depends and sometimes like if it's March and it's tax season I tell people straight up. That's like my blackout month. I can't think straight. I Can't write anything in the month of March I love it. Well on the next page you have a couple of What could could be considered a lead magnet, but you chose not to put them behind any kind of a gate or a forum? You require no information To download this paper on the power of financial planning or something on reverse mortgages So, how do you decide when to make it ungated or gated? I Would say most of my content is Ungated now I write for MarketWatch. They make some of my contents on Retirement gated because it's for their subscribers and for me. I'm always learning to remember at my core I believe everybody deserves access to competent ethical advice. So I know one of the things I'm working on this year is doing a better job of Creating some ungated content and further expanding You know my newsletter and connections, but for now Up until this point. I've made everything available Yes, and that's important because it's so much easier for people to share your content when it's not behind any kind of a form There are no strings attached on the next slide Johnny we're going to see a screenshot of Rita's blog and website where the custom content is totally and Gated and Johnny mentioned this earlier, but it makes Rita hyper relevant to her audience it fulfills her fiduciary duty her interest in serving the general public even if they may never become a client and Helping more people but it also helps with search search engine optimization SEO and We know if we have relevant content that we put on our own websites and blogs and then we're quoted elsewhere and We cross-link all of it. It creates a harnessing effect almost like spider webbing into the internet So we'll move on to the next slide and we're headed towards the top of the hour So I want to leave a little time for questions. I'm going to go through these next slides quickly And Really quick this question just came in said any tips to help write content as a recovering perfectionist The blank page paralysis is real. I think that this slide will be helpful to that person Okay, so here you go Johnny and I have covered this in the past and we put it here for a keepsake every time someone asks you a question or Something interesting you read it in the news and industry publication Blog or record the answer you can write a byline article for a third-party publication You can pitch it to the media and hopefully they'll quote you or invite you to write something You can write a special report or white paper post a webinar put it on social media So I think that for those of us who are perfectionists again Like Jodi said done content is better than perfectionist content, right? You got to just get it out there and have it be checked by people not just you know Dashing off things that are not well thought out but don't agonize over it Because if you're creating content that resonates with people what's on their mind whether it's today inflation recession Retirement stress taxes money heritage health well-being if you're writing that you're talking to your clients about that You have a lot of information that you can unpack just from your day-to-day thinking and reading and conversations and the next slide we talk a little bit about triggering emotions and these can be triggering positive emotions or Negative emotions and we know that sometimes that clickbait that we see it's going to be like a curiosity factor Oh, I can't afford to miss out on seeing that what would happen FOMO fear of missing out but aspirational content Also works too because we know we'll go to the next slide that people share content When we are helping them serve their personal motivations. So what are those it's expressing their worldview helping other people Showing where they in the world that meaning, you know being a part of a community so if you think about that back to the question and Johnny, maybe you can capstone this for us is You know creating content is something you can just get in the habit of You know Sometimes I carry my little notepad around or my dictation device and I can leave myself a voice memo or a note And when I've got that insight, it's easier for me to say there's that kernel there's that kernel of thought and then I talk to somebody who might like Johnny help me flush it out and then we turn it Into something a piece of content whether it's written or multimedia Johnny Think you recapped it all pretty well, but I'd say the two Most important ways I think for that. I see my clients coming up with content is paying attention to what's going on in the news current events Both local national industry publications and then just really paying attention to what your clients are asking you about if your clients ask you For advice or explanation on a certain topic You can bet that other clients and other investors and consumers are going to have similar questions and similar concerns and that'll be Valuable content for them So if you respond to a client's email where you write out a bunch of answers to their questions You can take that and start have that start a blog post for you and flesh that out for a more Public format or a byline article that you pitch to a third-party publication. Let's hear from Rita Absolutely. Well, I have a couple more ideas as well I did want to mention one thing about my gated contact the risk allies risk questioner is gated So for people to get this score, I do need their email address, but I don't like add them to my mailing list So as far as ideas and how to get started so you can also think about themes So there's a theme every month. So for example, I know February is Valentine's Day you can talk about how financial planning is When you plan it is a sign of love, right? So I'm always like looking How I can communicate this So that's just an example then September I believe September grandparents day might be in there I might talk about the things we can do to protect our loved ones and keep Older Americans and seniors safe online so I can sometimes look at a theme and then try To write something. I think that's helpful. I also want you to know I know there's hundreds of articles about a Roth IRA But I actually wrote about how I helped my 16 year old open a Roth IRA from her lifeguard earnings during the pandemic Lots of places were closed, but not the pool and that was very well received So I tell people the most important thing is just to start And the other thing is if you don't know, you know, sometimes I actually come up with my best ideas after a run I love music and Sometimes when I'm listening to music, I'm running I'm like, oh my goodness. I have the most amazing idea So the point is don't put so much pressure on yourself. The other point is make sure you're consistent I try to write something once a week Hmm. I wonder if Natasha. Do you want to add anything about getting over that blank page? perfectionism Yeah, um, so for me, um, I Get over it when I'm asked a question so either by a client or by You know a media professional they'll have a question. Hey, Natasha Do you want to write something on this and that'll sort of get my juices flowing and I guess the other source of inspiration is sometimes reading that is not anything that is necessarily directly related to Financial planning but that I think has an application or could be somehow applied to financial planning and that can be an Inspiration for me as well and just sort of a way to maybe bring a fresh perspective To an old topic and sort of bring my own voice to it. So that's sort of where I get inspiration as well Yeah, I think that makes it hyper Relatable as Bill Cates like to say be hyper relevant Johnny I'm gonna throw this back to you While you're looking at questions to see in the last few minutes if we have anything else we should be covering what we have on the next slide is just a couple of examples of how we think about content and impact communications because You know, our clients are you guys, you know It's financial advisors and allied institutions like Napa who are serving advisors And so we think about what are we hearing from our clients? What could we do? That's a service to the community So I never meant to start a podcast But during the pandemic I found like that was a great way for me to have relatable Conversations and to add value and then it turned into a video chat and now we're out on the road doing Content and we write and we blog and we do short form and long form Johnny I'm gonna throw this over to you so that you can help in summary Is there anything else that we need to cover before we go to our summary slide? Yeah, I just wanted to say we have a bunch of really good ungated content on our blog the impact blog and that Swift Chat video series actually started out as a video series interviewing practitioners and people who provide a helpful content to the advisor community and we decided to turn that into a podcast because that was an easy next step to turn the video into an audio form for the podcast and just that goes back to giving people different forms of content people have different preferences and So some people might want to watch a video and see you on camera Some people might like to listen to podcasts while they're out walking the dog or doing dishes So it's always good to provide different types of content. And also on this slide, you'll see, you know Marie and I also practice that pro personal show the character and culture of ourselves and our firm This was a couple weeks ago when we were in LA visiting a client and decided to snap a photo in the lobby before going to their office, so Just whenever you can work into that that character culture pro personal content into your online presence is always great There is a in summary slide here So be your pro personal best to attract right for clients and strategic partners Share personality character and culture people do business with people they like and trust Provide access to valuable content without constraints to build trust and draw people in don't just put your best stuff behind a gated form not everything needs to capture a name and email and Fill the internet with a steady stream of custom content to build SEO and a strong line presence people first spider second So obviously if you can then capture both of those things speaking to people while also getting the search engine spiders that that's great But I think the one of the main themes of this conversation was really, you know that fiduciary value Providing that ungated educational valuable content to your audience is Really the most valuable part of this and just helps to build your creditability and expertise, but also your trust Factor with your audience. So that's great and With that we're coming up to the top of the hour here. Just a couple Q&A and reminders. So the next master class Segment for the content marketing session here session 2 is September 28th. That's on the house So we're gonna really dive into how to create these pieces of content and then on session 3 on November 2nd We're going to have that interactive show-and-tell portion so we'll encourage you all to create a blog post or a byline article or a white paper or a video or a podcast and Come back and have us kind of give you feedback and critique that a little bit at the very least you can come with some ideas and That you want to bounce off of us and see see what we think before you really dive into creating that We're also in the works for putting together the master class series for 2023 So more info on that coming soon the mindset mastery podcast. We have a new episode on the first Monday of every month So we'll have another one very soon coming up here at the beginning of September But those are always great episodes hosted by Marie and the NAPFCC fall conference You'll notice we don't have a master class session in October because of the fall conference So that's October 20 20th to 22nd in Denver. So if you haven't registered for that, make sure to do so Here's the graphic and the info on that fall conference in Denver, which should be a great event So with that Marie any final comments for today now, I just want to thank Jodi Natasha and Rita today I really learned a lot. I always love spending time with each of you. Thank you, and we'll see you next time You

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