The words jumped off the page. Buried in an article in Morningstar Advisor about 2010’s Best Tech for Advisors, was an astonishing assertion. An independent financial advisor named Jeff Rose was writing a blog that was drawing “an average of 70,000 new visitors each month and 10 to 15 new subscribers per day,” as well as generating “three or four referral phone calls daily.”
Could this be the same guy I had heard on a BrightTalk webinar six months previously? I remember Jeff Rose saying that he began seriously studying how to use social media around the time he began his blog in July 2008. Nine months later, a gentlemen who he did not know but who had been reading his posts, emailed him. That conversation led to the guy asking him to manage over $2 million in assets.
If you are not familiar with Jeff Rose’s Good Financial Cents blog, it’s become a force of nature. The blog is now ranked #4 in financial blogs by Technorati.
How does he do it? To begin with, Rose is a disciplined blogger. In the first three weeks of 2011, 17 new articles were posted to his blog. He invites submissions, but most are his own. He spends between five and 10 hours a week on his blog. After he’s written a draft, he sends it to compliance, gets a response in three days, his assistant makes changes, and the piece is posted.
Although most blog posts are about topics that you’d expect from a financial planner, such as “How to Do Tactical Budgeting” and “Social Security Benefits for Minors,” not all are. In a recent post titled “Goals Update and Look Who Turned One,” Rose writes about his new son turning one, the new iPad he received for Christmas from his wife, and a Bible he purchased to read on his new devise.
Everything in his life is a blog post idea, Rose said during the webinar.
And that’s what makes good bloggers great. They include details of their own lives so that we get to know who they are.
It works for Jeff Rose. It could work for you, too.
