How to Establish Your Digital Presence

This week, we're breaking down how to successfully establish your digital presence.

There are 4 key pieces that if you get right, make it much easier to start growing & expanding in different directions in the future:

Your Website

In today's world, your website is truly your storefront.

Rather than spending $3,000/month on an office hoping people stop by and need an advisor, you can spend $30/month on hosting & intentionally reach anyone in the world at any time.

And I'm not sure an office location could bring in 1,800 unique people per month like our website is:

Your website is a place for someone to learn more about:

• What you do
• What it costs
• Who you are

Failing to include any of those 3 things reduces the chance of getting business online.

Why?

Because there are unlimited businesses who lead with transparency and if someone can't find the information they're looking for to get comfortable enough to reach out to you, they'll keep searching until they do.

Until you establish a connection with someone, you're just another name amongst the sea of advisors online.

Everything you do elsewhere—social media, webinars, podcasts, in-person events—should eventually lead someone back to your website, which should be designed in a way to get someone to schedule a call or share their email (for future marketing).

Below are two articles from the Club that talk more about website design:

Further Reading: How to Build a Website that Converts: The 5 Essentials

Further Reading: 3 Website Call-to-Action Tips for Financial Advisors

Email

I like to frame email marketing in two different ways:

• Newsletter: a regular, education-based form of communication
• Sequence/Drip: a short, call-to-action based series of emails sent after someone joins your email list or downloads a guide

The best marketing blends the two together.

I think it's hard to make a newsletter sound enticing enough for someone to subscribe to, so I prefer using a free PDF/eBook on my website to capture someone's email.

Like this:

We've talked a lot about using guides within marketing the past few weeks and below are a few resources to help you get started:

• [Email Template] New Subscriber Welcome Sequence (3 Emails)
• [eBook Templates] Three (3) Editable PDF Guides/eBooks
• A (Short) Guide to Understanding Guides

For newsletters, the most important thing is a regular cadence.

I think it's tough to establish familiarity with monthly sending, so I'd recommend going bi-weekly or weekly if you want to do a newsletter.

It doesn't have to be a 1,500 word masterpiece every time—it could be as simple as sharing your content from the previous week, and maybe curating a few helpful things you found.

If you can figure out a way to make the format unique or brand it towards your niche, it's even better.

And if you're trying to get clients, you want to include call-to-actions at the end of every email—like this:

Further Reading: Successful Email Marketing w/ a Small Subscriber List

Long-form content

Notice I didn't say "blog posts" or "podcasts" specifically.

And that's because I don't think there's one right way to go about long-form content.

You have to figure out what makes the most sense for you and your audience.

But ideally, you're creating some type of long-form content around the financial topics that relate most to your ideal client.

If I wanted to work with millennial business owners, I'm not going to create content about how to optimize social security or how to manage medical costs in retirement.

I'd talk about how to reduce taxes as a business owner, how to pay yourself, how to manage life & business balance, how to invest in your business AND your retirement.

All you're trying to do with long-form content is:

• Educate / show expertise
• Connect with your ideal client

Once you know a few core topics to create content around, then you can start building an overall distribution strategy.

For example:

• 1 blog post per week
• • Published on your website
  • Then, share a link to the blog on your primary social platforms
  • Send it out within your newsletter
  • Make graphics, videos to go along with it
  • Repurpose and make native on social
  • Post another link on social media

With one blog post (or video, or podcast) per week, you can easily fill a calendar with regular social media content.

Club Read: Mastering the Art of Repurposing Content

Social

If you've never done social media marketing before, I think it's the last piece of the online presence puzzle that should be put together.

Social media should be all about building relationships & distributing the message(s) you figured out in creating the content.

If you don't know who you're marketing to and what they would find value in, you probably won't find much success on social.

Each platform has its own nuances and strategies to succeed so I'm not going to break them down here, but you can check out this Content Framework I put together for different ideas:

And these are a few things to think about if you're just getting started with content creation:

Once you figure out the platforms you want to be active on, you also want to make sure your profiles are designed in a way to convert your audience.

Luckily, I have a short guide here for that as well :)

Remember: Social media marketing ≠ becoming an influencer. You don't need tens of thousands of followers to be successful.

You can win with a handful of engaged members of your target audience and a consistent message.