Advisor Today - September 2008

expect you to be a brilliant wordsmith. “The best advice is to write it like you would say it,” Allen says. “Sometimes that means taking some liberties with the language.”

Don’t update content every day. Allen has a major bone of contention with other social media experts, who believe that you need to post content four to six times a week. “If you’re trying to position yourself as an expert and you’re posting two to three times a week, that works just fine,” he says. “You have to recognize that people are saturated with information. If you provide them with valuable content three times a week, they pay more attention to it and perceive more value.” Make sure that at least one post has original, thoughtful content. Your other two blogs can be links, additional thoughts and commentary on a topic in the news.

Don’t say you don’t have the time. If you do not have time to blog, record your thoughts on a voice recorder and ask your secretary to transcribe them and post the blog. You also can give the post title and key points to an employee and ask him to craft a post. After the employee has written it, you can read it and add your personal thoughts to it. Ask the employee to post the blog on your behalf. “But if your name is on the post, then make sure you have touched it,” Allen says.

One of the most time-consuming parts of blogging is figuring out the blogs you can comment on. Ask your secretary to set up a search that gives you a list of five to 10 posts on a particular topic. This can save you up to four hours a week.

Promote your blog. Make sure you promote it in your marketing materi-

als, such as business cards, fliers and e-newsletters. Find other bloggers in your industry in different geographic areas and participate on their blogs. That way, you aren’t competing with them; instead, you’re supporting each other through links. Engage with people in related support industries. You can blog with attorneys, tax experts and accountants to gain more visibility.

Commit for six months. Most advisors aren’t going to see results right away. Don’t assume that just by writing, you will have loyal readers. “It has to all work together for it to work,” Allen says. “If you allocate two hours a week to blogging, divide the time between reading, commenting, blogging an original post, and posting links to some commentary. The fact that you have a good balance is more important. If it’s lopsided, you will not get any results.”

TIME MANAGEMENT
Free Tools to Help You
Manage Your Time
Use these online services to free up some of your time and
enhance your organizational skills.

All of us can use some extra time during our workday. We found three free (or almost free) web services that can help you save time and improve your organizational skills.

Backpack

Think of Backpack as a much advanced version of an intranet without its com-plexities. It allows you to organize your information easily by making pages, which can contain any combination of notes, images, files, etc. You can keep these pages to yourself or share them with co-workers and even friends and family. All you need to do is click the “Sharing”

Preeti Vasishtha

link on any Backpack page and choose the people you want to share the page with. They’ll be able to view and change the page, too.

The Backpack Calendar feature allows you and your group to maintain your schedules online

and access them from any computer. You also can email to-do lists, notes, files and images to a Backpack page and have Backpack email you the content from a specific page. Backpack Reminders allow you to set up text message and email alerts that can be sent to your cell phone. The free plan gives access to basic features, but for $24 a month, you can upgrade to many advanced features. Visit www.backpack.com.