Content Publishing

Investment managers publish content on a range of topics (including interest rates, inflation, valuations, investment principles, and portfolio holdings) in multiple formats (website articles, PDFs, videos, and podcasts).

By producing content the target audience finds valuable — without pushing products — a firm can demonstrate its expertise, establish credibility, attract new audiences, and build trust with subscribers.

This chapter shares a few ideas around best practice.

What's the best format for content?

In my experience, short-form written content (i.e., a few paragraphs and an occasional chart) is the best choice of format, because it:

• Reflects how most website visitors consume content (i.e., short attention spans, scanning behaviour)
• Can cover key points and link to deeper material if needed
• Requires less resources than other formats (e.g., video production)

If your firm publishes long articles on its website (which investment managers seem fond of doing) and the data is available, check if they are being read by visitors. If they aren’t, consider:

• Replacing the full text with a short summary and making the complete article available as a downloadable PDF
• Encouraging authors to write shorter, blog-style content instead

Engagement levels for resource-heavy formats (e.g., podcasts) should also be reviewed, as they are often introduced because it’s the “done thing” rather than from audience demand (although some firms will continue trying to force their success despite evidence of limited traction).

Categories & tagging

Each piece of content is typically categorised (either assigned to a single category or tagged so they can be associated with multiple). This helps visitors browse the website and can be used for subscription options.

There are many ways to categorise content, but I have found asset classes work best — they are standardised across the industry, consistent, and can be aligned with investment offerings. Other examples (e.g., investment teams, topics, and firm-specific content series) can present challenges:

• Their meaning may be unclear to new visitors
• They can change (e.g., investment teams after an internal restructure)
• They might become redundant (e.g., a firm-specific content series that has lost momentum)

When creating a category list, the four main asset classes — (1) equity, (2) fixed income, (3) multi-asset, and (4) alternatives — are a good place to start, and can be split into sub-asset classes or by region to more closely align with the firm’s product range.

I've found that two non-asset class categories — macro & markets and sustainable investing — can be useful additions.

A few investment managers have an influential person or team whose content becomes incredibly popular in its own right (e.g., Bill Gross's Investment Outlooks or Howard Marks's Memos), but it's rare.

Creating a publishing process

The digital marketing team should ensure they have a process in place so that content is published in a timely, consistent, and efficient manner.

A typical process involves the content marketing team sending an email to the digital marketing team — often called a posting pack — which contains everything needed to publish a piece of content on the website:

• Title, tagline, summary paragraph(s), and article copy
• Video, audio, and PDF files or links
• Author information
• Relevant categories and/or tags
• Website imagery and charts

The process often includes pre-specified dimensions (for images) and character limits (for copy), as well as a requirement that all content has received compliance approval, to keep it speedy.

To help with seach engine optimisation (SEO), the content marketing team can be provided with the keyword list as a reference. However, they should refrain from keyword stuffing and ensure the copy reads well.

Finally, if it’s not being done already, the marketing team can encourage colleagues (especially fund managers or investment strategists) to contribute content ideas.