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7 tools financial planners should be using to write blog content

Blogging is a great way to connect with clients, reach prospects and boost your website’s SEO. Whether you regularly craft blogs or it’s something you’re new to, it can be a challenge. Luckily, there’s a whole range of online tools that can help you spot typos and generate ideas.

Here are our seven favourite tools that could improve your blog content.

1. Keep track of your blog ideas on Evernote

This first hurdle of creating content is coming up with ideas that will interest your audience. But if you’re often coming up with a killer idea only to forget what it is was a few hours later, Evernote is a useful tool. It lets you take notes anywhere and clip web pages or images when you find a source of inspiration when browsing.

Keeping your inspiration stored in one place means when it comes to getting a blog written down, you don’t have to waste time searching for the details to get you started.

2. Create a ‘to read’ list with Pocket

Reading the news and other blogs can help shape your content, whether you find something that would perfectly suit your audience or an article you disagree with. Reading can really help when it comes to inspiration. In fact, “read, read, read, read everything” was one the quotes that featured on Gareth’s blog 6 tips from famous authors to improve your blog content.

With so many different sources available online, Pocket can help you keep tabs on those articles and blogs that have caught your eye. It stores the pages for you to go back to later.

3. Find out what people are asking on Answer the Public

As a financial planner, you provide a solution to the questions and concerns clients have. A blog is an excellent place to demonstrate your knowledge and answer some of the most common queries. One source of inspiration for this is, of course, your clients. However, it’s worth looking beyond those who are already receiving financial advice.

Answer the Public allows you to enter a keyword and find out what questions people are asking. Type in ‘Inheritance Tax’, for example, and a range of queries people are searching come up:

  • What Inheritance Tax do I pay?
  • How is Inheritance Tax calculated?
  • Is Inheritance Tax deductible?
  • Will the Inheritance Tax threshold increase?
  • Can Inheritance Tax be avoided?

The tool can help you answer questions prospects may have that lead to them seeking the help of a financial planner.

4. Give your blogs a proofread using Grammarly

It’s difficult to proofread your own work, you know what you wanted to say and will often skip over the typos and mistakes. Grammarly will highlight far more spelling and grammar mistakes than your standard spell check in Word. The free version will even highlight where your wording could be more concise, check the tone of your message and suggest where other words and phrases could be used.

You can either log in to Grammarly through your browser or add it to the software you use, such as Chrome or Word. It takes just a few minutes and can help you produce clear mistake-free content. If you think grammar and spelling have little impact, Nick explains why mistakes could be costing you business (and love) here.

5. Check readability with Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor shares some of the same features as Grammarly, but it’s still useful to use as it’ll highlight the readability of your blog. If you’re prone to writing wordy or complex sentences, this handy app will highlight them. It means you can focus on getting ideas down, then go through and edit where necessary. Breaking up sentences and using simpler words where appropriate can make your content more engaging.

6. Add some colour with Unsplash

The words might be written but crafting the perfect blog for your website shouldn’t end there. The right image can draw readers in and add some colour to your content. There’s a plethora of stock image sites to explore, both free and paid for. Unsplash is a useful source of free images to search through.

Don’t think pictures are that important to blog content? Naomi recently highlighted why it’s worth taking some time to choose the right one.

7. Measure the impact of previous blogs with Google Analytics

Writing blog content is all well and good, but are people reading it? Google Analytics is free to set up and can be used to analyse visitors to your website. Tracking which of your blogs are proving the most popular by reviewing hits and the amount of time spent on the page, you can start tailoring your content plan to match.

Of course, even with these seven tools to improve your blog content, it takes time and resources. If you’d rather be focussing on other areas of your financial planning business, Yardstick’s content team can produce beautifully crafted content for you.

Get in touch with us at hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300 to find out more.

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