Writing to Fuel Your Growth as an Advisor and a Writer

By Ann Garcia

Early in my career, the advisor I worked for asked me to help out by researching a client’s questions about planning for college for his children. I immediately thought about two things:

• This could be an opportunity for me to become a subject-matter expert because this advisor probably wasn’t the only one not interested in college planning.
• As a parent of two (hopefully) college-bound children, I needed to know about this topic for myself. 

Both of those have turned out to be true. What does this have to do with writing for your practice? As I progressed in my career, I fielded an increasing number of client questions about planning for college. The same questions came up repeatedly, so I started building my own FAQ library—mostly to make email replies quicker.

As that FAQ library grew, I made a New Year’s resolution to start a blog, using my FAQs as the first several months of content. Fast forward a few years, and that blog has morphed into a book, How to Pay for College; a website and online course for DIY college planning, howtopayforcollege.com; a YouTube channel; and tens of thousands of blog subscribers and social media followers. Also, I’ve logged regular appearances in national media, speaking engagements, and podcast guest appearances. The result? A steady stream of clients, center-of-influence referral partners, and others who rely on me for this information. 

Writing can offer huge benefits to your practice, as my experience shows. Most importantly, it attracts clients who are interested in your expertise. But how do you start? How do you decide what topic to focus on? How do you find your voice? How do you determine who your audience is, what media to focus on, how much expertise you even need to write about something?

Finding Your Why

As with so many other things, you start with “Why?” Answering the question of “Why do I want to write?” will lead you to great answers to all those “how” questions.  

For example, knowing your why can help with the how question of what “voice” to use in your writing. When I started my blog, my goal was twofold: to reach a wider mass-market audience beyond just clients and prospects; and to establish myself as a thought leader in this category. I planned to use my existing set of FAQs as my initial posts. But even though my topics were the same—how to prepare for the FAFSA, how student loans work, choosing a 529, saving for a grandchild’s college—my why had changed, and my audience with it.

Because anything to do with kids—college financial planning included—has a parenting element, I thought a different tone was more appropriate. I realized I was having conversations like this with friends, so I changed my writing voice to be more conversational. My tone became more like a trusted friend than a professional advisor, and I created a friendly/goofy avatar called The College Financial Lady. Answering “Why do I want to write?” will tell you to whom you’re speaking and what your voice should be. 

Choosing a Medium

What medium will you choose? Blogging is a great way to get started writing because it’s so adaptable. I find long-form content translates to other media more easily than shorter content. It’s easier to turn a blog post into a social media post than vice versa. Many blog posts can be recorded as YouTube videos too. 

Personally, I find that engaging with a subtopic long enough to write a blog post also helps me craft talking points for media or podcast interviews, and having a content library showcasing my depth of knowledge and point of view has been invaluable in getting those interviews.

Blogging can also be a great starting point for a book, for a couple of reasons: You’re more or less writing the book as you write blog posts, and having a writing habit is essential before embarking on a larger project like a book.

But your topic or audience might lead you to other media as a starting point. Your writing is your journey; the most important choice is picking something you’ll do consistently and intentionally.

Choosing a Topic

What should you write about? “I’m not enough of an expert to write about ___” is a common refrain from advisors. But that’s not quite the way to think about it. Writing isn’t just about putting what you know down on (virtual) paper. It’s also a process for learning: Researching a topic and writing about what you’ve learned is a key way to synthesize information. Rather than worrying whether you know enough about something to write about it, think about whether you’re interested enough in it to immerse yourself in it and develop expertise.

I didn’t know anything about college planning when I started looking into it—other than that I was really interested in learning more. Over time, I’ve learned a lot, and it’s the learning that motivates my writing rather than the other way around. 

Researching and learning is also helpful for narrowing and refining your focus over time. When I started writing, I wrote about anything related to college planning. I’ve since decided that I don’t like writing about student loan repayment; instead, my focus is planning for college.

How personal you choose to get is up to you. I wasn’t sure how much of my family’s journey to and through college should be included. After spending a week visiting colleges with my daughter, I wrote a blog post about our visits. That blog post got so many likes and comments that I’ve incorporated our story into my writing since then. Once you start developing a body of work and interacting with readers, you’ll get a sense of not just what resonates with them but what you’re most interested in writing about. 

Whatever format or medium you choose, writing has benefits far beyond just the content itself. Once you’ve figured out your why and chosen a medium, all that’s left is putting fingers on the keyboard. What are you waiting for?

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Ann Garcia, CFP^®, is a partner at Independent Progressive Advisors and the author of How to Pay for College: A complete financial plan for funding your child’s education. Her writing can be found at howtopayforcollege.com.

image credit: istock.com/bojanstory