Executive Summary
While blogging and social media for financial advisors continues to become more popular, one of the common challenges I hear from advisors trying to get started is that they'd like to see examples of what other advisors are doing that's successful. What are some examples of blogs that have been able to get a lot of readership and traffic?
To help support this, today I'm excited to announce a new "Top 50 Advisor Blogs and Bloggers" list that we've built (powered by BrightScope) to recognize some of the most successful advisors in the blogosphere. The list captures a wide range of advisors, from those who write broadly about markets and investment and economics, to those who have niches Generation Y to Financially Wise Women to Low-Cost Investing.
So if you've been wondering what 'blogging success' looks like, click around and check out some of the advisor blogs, and see what they're doing, or go through the submission process to have your own blog considered the next time we update the list (while we tried to capture as many advisor bloggers as we could, I'm sure there are more to be considered!). Of course, in the end a blog alone does not make a business - you still have to provide services and deliver value to your clients as well! - but I hope this list is helpful to stimulate some ideas, and to recognize those who have been pioneers in the advisor blogosphere so far!
Introducing The Top Blogs And Bloggers
Click here to see the full list of the Top 50 Advisor Blogs And Bloggers!
Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the top advisor bloggers have some of the longest-standing blogs, as the simple reality is that building a blog audience takes time (in fact, 'giving up too early' may be the most common reason that blogs fail!). In addition, the reality is that while blogging in the context of financial advisors in particular is somewhat 'new', blogging in the world of investments, economics, and finance has been around a bit longer, and consequently the top advisor blog list is led by some of the top finance blogs written by financial advisors.
Nonetheless, not all the blogs on the list are solely about finance, and several were created in just the past few years. And in going further down the list, you will see more and more blogs written by advisors that are focused specifically towards their particular niche or target clientele. And notably, most of the top advisors in blogger are not solely active in blogging; most were also recently recognized on BrightScope's list of the "Top 100 Most Social Financial Advisors in the US" as the reality is that it's difficult to build a blogging audience without also being engaged in social media to help people find your content!
Selection And Scoring Criteria For Advisor Blog Rankings
As with any instance of trying to "rank" and "score" something, it's necessary to try to build a framework for analyzing all of the data. Accordingly, in order to develop this list of top advisor blogs and bloggers, here's the process we followed:
1) To be eligible, advisors and/or their firms must actually be registered, either through an SEC- or state-registered RIA, or as a registered representative of a broker-dealer (or in some cases, dual-registered to both).
2) Advisor registration details are verified via BrightScope AdvisorPages
3) Blogs are ranked using page authority and link metrics from Moz (a well recognized third-party platform for determining website traffic metrics)
4) Blogs are scored on a weighted basis based on their page authority (85%), external links (10%), and total links (5%). External and Total links are scored on a log scale (given that the largest blogs are exponentially more linked than the smaller ones). All scores are relative to the score of the top blog on the list, which will have a maximum score of 100. (Click here for the exact scoring formula.)
5) Moz scores and the associated overall rankings will be updated at the end of every month
Over time, we hope to add more metrics and analytics criteria to further improve upon the scoring and ranking methodology used here.
To have your blog considered for this list, be certain to find and claim your AdvisorPage profile and submit your blog information via BrightScope.
Thanks for doing the legwork on this Michael! I also appreciate you sharing your scoring criteria. I certainly see some familiar names! I’m excited about the potential to raise the profile of those advisors who are paving the way with blogging.
Shouldn’t a financial advisor give financial advice? The only ones I know on this list are Ritholz and Brown. And entertaining as they are, I don’t read them regularly because I can’;t make a dime from their blogs.
Thanks for the list of Top Advisors with top blogs.
I read a few of these blogs because I subscribe to them primarily to keep on top of industry trends and it’s ever many changes. Truth is, I am and have always been a news junkie!
I like seeing, from time to time, some personal stories as well as stories or articles about what the person is interested in (other than financial information). This helps me get a feeling of who they are as people, too.
However, more than that, I’m also connected to many of them (or will be) via Twitter. That way I’ll see what they’re posting by just seeing the title and link, and when something interests me, I can read it.
Knowledge of course isn’t money, but often the blogs give me ideas –or put me in the direction of an idea — that can be translated into cash.
Blogs are good because they help you “connect” with the owner of the site. I’m always amazed when someone calls me from a blog post and feels that they “know me” — even though we’ve never spoken. And knowing someone is the start of a new connection and relationship.
(I of course would love to see a list of the Top 50 Marketers/Coaches/Consultants with blogs niched to assist the Financial Industry of course.)
Enjoyed the presentation at FPA Central Ohio yesterday. Look forward to having you speak at the ACP Conference in Philly this Fall.