All business owners are in the content-publishing business now, but you'd never know it by looking at most advisors.

Few advisors create original content. That, by definition, means most advisors are adrift in the sea change produced by social media marketing.

Sure, tools for social media compliance are being rolled out to advisors. But there is little understanding or regard for content in these efforts. So that's what I want to focus on for a change-not tools and technology but what's involved in creating a social media stream that is your own.

Broker-dealers, to create social media solutions for reps, assign executives with neither the time nor understanding of social media, much less the experience in using social media successfully. At most B-Ds, decisions about social media are made by committee, with a compliance officer or business executive often casting the crucial vote. The result is that B-Ds end up with crude solutions.

Investment advisor reps are busy with pressing matters: a euro zone debt contagion, U.S. joblessness, double-dip recession, and sagging investor confidence. In such times, how can you expect a fiduciary to learn about social media, never mind dedicate the time to create content on the Web?  

The adoption of social media now taking place at B-Ds and RIAs reminds me of the frenzy to develop Web sites 12 or 15 years ago. Low-priced solutions were adopted by the vast majority of IAs and registered representatives, solutions that didn't tap the promise of the Web.

That's happening all over again with social media. With advisors in larger numbers adopting social media, the focus again is on delegation, automation and the lowest-cost solution. 

Delegating the creation of an automated social media content stream to an intern or outsource firm is desirable and achievable, and it can be low-cost. However, a low-cost automated solution is no substitute for you and your ideas.

At best, automated content services credibly augment your stream of updates. An outsource provider or intern can complement your original content. However, if you are advising clients on how to manage their personal financial affairs, your original content is your most effective means of engaging your audience. And by audience, I mean your target market, your prospects, the people willing to pay you to manage their money.

In telling you this, incidentally, I'm speaking from personal experience. I've been updating my status daily, writing blogs and marketing content for many years, since before it was called content marketing. I've built a 15-year-old, 15-employee business with enduring value primarily by utilizing content marketing.  I've been eating my own cooking for a very long time.

In my experience, engaging doctors, the suddenly wealthy or other target audiences requires content personally created by an advisor. That will differentiate you. Your ideas about events in the news and your advice on important items relevant to your target market make excellent social media content.

And you will benefit in a surprising way. An important aspect of content marketing often lost in the social media soup is that the activities necessary for your success don't only engage your audience, but they engage you as well.

To be able to publicly communicate ideas of value day after day, month after month requires you to stay informed and prepared to discuss what's important to your audience. To be sure, creating your own stream of original content requires commitment, discipline and research. It's real work and responsibility.

Doing this work will, however, force you to think more clearly and strategically. It will compel you to explain your ideas more articulately.  It will make you more accountable to your clients. Gains in personal and professional development are fundamental and real. You can't fake the knowledge, experience and professional dedication that come with continuously researching ideas necessary for your clients to succeed. Doing this work is empowering and attracts prospects to you.

Indeed, if you are doing the research and strategic thinking necessary to give clients prudent wealth management advice, then not creating your own social media content is a missed opportunity. The value inherent in your ideas is social media gold. In doing the research necessary to advise your clients, you've done the hardest work. Not communicating your knowledge is throwing away an opportunity.

If you spend a few hours learning about social media and setting up your streams, you should be able to adopt a strategic plan that will enable you to benefit from telling a larger audience about your ideas for managing their wealth more wisely. That's who this column is for: those of you who are great at being an advisor but who don't know how to use social media to let the world know that.

On a practical level, whether you are researching mutual funds using technical analysis, providing physician groups with 401(k) solutions, or specializing in financial solutions for Persian jewelers in Great Neck, N.Y., you must update your target markets with your analysis. Your ideas are your best content.

While this may sound simple enough, few advisors create or curate original content. Applying Pareto's rule in my estimation would overstate the number of advisors regularly producing content.

That's because most advisors never produce enough good content for a sustained period to benefit from social media. How much content do you need to create to start to benefit from social media? My guess is that you would need to post to Twitter three times a day targeting three well-defined niches and blog at least twice weekly for a year. That's about the minimum amount of content you'd probably need to produce to start to benefit from your effort.
Producing this much content is not difficult. But my guess is that fewer than 10% of advisors have done this. Here's guidance on turning your ideas into social media content.

Pick A Medium. You may be a lousy writer but a fantastic speaker. You may love PowerPoint or podcasting. You may hate Twitter but enjoy making a video daily. It doesn't matter which of the social media Web sites you choose to focus on, but find a medium for communicating. Your favorite medium might be the written word. You may like creating mind maps. It does not matter which medium you choose. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites let you communicate in video, writing, PowerPoint or pictures. It's all content. Use what you like best, what's easiest for you. Optimally, you'll use different mediums because some people who consume your content learn best from pictures while others prefer to read and still others are auditory learners.  

Define Your Audience. Your audience is your ideal clients. If you don't have an ideal client, then you need to get one. You need to take a strategic step back and write a marketing plan. Tweeting or writing a blog without defining your ideal client and audience is a waste of time and effort. Advisors create marketing information all the time without ever going through the strategic process of determining who their ideal client is. But that's like getting in a car and driving without setting a destination.

Take a few hours to segment your client base into A, B and C clients based on how valuable each is to you. Valuable clients are those most profitable and who you enjoy working with most.

Now, take it a step further by segmenting your most valued clients based on key demographics. Sorting them based on demographics means determining whether your most valued clients are in their 40s, 50s or 60s. Are many of them local? Are they spread out across the country? Are they gay? In the military? From your church? Do three or four of your most valued clients work in the same company? Are they physicians with a particular specialty? In the same mega-group? Examining your client base from this perspective lets you find niches you did not realize you were serving. You have something these people want.

Define Your Keywords. Your niche audiences need specialized information.  That's why they pay you. In fact, specializing pays a premium. You tell business owners about Roth IRAs or advise plan sponsors on fiduciary issues. You know what tax deductions doctors with home offices can take without risking an audit and how business owners can create a 401(k) plan that will optimize benefits to owners while also helping them satisfy their employees. You may work with real estate developers with liability and asset protection concerns or diamond dealers that manage cash businesses and carry an inventory in jewels. Whatever your specialty, each niche has its own lexicon. Your social stream must address the needs of three or four niches.

To do it right, you need to go a step further to reach your audience by identifying the concepts most important to them and defining the words they use to describe their problems. You must come up with a list of keywords for each niche and regularly post content using these keywords. The titles of blog posts must contain numbers referencing private letter rulings and U.S. Tax Court decisions. Top executives in Silicon Valley may be concerned about specific alternative minimum tax issues and many college professors might right now be concerned about recharacterizing Roth IRA conversions. 

By writing, tweeting, videoing and using other social media to communicate your ideas, you make it easy for people to find you on the Web. Almost everybody uses the Web to find answers. If you are a salesperson, you might search for information about travel deductions. If you are a real estate developer in Billings, Montana, you might want to know about state estate tax rules. You will probably go to a search engine for help. By posting content to the Web using keywords your audiences will use in searching the Web, you will draw your audience.  But keywords must be targeted to a very specific group, and you must produce a library of content for them for months. That will boost your rankings.

Budget Time. We've already established that you're spending time keeping up with news and researching the ideas necessary to advise people on wealth management, and that this is the hardest part of your social media effort. But that does not mean producing content and streaming it requires no effort or time. Social media requires you to spend time daily communicating your knowledge. Writing and sending six tweets a day takes about 60 minutes.
That's a reasonable amount of time to expect to spend every day if you're primarily using status updates to engage your audience. Writing a post for your blog may take you two hours twice a week. Making a video once a week-after planning exactly what you want to say and getting the lighting and sounds right-may take you a couple of hours. Posting it on YouTube may take another 15 minutes.  

Experiment. Budget time to keep up with social media issues and try different tools.  For example, you may find that you're great at creating PowerPoint presentations and posting them to SlideShare. You may find that Facebook is a far better place for your blogs for plumbers.  The only way you'll learn is by taking the time to experiment.

Measure Your Success. Determine how you will measure success. Success does not only mean converting clicks to clients. In fact, focusing solely on converting content to clients can be discouraging, especially when you're just starting out with your social media effort. Success must also be measured by Facebook likes, leads generated and the number of visitors to your content. It's measured in the number of comments you receive to a blog post and by the number of people you speak with that mention your content. 

Editor-at-large Andrew Gluck, a veteran financial writer, owns Advisor Products Inc., a marketing technology company serving 1,800 advisory firms.