Hortz: How do you define “valuable content” and how do you go about finding it?
Rogerson: Valuable content exists at the intersection of what your audience is interested in reading and what your brand is uniquely capable of offering, whether original or curated. Valuable content moves your brand forward in the minds of your audience—positioning your organization and team as trusted experts in solving their current and future problems. You must first decide what your brand narrative is, and what your goals are, in order to identify valuable content. And this can shift depending on the developments of your company and brand.
Once these criteria are in place, the best way to present this content on a steady basis is by creating the pieces that you have a unique perspective or expertise in and then using artificial intelligence (AI) to discover third-party content that provides context, stimulates action, and meets your brand goals. That’s where UpContent comes in. We built an engine that enables content curation by automating the discovery and distribution so your team can focus on the value. It’s like having a team of experts that understand your business scouring the internet for you.
Hortz: How exactly are trust and loyalty formed by providing valuable content? How does it lead to converting prospects into clients and enhance current client retention?
Rogerson: Trust comes about in a few ways.
First, people are viewing content online all day. By serving as an outlet that can cut through the noise and elevate the worthwhile pieces, you are harnessing a dynamic that is already happening while building credibility and providing value to your audience. You are not afraid to share content that is not your own if it’s helpful to the consumer. Yes, even if it might have ads for your competitors. (Earning business due to ignorance of your competition isn’t a winning business plan!)
Second, people start to see your brand and your team as resources, not just another marketing campaign. They begin to look to you for on-topic information, not just self-promotion. This helps credibility and trust with both clients and prospects.
Hortz: What process do you use to match content that is valuable and relevant to different clients?
Rogerson: Specificity begins with breadth. We uncover over 150,000 articles each day to ensure unparalleled coverage—regardless of the interest area. Each uncovered article then moves through a litany of “hygiene” classifications and scoring processes to understand how beneficial the content would be when presented to an audience interested in the content’s topical area.
Relevance begins with specificity. Rather than providing a finite set of hierarchical categories or fixed feed list, we leverage our own proprietary crawler to discover, index, and present the content that is most applicable to our customer’s goals. Customers are able to create their own custom topics via our guided or advanced builder process in order to be as broad or complex as they would like. Further, customers can specify the language and region to further narrow the articles discovered.
We recognize each of our customers have their own approach to curation and provide a full continuum from 100% automated to 100% manual, but all within a central solution.
Hortz: What are some of the features you built into your platform to help advisors?
Rogerson: One of the most pressing challenges for advisors is in achieving the level of authenticity they have long experienced in their analog conversations using the current digital formats of social media, email campaigns, and microsites—and doing so in a scalable, compliant way.
Our ability to easily manage access, our partnership with Proofpoint to ensure compliance of curated articles against the specific policies of the firm (rather than a generic filter), the opportunity to leverage these curation efforts to support all digital communication channels (both internal and external), and the output being thoughtful curation of content that brings the reader to the publisher’s site, has helped us directly address the needs of the advisor community.