Best-selling author Scott to Wealth Advisers: Hire a freelance writer to stay in marketing game

Nearly everyone uses the Internet to find answers; it’s time for you to use the Web to supply your own.

David Scott Meerman says the old rules of public relations and marketing are dead. He’s written a book about the new benefits of web 2.0 and other marketing topics, The New Rules Of Marketing & PR (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2007). Here’s an excperpt of his interview with Financial Advisor Magazine.

GLUCK: What you describe is totally different from the traditional use of a press release.

SCOTT: It used to be that the press release was just to deliver information to the press. But press releases now are available to anybody with an Internet connection. And therefore advisors should be thinking about the news release as a vehicle to actually create news and get it into the marketplace. It works.

GLUCK: Advisors aren’t writers. So when you talk about things like creating news releases or blogging, is it realistic? Will a small financial advisory firm with three or five or maybe ten employees do it?

SCOTT: The average advisor will never do it. No matter how much you write in this magazine, the average financial advisor is never going to do this stuff. But there’s going to be a percentage who embraces this approach. And maybe they’re not great writers, but they can pick it up and they can get comfortable with writing.

Or maybe, if it’s a ten-person firm, they might decide to hire a freelance writer for three days a month to write for them. What saddens me is when you’ve got companies spending $50,000 or $100,000 or more on traditional marketing and they don’t try to understand how they can market on the Web, which doesn’t require the same amount of investment.

To learn more about Scott and thought leadership campaigns click here.