Skip to content
Free Trial
All posts

Stop Chasing Online Conversations-How Steward Partners Is Starting Valuable Conversations With Curated Content

  Bethany Dameron  ·  5 minute read

conversation starter

Have you been trying to get your team to share more on their LinkedIn? If you’re in any space remotely related to the financial service world, you know it’s difficult to launch a content strategy.

There are issues of not having enough content, not having compliant content, and then figuring out how to make the content available to your advisors, partners, and team.

As with most content marketing and social selling strategies, a “one size fits all” solution isn’t going to work, especially in regulated industries.

The marketing team at Steward Partners wanted to support their advisors in their compliant use of social media to grow and strengthen their client relationships, but providing the supply of relevant content was a missing puzzle piece needed to make that possible.

We talked with Isabel Barbosa, Social Media and Marketing Manager at Steward Partners, about how they deployed a system that automatically surfaces, filters, checks for compliance, and delivers external content that aligns with each advisor's interest to support their consistent presence on social media, offering the foundation for sparking valuable conversations rather than chasing them.

The Perfectly Compliant Curation Solution

Before their current content tech solution, Isabel says they had a few content subscriptions, but the process of approving content through compliance and having enough content made their efforts difficult on the day-to-day.

While the content coming through was good, there wasn’t a lot of it, covering very few topics. Sometimes, articles would take days to get through the compliance process, so by the time they reached advisors, they were older and sometimes not relevant. 

“The content was minimal. And not only that, we had to rely a lot on the review from the compliance team,” Isabel says.

The marketing team at Steward wanted to provide content not just to their wealth advisors but partners, the management team, and other employees who wanted to invest in their personal brands online.

That’s when they switched to their current content stack trifectas for financial service professionals: UpContent, Hootsuite’s Ampify, and Proofpoint.

Steward has provided Hootsuite’s Amplify to make finding and sharing content for their advisors accessible and right at their fingertips.

The content sourced via Curate by UpContent is automatically run through a compliance check with the custom policy they built within Proofpoint. Any content that passes compliance checks is automatically available in the Amplify library for advisors to share.

“This way, they [the advisors] can have content faster and more relevant to the market and the industry. When you go to the Amplify library, there's a lot of fresh content that was posted one day, hours ago, and two days ago. Our advisors are conversation starters now,” Isabel says.

“The content isn’t going to someone's inbox for a few days waiting for pre-approval and then the library. It becomes available for us, and we can participate in the momentum, which is extremely helpful for the social media world.”

Streamlining Content Creation and Curation for Financial Advisors Using Hootsuite and Amplify

Once their workflow was up and running, Isabel says their content curation process runs almost entirely independently with minimal management, which has opened up her schedule to focus on creating valuable original content.

“Providing content to our team is my day-to-day job. This tech stack is beneficial and saves me tons of time because I don't have to research, separate, and approve articles manually and then make them available. I can put time into creating content on topics we are experts on,” Isabel says.

But this doesn’t just save time for her. Isabel says this time savings have also helped their advisors focus their time on building the relationships they need, all with the tools they need right at their fingertips.

“For our advisors, it is the same thing, right? They have to work on their relationships, work with clients or potential clients, bring new clients, manage all the portfolios, and do everything else daily. But they want and need to have that communication, and UpContent makes that possible,” she says.

Starting Conversation With Curated Content

Have you ever been to a dinner party where the room goes stale with silence? It's super awkward, right?

But then, inevitably, someone in the room mentions an article they have read or some interesting fact they have come across and gets the conversation going, and everyone pledges their allegiance to the thought leader of the room.

That’s how Steward Partners advisors use curated content: conversation starters where people spend most of their time - online.

“I think having so much content available for our advisors allows them to be on top of certain topics, news, and themes, and they can start conversations online because the article is just the beginning,” Isabel says.

Isabel says that the advisors as a whole are very technology-forward and want to be not only a part of the social media world but also thought leaders in that space. Using tools like UpContent, Hootsuite, and Proofpoint has given the advisors the push they needed to put those wants into motion.

“Now they just need to go pick what articles they think would resonate with their audience and schedule out their posts, so Amplify and UpContent save them a lot of time,” Isabel says. 

Measuring the Impact: Engagement Rates of Curated vs. Original Content

The curated content sourced via UpContent and shared through Hootsuite's Amplify consistently demonstrates higher engagement rates than only sharing original content created by the marketing team at Steward.

How is this possible? Largely because the content is timely, relevant, and diverse. It covers a wide range of topics that appeal to various interests within their audience and allow the advisors more latitude to present an authentic version of themselves. 

Shares of curated content garnered nearly 2x the number of clicks per share compared to original content shares, and curated content was shared by advisors 2.3x as often.

Isabel says that having curated content as part of the mix increased advisor engagement in the program and doubled the engagement of their audience in their profiles, helping them stay ahead of the curve in stimulating conversations with their audience.

While curated content casts a wide net and reaches a broad audience, their original content plays a crucial role in establishing thought leadership and expertise in specific areas that Steward Partners specializes in. 

This blend of curated and original content helps their advisors maintain a consistent and engaging presence on social media, keeping their audience informed and interested while also demonstrating Steward’s leadership in niche areas.

"Our curated content keeps the conversation going, providing a steady stream of interesting articles and insights. At the same time, our original content allows us to showcase our unique perspectives and expertise, sparking deeper and more meaningful discussions with our audience,” Isabel says.

By leveraging curated and original content, advisors create a dynamic and effective content strategy that captures attention, builds lasting relationships, and drives meaningful engagement.

Next Steps To Helping Your Advisors Start Conversations With Curated Content

Because Isabel and the team created so many Topics for their advisors to choose from, there’s enough content to appeal to a number of interests, specialties, and focus areas, which helps keep the team engaged with the tools.

“They have all this content in Amplify, but not everything is going to resonate with everybody, so you can actually find information. It's a little bit more customized for each individual, so whether someone wants to share about retirement, market insights, or store partners…all of that is available,” Isabel says.

“They want to position themselves as experts. The advisors want to demonstrate that they know what's going on. Thanks to these tools, they are active on social media and know what’s happening within the industry.”

UpContent is designed to be as custom as you need, finding content around any and every topic you need and building processes to be as manual or automatic as you want to help your team succeed online. 

If you’d like to learn more about how UpContent can help build a custom content curation strategy for your firm, or see in a little more detail how UpContent works, you can watch a free demo! 

Or, if you’d like to see how we have helped others in the financial service industry with their content marketing strategies, check out some of our other success stories!