Accountants are at their best when working with numbers but often feel out of their depth when it comes to creating and marketing content. There are many moving parts to a successful content marketing campaign in the accounting industry, all of which require optimization to ensure leads are captured and nurtured in ways that promote actionable engagement.
Below we discuss how important it is for accounting firms to create high-quality content on their website and social media channels, how to get on the same level as your target audience, and 5 easy steps to creating a content calendar for your accounting firm.
Let’s dive in!
The Importance of Content Creation for Your Accounting Firm
Publishing quality content to your website and social media channels on a relatively consistent basis is the first step to generating more online visibility for your accounting firm. In fact, Google says that content is one of the most important ranking factors used to determine where websites end up in the search results for a particular keyword. Good content keeps your website fresh, your brand relevant, and your website authoritative, all of which Google takes into consideration when determining the ranking of a page for a key phrase.
Quick Content Marketing Tips for Accountants
Before getting started creating a content calendar for your accounting firm, look over these quick tips to help you get started off on the best foot possible.
Define Your Target Audience
Before writing any blog post, you should thoroughly define and get to know your target audience and the ideal customers within them. You can create detailed buyer personas that can be used as a litmus test throughout the content creation and marketing process. Check back to your personas and target audience frequently to ensure your messaging is in line with their goals, problems, and desires.
Fine-Tune Your Messaging
The type of content you create and even what you say may not necessarily be the most important part of your message. You should also pay close attention to how you present information to your target audience. Think about how you can word your content and the verbiage you use to market it in a way that resonates more deeply with your ideal customers.
Set Up Multiple Platforms to Share Your Content To
Your content should be published on a number of different platforms, each consistent with your overall branding. This is so your community and potential consumers will be able to associate each of your social profiles with your overall media presence. The more places you are able to share your content and marketing initiatives, the greater visibility your brand will begin to have.
Plan Ahead With an Accounting Content Calendar
Once upon a time, it was very easy for websites to simply publish content whenever they wanted, about whatever topic they fancied, and gain more online visibility. However, competition today is stiff and managers in every niche are consistently having to come up with new ideas and ways of presenting information to keep website visitors – and therefore potential consumers – engaged.
Strategizing your content calendar in a way that promotes your most important campaigns to the right audiences at the right time helps maximize the efficacy and impact that each piece of content in your marketing strategy has.
5 Steps to Easily Create Your Own Monthly Accounting Content Calendar
Step 1: Get to Know Your Audience On a More Personal Level
Once you’ve isolated your target audience, it’s time to get to know them on a personal level. What are their primary goals in life? What do they ultimately want to see when they talk about what success looks like for them?
More importantly, you should begin understanding the problems they face in their daily lives and the obstacles they have to overcome. You should understand what questions they’re asking, what concerns they have, and what excites them. This allows your team to begin creating custom content tailored to their specific needs and covering the topics that are currently the most relevant to that target audience.
Step 2: Determine the Frequency of Your Posts
Next, consider how frequently you want to post content to your website blog, YouTube channel, or other social media outlets. What’s doable for you with your schedule? How much content are your competitors posting and how often are they posting? You want to come up with a posting schedule that edges out the competition without overwhelming your available resources.
Each content marketing outlet takes time and effort to manage. For example, Twitter posts typically require more posts per day, whereas an outlet like Instagram could still flourish with one high-quality image post per week. You should come up with a schedule that works for each platform as well as how frequently you are going to be able to post content while being busy with your accounting firm.
It’s also important to ensure that the tone of the content you publish on each platform is consistent with the tone, style, and overall mindset of your target audience on that platform. This means you could be using different hashtags, phrasing, language, and even photographs between different social platforms depending on your intended message.
Step 3: Identify Your Content Categories
The next step is to identify the different categories, or types, of content you will be producing. Ask yourself what your favorite types of content are to create and what types are most successful in your niche. Common potential content categories include the following:
Seasonal topics
- Tax season
- Holiday promotions
Limited time opportunities
- Special offers and discounts
General accounting information
- How-to guides and practical advice
Company news
- Behind-the-scenes updates, changes, events, and celebrations
Community involvement
- Meaningful initiatives that your accounting firm participates in to give back to the community
Step 4: Brainstorm New Topics
Now that you have your categories fairly well-delineated, you should begin to brainstorm specific topics you want to cover that fall within those categories. Then, come up with titles, descriptions, and other information about the different types of content that you want to use to cover these topics.
For example, a content creation brainstorming session for an accounting firm may look something like this:
Seasonal
- Mother’s Day
- Father’s Day
- 4th of July
- Halloween
- Thanksgiving
- Christmas
- New Year’s
Limited Time Opportunities
- Summer discount for new account holders
- Discount for new users that sign up
- Referral programs with incentives
General Education Content
- Tips for money management
- Accounting tips and tricks
- Indicators that consumers need professional accounting assistance
- What makes a good accountant/accounting firm
- Warning signs of unscrupulous accounting firms
Company News
- Exciting upcoming events for employees
- Behind-the-scenes footage of your firm’s top employees
- Employee birthday and anniversary celebrations
- Promotion of news articles or mentions of the firm in other media sources
Community Involvement
- Initiatives your firm takes regularly to get involved in the community, such as setting up a brand awareness booth at local fairs, swap meets, and other community-wide events
- Recommendations to other providers or brands in the community that your customers may benefit from
Step 5: Create Your Accounting Content Calendar
Now that you have a fairly detailed set of guidelines to follow when creating your content calendar, it’s time to decide which types of posts will go where and when they will be published.
These metrics differ greatly from industry to industry and often, the best course of action is to run a smaller test campaign and utilize the feedback from it to improve your content marketing strategies.
There are many different types of content you can create, from free downloads to paid eBooks, to webinars, blog posts, checklists, journals, and more. Remember that content is ultimately dynamic and flexible and can be adjusted to meet the needs of your target audience.
Be sure to also do some research on fun, smaller holidays that may pertain to your business. Depending on your company’s niche, you can plan a mix of timely, holiday or event-inspired social posts, filling the remaining spots on your content calendar with dynamic, engaging content like company news or behind-the-scenes footage.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo For Industry-Proven Content Marketing Tips for Accountants
At Surefire Local, we understand how intimidating it can be to look at all the steps it takes to create a successful and effective content marketing calendar for your accounting firm. However, this is a necessary step to streamlining your team members and the processes they use to publish winning content that drives leads that ultimately improve your organization’s bottom line.
Our all-in-one local marketing platform allows you to not only create and schedule content ahead of time but also integrates critical analytics that gives you real-time information, allowing you to make important decisions about what content you want to publish, even without much lead time at all. Our tool helps you manage the complex nature of content creation and calendar tracking from conception to completion.
