The Importance of High-Quality Trading Education Centers – Guest Editorial

By Charlotte Day, Contentworks

With average foreign exchange trading volumes surging to over $1.8 trillion in 2018 and the global alternative asset market set to hit US$6702.1 million by the end of 2025, it’s clear that there’s a need for continuous, high-quality trading information.

Contentworks is leading the way for content driven educational centres which help brokers stand out from the crowd and improve brand loyalty.  Here are some top tips for delivering on high quality educational content.

Become a Go-To Source of Information

In an age where digital activity dominates, it’s becoming more important than ever to captivate an increasingly fussy target market. One of the best ways to do this is to provide content they want to read and position your brand as a go-to source of information within the sector.

Fresh, timely content that’s factually correct is hard to ignore and keeps traders coming back for more. Brokers who haven’t nailed their social media strategy will find it harder to drive traffic back to their education centre.

What does an education centre need?

Posting a blog now and again simply won’t cut the mustard. For an education centre to really shine it needs to be loaded with useful information that’s tailored to the given audience. And that requires research. Once you know who you’re talking to, content marketing suddenly becomes a lot more straightforward. With an educational portal it’s also possible to segment your market and provide content based on experience levels and interests.

With this in mind, education centres typically include:

• Blogs and articles tweaked for different abilities

While a complete newbie to the forex world might want to read up on how to set up a demo account or learn the difference between fundamental and technical analysis, experienced traders might want to delve more into strategies and indicators. A well-planned portal will categorise articles based on what consumers are interested in and then divide them into difficulty levels. Nobody likes to feel stupid and a good educational centre will leave each reader feeling accomplished.

• Industry news

A wide range of factors can influence the forex sector from environmental considerations to political tensions and central bank decisions. As there are segments of the market nowadays that are decentralised it’s influenced more by market sentiment with news of hacks and scams negatively impacting the price of digital assets such as Bitcoin.

The market also reacts to decisions about forks, ETFs and statements from important leaders. Therefore, it’s vital to follow industry news before making any market moves whatsoever. Popular pieces which keep traders on track include:

• Daily forecasts and reviews
• Daily analysis features
• Monthly outlook reports
• Trading diaries

The great thing about news is that it’s always changing and therefore provides the fuel for regular content – which Google loves. The important thing to remember is to always optimise content for the web making use of relevant keywords which will be picked up by search engines and Google snippets.

The lack of an air-tight SEO strategy can negatively impact organic search results which is why it’s also often important to go back to the drawing board and decide which short-tail and long-tail keywords need to feature in your portal. Remember though, the human element must always come first. If you’re keyword stuffing to the point where potential customers tune out, then you’ve failed.

• Video updates and webinars

With financial marketing agencies like Contentworks well-versed in producing high-quality videos, it’s worth asking yourself this question. Why doesn’t our education centre have more videos? Educational video marketing is increasing because viewers find this format easier to absorb. Videos are visual and can explain difficult concepts in an easy way. Here are their other benefits:

• Break down topics and provide content for those not interested in reading text
• Humanise your finance brand by featuring key members of your team
• Enhance your strategy offering content that can be easily shared across multiple channels or repurposed to form infographics, tweets, blogs, articles, LinkedIn pieces and so on.
• Provide quick learning lessons that help clients to move along your sales funnel
• Take the heat off your support team by answering key trading questions

• Bite-size content

As well as e-books and long-form articles which have their place, bite-size content is a must. Concentration levels are decreasing with the average attention span now coming in at 8-seconds. That’s a whole second less than a goldfish, so it’s a good idea to cater to this ever-impatient audience.

Bite-size content means large headers and easy to read snippets. It also means short paragraphs, plenty of takeaways, bullet points and snackable features which people can easily re-tweet and share. Learning how to trade or invest is not always straightforward. Therefore, creating an environment conducive to learning is key and bite size lessons are a must have.

Here are some of our takeaways

• Put yourself in the position of a newbie trader or investor- would you be able to learn from your content?
• Are the common questions a trader might ask, featured in your site? If not, they may go elsewhere.
• How is your content different from everyone else’s? If it’s the same, why would traders return to you?
• Millennials prefer less telephone interaction and more online support. Forcing them to call you for assistance can be a turnoff.
• Have you explained the jargon? Failure to do so can leave web visitors cold.
• Newbies learn more from fun and engaging content. Long and rambling articles on complex subjects just don’t work.

Education centres are a great way for finance companies to attract and retain clients. They also provide valuable support for your sales and customer service teams.

The subject matter and the content of this article are solely the views of the author. FinanceFeeds does not bear any legal responsibility for the content of this article and they do not reflect the viewpoint of FinanceFeeds or its editorial staff.