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Content Marketing for Financial Advisors: What to Post and Where
Content marketing for financial advisors is the work of publishing useful, compliant answers on your website and one or two chosen channels, so prospects can check you out before they call. Some firms call it social media marketing, but the two are not the same thing, as the cost data shows.
Social media is the expensive part. In the Kitces Research 2026 Advisor Marketing Study of 506 advisors, it cost $4.88 of marketing spend per $1 of new revenue, the highest of any tactic, and 82% of the advisors who used it reported no new client from their social media efforts in the past 12 months. Prospects rarely judge an advisor by it either. In Wealthtender's 2025 survey of 500 U.S. adults planning to hire an advisor, 13% would use social media presence to judge an advisor, against 49.2% who would check a professional website.
This guide has five parts. Pick covers the channel where prospects check you. Say covers what to post and how to write it. Plan covers 90 days of it. Earn covers mentions beyond your own accounts. Prove covers what each part cost and returned.
By Simona Ondrejkova, CFP® · Updated October 30, 2026 · 13 min read
In this guide
Key takeaways
Social media is the costliest tactic. It cost $4.88 per $1 of new revenue, and 82% of the advisors who used social media reported no new client from it in the past 12 months (Kitces Research, 2026, 506 advisors).
Prospects judge you on your website, not your feed. 49.2% of 500 U.S. adults planning to hire an advisor would judge one by their professional website and 13% by social media presence (Wealthtender, 2025).
Written content costs less than social posts. Kitces found content creation averaged $1.99 per $1 of new revenue and blogging $1.64, against $4.88 for social media.
PICK
Does Social Media Bring in Clients for Financial Advisors?
Rarely on its own. In the Kitces Research 2026 Advisor Marketing Study, 82% of the advisors who used social media reported no new client from it in the past 12 months, and it cost more per dollar of new revenue than any other tactic. Prospects still look at it, but they look at other things first.
Wealthtender's 2025 survey of 500 U.S. adults planning to hire an advisor shows that the place they start and the place they check are different. Asked where they would begin, 62% named friends and family, 49.8% a search engine and 22.2% social media. Asked what they would use to judge an advisor, 61% named online reviews, 49.2% a professional website, 24.8% educational content and 13% social media presence. A profile that points to a strong website can turn a small following into clients.
| Where they would start | Share | What they would use to judge an advisor | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Friends and family | 62% | Online reviews | 61% |
| Search engine | 49.8% | Professional website | 49.2% |
| Professional referrals | 49.2% | Client testimonials | 36.4% |
| AI tools such as ChatGPT | 25.4% | Educational content | 24.8% |
| Social media | 22.2% | Social media presence | 13% |
Source: Wealthtender, 2025 study of 500 U.S. adults in households earning over $100,000 who plan to hire an advisor within five years, ages 35 to 64, fielded the last week of July 2025, margin of error 4.4 points. Respondents could name more than one. Wealthtender is a directory whose featured advisors pay it, so read the figures as stated plans from one survey.
So post to be checked, not to be found. That is my reading of the numbers, not a finding in them. A website and a piece of educational content can both hold an email signup, which is why growing your email list as an advisor belongs beside any posting plan.
If you pick one network, check what your firm allows first. In Putnam Investments' 2023 Social Advisor Survey of 1,043 advisors, 38% used LinkedIn exclusively and 46% said it was the only network their firm allows, so for many advisors the choice is already made. LinkedIn for financial advisors starts with a profile that names your niche.
Do this week: Open your own LinkedIn profile in a private window, as a stranger would. Check three things: the headline names your niche, the newest post is under a month old, and the profile links to a page that explains how to work with you.
SPOKE ARTICLE
How to Turn a Small Social Media Following Into Clients
Small, engaged followings can become clients when advisors focus on one platform, earn trust before asking for anything, and move people onto an email list. The conversion path matters more than the follower count.
Bridge to Pillar 4: this article also links across to Lead Generation & Email, where a following becomes subscribers.
Why the numbers differ
| Survey | Who was asked | What it measured | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Putnam Investments, 2023 | 1,043 U.S. advisors, October 2022 to January 2023 | Share of advisors who gained clients through social media | 89% in 2020, 81% in 2021, 51% in 2022 |
| Kitces Research, 2026 | 506 advisors, March to April 2026 | Whether any new client came from their social media efforts in the past 12 months | 82% of advisors who used it reported none |
The surveys ask different questions of different advisors four years apart, so never subtract one from the other. They point the same way: fewer advisors gain clients from social media, and in Putnam's data those who did spent more time on it (1.8 hours a week against 1.0) and used more original content (68% against 46%).
Simona's take
"Kitces found that 82% of the advisors who used social media reported no new client from it in the past 12 months. That matches my experience as an advisor. Prospects who came to me by referral still looked me up before they called. A post never closed anyone. It answered one question for a stranger: is this person real? So I stopped posting to be found and started posting to be checked. Say who you serve, show how you think, and let your website do the closing."
Simona Ondrejkova, CFP®, former advisor at Merrill
SAY
What Should Financial Advisors Post on Social Media?
Post what a prospect would want to check before calling you: a plain-English answer to one client question, a client situation told without identifying details, and a short note on how you work. Skip announcements and market predictions.
Teaching is the content type prospects name. Wealthtender found 24.8% of its 500 adults would judge an advisor by educational content, so social media post ideas for financial advisors should lean toward teaching, with announcements the exception. Original work also marks the advisors who gained clients: in Putnam Investments' 2023 survey, 68% of advisors who gained clients through social media created their own content, against 46% of those who did not.
Posts land harder when they speak to one kind of client, so picking a niche you can serve comes before picking a topic. It also answers a common worry. Broadridge's 2024 survey of 403 U.S. advisors found 44% of those who do not share educational content cite a perceived lack of client interest. Wealthtender's prospects say otherwise: about one in four would use it to judge an advisor.
Three kinds of post cover most of what you need:
Teach. Answer one client question in plain English, in under 150 words.
Show. Describe a client situation and what you did, with no name and no detail that identifies the client.
Explain. Say how you work, how you are paid and who you serve.
Do this week: Write down the three questions prospects asked in your last five discovery calls. Draft a 100-word post that answers the most common one in plain English, and send it to your compliance team before it goes anywhere.
SPOKE ARTICLE
7 Social Media Post Ideas for Financial Advisors That Build Real Trust
Seven personal post ideas for financial advisors, from your own story to a client win told without a name, plus the guardrails on what not to post.
Compliance check before you post
Whether a post counts as an advertisement depends on what it says, so your compliance team decides. The SEC Division of Examinations' December 16, 2025 risk alert named websites and social media accounts among the channels it reviewed. Four points from that alert and from FINRA's guidance:
Disclosures have to be there when the post goes out. The most common deficiency in testimonials and endorsements was missing disclosures when the content was published. The alert also said disclosures reached only through a hyperlink were not clear and prominent. FINRA's Regulatory Notice 17-18 treats a clearly marked hyperlink differently for broker-dealer testimonials, so which rule applies depends on your registration.
Liking or sharing can make a comment yours. FINRA says a firm that likes or shares an unsolicited favorable comment can adopt it, and the SEC's 2020 adopting release applies the same adoption and entanglement idea.
Paid and arranged posts are your advertising. The alert flagged social media influencers and third-party ratings placed in social media profiles. FINRA treats firm-arranged influencer posts as the firm's own and expects them to be identified as advertisements.
Keep what you publish. Under Rule 204-2, SEC-registered advisors keep an advertisement for five years from the end of the fiscal year it was last published, the first two in an appropriate office. Broker-dealers keep communications for three years under Exchange Act Rule 17a-4(b), the first two easily accessible. Ask which tool captures edits and deletions, because a folder of screenshots does not.
State-registered advisors follow their state's advertising rules. On May 4, 2026, NASAA announced model-rule amendments on testimonials and endorsements, and they apply only where a state adopts them.
The archive you are required to keep is also a searchable list of everything you have already said. It feeds your calendar, your FAQ and your next post, so the record-keeping rule hands you a content library.
Run client-facing content, including posts and replies, through your own compliance review before you publish it. This page is education, not legal advice.
How Can Advisors Use ChatGPT to Write Posts?
ChatGPT can draft a first version of a post in minutes, but you still supply the idea, the facts and the final edit. Give it your niche, your reader and one client question, then rewrite the draft in your own voice.
The blank page is a bigger barrier than the rules. Broadridge's 2024 survey of 403 U.S. advisors found 49% unsure how to share educational content and 46% short on time, and using ChatGPT for social media posts can ease both when a person edits the draft. That is my reading of the numbers, not a finding in them. Compliance came fourth, at 34%.
The SEC's fiscal year 2026 examination priorities say representations about artificial intelligence must be fair and accurate. That concerns what a firm claims its AI does, not how a post is drafted, so your firm's own policy decides whether AI-drafted posts need extra review or a label. Ask before you start.
One prompt to start with:
Act as a financial advisor writing for [niche]. Explain [client question] in 100 words at an eighth-grade reading level. Use no performance claims, no guarantees and no product recommendations. End with one plain question the reader could ask their own advisor.
The article on ChatGPT prompts builds on three keys:
Decide who you are writing for. Describe one client type and ask ChatGPT what that person is searching for or worried about.
Turn real client questions into posts. Paste three questions clients asked and ask for short, plain-English drafts.
Map each post to a next step. Sketch how a reader moves from the post to a booked call, then check the sketch against your actual services.
Do this week: Take the client question from the last step. Paste the prompt, fill the brackets, ask for two versions, and edit one until it sounds like you. Never paste client names or account details into a public AI tool. Send the result to compliance.
SPOKE ARTICLE
3 Keys to ChatGPT Prompts for Financial Advisor Social Media
Three ways to use ChatGPT for advisor social media: define who you are writing for, turn real client questions into posts, and map each post to a booked call. Each key has a prompt to try, and the article covers the compliance risk of AI content.
PLAN
How Do You Plan 90 Days of Content?
Start with two to five posts a week on three to five topics your clients ask about. Buffer's study of more than two million LinkedIn posts found that range beat an account's quieter weeks, and heavier posting added reach at a diminishing rate.
Buffer's August 2025 analysis covered more than two million posts from over 94,000 accounts and compared each account with its own quieter weeks. In weeks with two to five posts, impressions per post rose by 1,182. With six to ten posts they rose by 5,001, and with eleven or more by 16,946. Buffer sells scheduling software and its data is not specific to advisors. Putnam's advisors point the same way: those who gained clients through social media posted 35 times a month against 18, roughly eight posts a week against four. Both are associations, not proof of cause.
Three posts a week sits inside Buffer's first band, which makes a 90-day social content calendar for advisors a practical way to hold that rhythm. A calendar is one page of a plan, and building a financial advisor marketing plan first keeps the posts tied to the clients you want.
A common mix puts 70% of posts on teaching, 20% on shared material and 10% on promotion. I found no study behind it, so treat it as a starting rule. The rate that matters is the one you can hold for 90 days:
Days 1 to 30: pick three topics and post twice a week.
Days 31 to 60: raise the rate to one you can hold.
Days 61 to 90: review against the table in section 6 and cut what did not help.
Do this week: Block 90 minutes. List 12 client questions, one for each week. Draft the first four posts and put the other eight on the calendar as headings only.
SPOKE ARTICLE
90-Day Social Content Calendar Template for Financial Advisors
A 13-week plan with three posts a week, content pillars and a compliance review column for every post. Covers the five steps to build it, the tools to use and how long advisors must keep posts.
EARN
How Do Advisors Earn Mentions Beyond Their Own Accounts?
Advisors get quoted by answering a journalist's or host's specific question fast, in plain language, with a credential anyone can check. Mentions on other sites also correlate with AI visibility, so they are worth pursuing before they bring a client.
Ahrefs' December 2025 study of 75,000 brands with a domain rating above 40 found that branded web mentions correlate with AI visibility at 0.66 to 0.71, against 0.27 to 0.33 for domain rating, and that backlinks were a very weak signal. That is a correlation across brands in general, not advisors, and not proof of cause. It is still a reason for thought leadership for financial advisors to earn a place in the plan beyond your own posts. Mentions on other sites also feed the visibility work covered in SEO and AI search for financial advisors, so treat the two guides as one plan.
Be honest about what a mention buys. Only 11.8% of Wealthtender's respondents would use media or awards to judge an advisor, so treat press as a visibility play, not a conversion play. In the Edelman and LinkedIn 2024 B2B Thought Leadership study of 3,500 global B2B decision-makers, 73% said thought leadership is more trustworthy than marketing materials. That is business buyers, so it fits advisors who serve business owners more than retail households.
There are three ways to be named:
A quote in an article. In Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026 survey of nearly 1,100 journalists, 47% said pitches are seldom or never relevant. Answer specific requests and write to reporters who cover your topic instead of sending one pitch to everyone.
A seat on a podcast or panel. Hosts and organizers need a guest who can state a point of view in two sentences.
A mention by a partner. A CPA or attorney who names you to a client does for one reader what a press quote does for many.
Do this week: List the three questions you answer best. Write a two-sentence expert comment for each, with your name, credential and firm, and save them in one document. When a reporter or host asks, paste the matching one. Send the first to one local business journalist or podcast host, after your compliance team approves it.
SPOKE ARTICLE
Thought Leadership for Financial Advisors: How to Get Quoted in the Press
How advisors earn press quotes and podcast invitations through a specific point of view. Covers positioning statements, a step-by-step PR path, compliance, AI visibility and how to measure it.
PROVE
How Do You Measure Content and Social Media Results?
Measure content and social media by cost against new revenue for each tactic, plus three counts you can pull in one sitting: what new clients say about how they found you, clicks from each profile to your site, and inquiries that mention a post.
Kitces Research's 2026 study of 506 advisors (fielded March 6 to April 13, 2026, margin of error about 3 points) tracks revenue acquisition cost (RAC), the marketing spend it takes to win $1 of new revenue. Lower is better.
| Tactic | Marketing cost per $1 of new revenue |
|---|---|
| Social media (36% of advisors use it, down from 42% in 2019) | $4.88 |
| Webinars (18% use them, down from 25% in 2024) | $2.37 |
| Content creation, average (high-growth firms $1.36, all others $5.47) | $1.99 |
| Blogging | $1.64 |
| Podcasts | $0.82 |
| Typical practice, all tactics combined | $0.70 |
Source: Kitces Research, 2026 advisor marketing study, 506 advisors, mostly from the Kitces.com audience, so the sample may lean toward firms that already take marketing seriously.
Read the table as a spending guide. Social media is the most expensive way to win revenue on this list, and the firms that grow fastest spend far less per dollar on content than the rest. That does not mean you should stop posting. It means a post earns its place by serving the readers who check you out, which is why the marketing metrics advisors should track start with source and cost, not likes.
Three counts tell you whether a tactic is working, and each takes minutes:
What new clients say. Ask every prospect how they first heard of you and what they looked at before booking. Tally the answers monthly.
Clicks from each profile. Add a tagged link to your site in each profile and read the click count in your site analytics.
Inquiries that mention a post. Search your inbox and call notes for a post, a video or an article someone named.
When a number moves, check one thing first:
| If this moves | Check this first |
|---|---|
| Impressions rise, inquiries stay flat | Whether the posts speak to the client you want. Reread the post types in the SAY section. |
| Profile clicks rise, bookings stay flat | The page the click lands on and the booking link. Run the fixes in why advisor marketing isn't converting. |
| Bookings rise, few become clients | Who is booking and what they expected. A niche that is too wide brings the wrong calls. |
| New clients never mention a post | Where they say they started. If it is referrals or search, put the posting hours there. |
Do this week: Add one question to your discovery call: "How did you first hear about us, and what did you look at before booking?" Log each answer in a sheet with the date, the source and what they viewed. Review the sheet after 30 days.
All Articles in This Guide
Want a posting plan you can keep up with?
Posting without a plan costs hours and brings few clients. If you want a second set of eyes on what to post and what to drop, book a posting plan call with Simona.
FAQ: Content and Social Media for Financial Advisors
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Yes, within your firm's policy. Posts that promote advisory services can be advertisements under the SEC Marketing Rule, so get your compliance team's approval for the formats you use. SEC examiners named social media accounts among the channels they reviewed in their December 16, 2025 risk alert. Keep a record of what you publish.
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Yes, under the same rules as any advertisement. Testimonials, endorsements and third-party ratings need specific disclosures at the time of publication, and the SEC's alert said disclosures reached only by hyperlink were not clear and prominent. Posts a firm pays for or arranges count as the firm's own advertising. Broker-dealer representatives also follow FINRA Rule 2210.
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Two to five times a week is a workable start. Buffer's 2025 study of more than two million LinkedIn posts found accounts gained 1,182 more impressions per post in those weeks than in their quieter weeks, though the data is not specific to advisors. Putnam's 2023 survey found advisors who gained clients posted 35 times a month against 18. Pick a rate you can hold for 90 days.
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Not directly, for most. In Kitces Research's 2026 study, 82% of the advisors who used social media reported no new client from it in 12 months, and it cost $4.88 per $1 of new revenue. It works better as a place prospects check: 49.2% of Wealthtender's respondents would judge an advisor by their professional website and 13% by social media presence.
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Answer a specific question fast, in plain language, with a credential a reporter can verify. In Muck Rack's 2026 survey of nearly 1,100 journalists, 47% said pitches are seldom or never relevant, so respond to requests and write to reporters who cover your topic instead of sending one pitch to everyone. Keep two-sentence expert comments ready, and get compliance approval before they run.
About the Author
Simona Ondrejkova, CFP®, spent about eight years as a financial advisor at Merrill and now leads marketing strategy for advisors and RIAs as founder of The Advisor's CMO. Her tip: keep a running note of the questions clients ask you. Each one is a post, and the plain answer you give a client is the same one a reporter can quote.
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