Do you ever feel stressed out when it’s time to work on your investor newsletter or other client communications? Do you wonder if investors understand the key points and theses you want to drive home? If you answered “yes” to one or both of these questions, you are not alone.
Read on to learn about techniques and tips that will tighten up your investor communications while giving you confidence and peace of mind.
Why versus How
Many of us are technical writers and are used to expressing large amounts of details that investors can use to help inform a buy or sell decision. In his second writing event offered by CFA Society Chicago, Scott Wentworth, Founder and Head Financial Writer of Wentworth Financial Communications, offered a new framework to use when creating investor communications. He encouraged us to always think of the “why” versus the “how”. Thinking about why you are putting out your letter or communications and using this as an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of your investors and the markets can create a big win. What are the three key things we should focus on?
Three Focus Areas
One useful tip Scott offered was on engaging the reader by providing your conclusion first. This is different than the typical legal opinion approach of citing the facts first then following up with a conclusion.
There are three key areas to focus on when developing investor communications.
- Telling a compelling story
- Providing content that is easy to consume visually
- Streamlining the process for creating investor communications
Final Tips for Stress-free Execution
During the question and answer session, we learned how to refine our communications. Below are some final tips.
- Use questions to engage readers but be consistent with section headers. Make all the headers questions or not.
- If you use infographics, make sure they help tell the story and are understandable.
- Analogies are good but be consistent and don’t take them too far. They should be used to get attention and create branding.
- Make your main thoughts actionable.
- Keep it fresh. Look around the industry and garner ideas from communications you like.
- Have a section highlighting a different perspective or a section you can change in each quarterly communication.
Finally, reading non-fiction and fiction can help you become a better writer.