Establishing credibility with yourclients, prospects and potential professional business partners is the most effective form of marketing you can do. Building credibility with these groups actually pulls them to you and makes them want to work with you-which means you no longer have to push yourself on people to get new business. One of the most powerful ways to establish credibility is to publish an article that shows your expertise in identifying and solving financial problems your clients face.

If you can show people that your ideas are valuable enough to be in print, they will see you as an expert whom they should work with. And we know from industry research conducted by Russ Alan Prince that expertise is crucial. In fact, 91% of affluent investors said that an advisor's overall expertise is one of the key factors to consider when deciding whom to work with.

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Of course, most financial advisors aren't professional writers and therefore think it might be challenging to write an article. Certainly you can hire a freelance writer to help you create and position content.

But the fact is, writing an article probably isn't as challenging as you think it is. In our coaching programs, we offer advice on article writing based on the insights of one of our faculty members, Larry Chambers, who has created a system that can have you creating quality content in around 30 minutes.

The whole point of the 30-minute article approach is to go fast and let the creative right side of your brain run free, so it doesn't get shut down by the more rational and judgmental left side. The process involves six steps:

1. Name the issue. Start by writing down your client base's biggest challenge or concern. It might be preserving wealth, achieving a comfortable retirement, minimizing income taxes, taking care of heirs, protecting wealth from lawsuits or any number of key issues that investors today are facing. Don't overthink it-write down the really big issue that first comes to mind.

If you serve a particular niche, you can identify specific concerns. For example, Aaron Rubin, an advisor with Werba & Davis Advisory Services in San Jose, Calif., identified the key issue facing his niche of senior public accounting partners-downward pressure on incomes-when he recently wrote an article using the process. Also, remember that this article isn't about you. Don't write down the biggest challenge you personally face with clients-focus on your clients' financial concern.

2. Identify the problems. Write down three problems or adverse conditions that result from the main challenge or concern you first identified. The problems should be what you hear your clients talking about all the time, creating anxiety.

Rubin, for example, wrote down that accounting partners have been forced to cut staff, initiate pay cuts and cash out of their businesses at lower valuations than they desire-jeopardizing their retirement prospects in the process. Again, do this process quickly and freely-don't spend an hour trying to come up with three things.

3. Address the obstacles. Now ask yourself: What are the major obstacles that my clients must overcome (or bypass) to solve the three major problems they're facing? These might be difficulties approaching the question (as in how they would begin to solve it every day) or tactical obstacles that tend to arise along the way.

For Rubin, the obstacles included CPAs often trying to do all aspects of financial and business planning themselves instead of working collaboratively with other experts. Another obstacle that will likely be present, regardless of the article topic, is finding trustworthy people that investors can work with to help them solve their concerns.

4. Propose the solution. Next, write down the steps that will help your clients reach the ideal outcomes. Quickly write down a word or phrase that describes each step (you can return later and flesh out the content with more detail or add charts and graphs).

This part is relatively easy-it basically will be the same process you use every day to solve these particular problems for your existing clients. You should not offer generic advice, but instead provide solutions that you actually have delivered in these situations.

Depending on how you work, you might provide how-to components of the solution that build on each other, a list of resources or examples of the results of going through the process. At any rate, you should take readers through a sequence of instructions that can help them solve the problem. In Rubin's case, he spelled out his consultative wealth management process to his readers.