by Liz Farr, CPA

Question:

What can help your website with SEO, enhance your firm’s profile as a trusted advisor, connect with prospects and clients, save you time, help you really understand a topic, get you new work from existing clients, and get a newsletter written automatically?

Answer:

Adding a blog to your website can do all those things and more!

But I’m a numbers person, I can’t write, you say.

But you’re already a writer. I bet you send emails to clients, co-workers and colleagues every day. And there are all those review notes you write or respond to. Don’t forget research memos and reports!

See? You’re a writer!

And don’t worry that you’ll have to write detailed explanations of tax code or the latest FASB pronouncements on revenue recognition. The best blog posts for clients aren’t heavy duty technical treatises. If you get too technical, the only ones reading your posts will be other CPAs. They’re not your clients.

Your clients, like you, are busy people. They don’t have time to read long articles. They want something quick to read that demonstrates your expertise. You want to give them just enough information so they pick up the phone and call you.

Now let’s look at the benefits of writing a blog for your firm…

1. Helps with SEO without technical trickery. Google loves sites that add fresh content on a regular basis. Sites that do that and demonstrate knowledge of a topic rise in the search rankings overall. If your blog is one of a handful addressing a topic, that post will show up when someone has a question that your post answers.

2. Enhance your profile as a trusted advisor. If you share freely of your expertise, you’ll be demonstrating the ways your firm helps its clients. Sure, you’ll get a bunch of visitors who will take your expertise and apply it on their own. But those do-it-yourselfers are rarely great clients. And who knows, they may refer you to someone who needs the exact services your firm offers.

3. Connect with prospects and clients. When you write, a bit of your personality emerges. While we may pride ourselves that it’s our technical expertise that keeps clients coming back, the truth is that accounting is a relationship business. If your clients don’t like you, they’ll most likely let you know by not coming back.

4. Save time. Are there questions you hear over and over? Just think how much easier it would be if you could just point them to a post on your website that answers that question in detail. You won’t have to worry about clients getting inconsistent answers from different staff people because it’s all there.

5. Helps you really nail a topic. The best way to really learn a new topic is to teach it. And as I can attest to, writing about the distinctions between employees and independent contractors or the implications of a Tax Court case has deepened my understanding of those topics.

6. Get additional work from existing clients. Has this ever happened to you? A client you’ve worked with for years mentions that they went to another firm for a specialty service. Maybe they needed a business valuation or a cash flow projection. And they didn’t call you first because they didn’t know you also offer that service. If you write posts about those additional services, your clients have a way to find out what else you can do for them.

7. Your newsletter is already written. When you blog regularly, all those posts can do double duty as articles in your newsletter. You’ll have a newsletter that talks about the pain points of your clients in your unique voice. There’s something magical that happens when you put your ideas and your voice in front of your clients, prospects and connections in the community. The relationship deepens and strengthens.

With all those benefits, what are you waiting for?

Blogs written for you by Bizink’s Content Team

Our Business Booster Blogging service is a library of blog posts written specifically for accountants and bookkeepers by our expert content team. Our team have also written for Bank of America and Microsoft, so we know what content gets read and what doesn’t. Find out how our Business Booster Blogs can help your practice.

Or if you’d like custom content, check out our express content writing service.

About Liz Farr

Liz Farr spent 15 years working in tax and accounting at small public accounting firms in Albuquerque, NM, USA. She has been a CPA since 2005. Since 2015, she has also been a freelance writer, helping accountants and bookkeepers around the world with content. She is a regular contributor to Intuit’s Firm of the Future blog, AccountingWEB and the Journal of Accountancy. When she’s not writing, she’s out hiking or skiing (yes, it does snow in the high desert mountains of New Mexico!)

A version of this article appeared previously in the ePlus newsletter of the New Mexico Society of CPAs.