Because you want more customers, and you want your old ones to stick around, don't you?
Blogging has to be one of the most interesting forms of marketing in the digital realm today. However, as interesting and effective as it is, it is equally confusing and obscure to those who are just getting started, especially with businesses that are more practical in nature, such as accounting.
After all, how does one quantify the most popular reason for blogging, to "become a thought leader?"
You can't pay your bills or hire staff based on this notion alone, and measuring it... well, that's a whole other ball of wax. It's not practical, and it doesn't drive results.
So, how does an accounting practice, such as yours, justify the expense and time investment in something like blogging, when it's so difficult to monetize? - Here's the good news... it's NOT hard to monetize, but it does take a bigger picture marketing strategy, which includes other forms of digital marketing, to make sense and cents. Here's why you should start blogging for your accounting practice.
"WHY should I start a blog" isn't only question we should be asking.
That said, I'm going to walk down two paths, so you can see the benefits and the play-book.
1. Reason WHY #1: Drive solid traffic to your website
Have you noticed lately how often blog posts show up in your Google searches? It's no secret that Google and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo have committed themselves to supporting and promoting educational content over virtually every other type of content out there.
The web has become a marketplace for thoughts and ideas, and those who are helping educate their prospective customers are earning more of those search queries than ever before.
1a. HOW to drive solid traffic: Follow an SEO marketing strategy
Your blogging strategy can significantly contribute to your organic traffic when you implement an SEO strategy behind it. This means developing and tracking a list of targeted keywords, then using your favorites as blog topics. These keywords should consider how your prospective customers seek answers to their problems as well as traffic.
For example, one of the keywords I"m focusing on for this particular post is, "should I start a blog." If your practice offers specialty tax credit studies like R&D, IC-DISC, or something else completely, you can post article about how or why your prospects should take advantage of them.
2. Reason WHY #2: Convert visitors into leads
Now that your blogs are driving traffic to your website with your blog posts, you can also now convert that traffic into more than just blips on your Google Analytics reports. After all, what good is traffic without conversions?
2a. How to convert visitors into leads: Conversion paths
While blogging around keywords is important, it's equally important to have a game-plan for converting traffic into leads, which starts with other forms of content, particularly downloads, that you can make available through conversion forms, found on landing pages throughout your website.
For example, if you're blogging around the significance of R&D tax credits for small-to-medium sized construction companies, you could offer an industry-specific Excel calculator that helps readers quantify the potential value of their credit. Of course, make sure it's clear that it's for estimation purposes only, and that to actually capture the credit, one should utilize professional accounting services... (hopefully they'll go with yours, or at least give you the opportunity to pitch and bid).
3. Reason WHY #3: Learn about your buyers
It may surprise you how little or how much your buyers care about certain topics. Blogging gives you a window into their thought processes by opening up conversations and providing inroads to your content and conversion forms.
You will learn a ton about your buyers, but not just which of your service offerings matter to them... you'll also learn about how to communicate with them, get them excited about using your services, and understand where your accounting practice fits in to their overall game plan.
3a. How to learn about your buyers: Social media
Posting on social media is another area that eludes a lot of even the biggest CPA firms with robust marketing budgets. Many use it as a forum to blast company ads, but this is a common misuse of the medium.
Instead, if you were to curate content on social, including yours AND those of folks and businesses you follow, you'll be able to find out quite a bit about your audience. There are forums where you can even post and curate your blogs outside of the big 4 (not KPMG or friends.., but rather, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+), and use them as talking points to kick off major discussions.
4. Reason WHY #4: Help your buyers buy
Blogging is such a great way to connect with your audience, because it is used to help readers diagnose their problems... problems that YOU and your firm solve.
Education is a critical part of your sales process, because if your prospects don't know why they need you, in their minds they simply WON'T need you.
4a. Help your buyers buy: Varying blog topics
Not everybody who finds your blog is going to be in the same place. Some will already know quite a bit about your service offerings, because they've spent time diagnosing their problems in the past. MAYBE they're ready to buy, and maybe they're not.
If you post blog topics based on different aspects of the buyer's journey, you're going to attract and engage folks who fit into a wide spectrum of wants and needs. Some of your posts will be tactical in nature, which means they're aimed at people who know a little bit about the topic, but not enough to consider themselves informed. Some will be deeply tactical, which will have more details, links to references, and more comprehensive descriptions.
Others will be purely about creating awareness... as in, basic education for folks who know little to nothing about what you do.
By blogging for all of them, you create opportunities to engage folks at all levels. By pushing them through your lead conversion paths, which will also reflect varying stages of the buyer's journey, you'll create custom experiences that will motivate any potential customer to buy when the time is right.
5. Reason WHY #5: Retain & convert your customers into evangelists
One of the best ways to lose clients is to forget about them throughout the year when you aren't working on their returns. Although you may not feel like there is a good reason to connect prior to needing their information, your competitors are using this lull to get in front of them.
And because they are the only voices your customers are hearing, it's going to be harder to retain them at tax time, and they're certainly not out there promoting you, but it doesn't have to be that way, and blogging can help!
5a. Turn your customers into evangelists by not forgetting about them
By providing educational content in bite-sized chunks throughout the year with your blog, you make it easier for your clients to understand the value you bring, and help themselves prepare for crunch time - essentially making it much less crunchy.
So, develop varying blog topics that follow the rules of SEO, as we discussed earlier in this post, that help you re-convert them with valuable content, which is distributed on social media, and made easily sharable. This will enable your followers to curate your blogs and direct traffic to your site and content offers... which will help you generate more leads.
You blog for customers, promoters, and business success.
There is a simple equation that goes with this, but it fits into a bigger picture strategy, because blogging on its own (ie, no social media, content downloads, or nurturing efforts after), can only move the needle so far. "Should I start a blog for my accounting firm?" - Are death and taxes inevitable?
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