Your Cpa Or Accounting Blog: A Few Simple Techniques For Luring Regular Subscribers

Blogging is simple and fun, but without guests your blog will not help you market your firm. Finding a robust group of subscribers, however, is a lot of work. If you are searching for instant gratification look somewhere else. Blogging isn't going to . It always takes months to put establish a real group of readers, even if you do everything faultlessly. I'm not going to talk about content. You've already read a thousand good articles about content and I'll just advise you to keep the content interesting and fresh. Being likable and informative is useless, however, if you don't also promote your blog.

Here are a variety of tested strategies that will help attract readers into your accounting blog:

1. Keep employees and clients informed.

Your employees are a built in audience, and your blog makes a great place to post staff birthdays, meetings, after hours get-togethers, and other daily updates. Your clients can also make great readers. Use your blog to keep them informed of breaking news that affects them. With hundreds of tax law changes every year your clients need you to sort though them and let them know what matters to them. Sending them an email asking them to comment on one of your posts can go a long way, too.

2. Make your blog easy to find on your website.

Don't make visitors search for your blog. Display the link prominently on your accounting website. Put it on the top level of your navigation menu, and add a banner link to your home page.

3. Display your website address everywhere!

It's quite simple really. The more places you post your web address the more opportunities people will have to find your blog. Business cards, stationary, email signatures, yellow pages and other ads are all natural places to post your URL. Also, post your URL on any blogs or forums that you participate in. Avoid the temptation to point all your links to your website home page. In some cases it's much more appropriate to map the link straight to the blog. People don't like to click-through. If someone clicks on a link to read a blog article they're going to want that link to go straight there.

4. Write/invite guest bloggers.

Bloggers are a tight-knit, cooperative community. If you help them out, they'll help you out. Theres no better way to put yourself out there. In fact, it's really the ONLY way get your name on other industry blogs and get some established exposure to your content. As a rule you'll get a link back to your website or blog for your trouble. This is not just a great way to drive visitors to your site, the search engines also look at these links as adding authority to your domain.

Conversely, you can return the favor by inviting guest bloggers of your own. Help others help you!

5. Take advantage of networking, social and otherwise.

The online world is not as fragmented and impersonal as it might appear to the casual observer. In, fact it's composed of many tight knit communities and if you want to succeed you need to find and engage the communities that are relevant to your market. Joining a LinkedIn group or a more traditional forum are two ways you can do this. Instead of simply promoting your blog in these venues, however, put your link in your profile and be as active as you can to draw potential readers.

6. Give love to get love.

Use social sites to talk about and to your contacts; particularly other bloggers.

Large media and content providers set up vanity tracking so they know when their name is mentioned. This means that using their name in your content gets you noticed - and it may up the chances that they'll share it with their readers.

7. Contests draw a lot of traffic.

People love free stuff. They always have and they always will. In fact the word "free" is the most powerful word in the marketing lexicon. You don't even have to offer something extravagant as a prize; it can be as simple as sharing your blog link or posting the most comments. If you want to get even more comments you could offer something even more valuable. A free tax prep might seem like one obvious choice.

Contests can also be used as a good way to cross sell your off season services. Offering a free compilation and review for a local business owner, for example, can kill two birds with one stone. It will often bring that client into the monthly fold, and it can be used to create a new blog post that highlights the value added by exploiting financial statements.

8. Keep it dynamic.

Eventually every blogger gets stuck in a rut. Once you succumb to a formula it can be hard to get past it. Don't succumb to the doldrums! By the time you feel yourself starting to drift into limbo it's a pretty safe bet it's already happened. Do something different. Tell a joke, post a funny picture, or post a viewpoint that differs from your own. Keep your readers guessing. Videos work great and have added benefits. When you upload a video to YouTube you get even more exposure and can lure traffic who would never have found you otherwise.

If you employ these tactics you'll have a much better chance of cultivating a real following. Lastly, stick firm to the fundamentals. Keep your content interesting and write to your target audience. As long as you're engaged, your readers will be, too.

By: Brian OConnell

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Brian O'Connell is the President and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's leading edge businesses dedicated exclusively to accounting website design. His company at present provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, bookkeeping, and tax preparation firms.