Aaron Hoos

Blogging is a great way for accountants and bookkeepers to build search engine optimized traffic and connect with their target market. If you are an accountant or bookkeeper, here are 10 blog posts that you should write:

1. Write SEO-friendly content to talk about the town or community you serve. Specifically, consider writing blog posts about the local business owners who work nearby.
2. Write blog posts about specific aspects of the type of work you do (especially if you specialize in a particularly type of accountancy, for example).
3. Remember that your clients aren’t just using your services because they don’t want to do their own books. Demonstrate your skills by providing a series of blog posts about how to make more money (i.e. through tax minimization, etc.)
4. Dispel myths that people frequently have about their finances (i.e. “Business owners can write off everything”).
5. Write a blog series about ways that people can save money (not just about saving money with the finances that you take care of, but rather about saving money in general).
6. Write the answers to questions that prospects and clients ask you frequently.
7. List the costs and risks that someone faces by trying to do their accounting or bookkeeping on their own.
8. Write a series of blog posts with each post defining and giving examples of finance-related terminology that they might not understand.
9. If you serve business clients, write about tips to help them make more money.
10. Chances are, you prospects and clients tend to think of you as a “number cruncher”. (Sorry). Show them your human side by including some blog posts about what you’re doing when you’re not working with a calculator.

Blogging is a great way for financial software firms to build search engine optimized traffic and connect with their target market. If you are a financial software firm, here are 10 blog posts that you should write:

1. Write a blog post explaining how you work at the crossroads of finance and tech. In other words, explain how you have expertise in both sectors.
2. Do a comparison of how your software stacks up against the competition’s software. Don’t just write the blog posts to show how your software is awesome (even if it is). Rather, use the opportunity to highlight how your software is perfect for your target market and your competitors’ software is perfect for their target markets.
3. Write a series of troubleshooting blog posts. Obviously, you won’t want to highlight any glitches and bugs. But rather, discuss some common fixes to common problems that people encounter when they use your software.
4. Write case studies of companies who have successfully used your software.
5. Create video-based demonstrations of your software in action.
6. Write blog posts that don’t necessarily have anything to do with your software but have everything to do with the financial sector that you’re involved in. (For example, if you sell investing software, write about the stock market; if you sell bookkeeping software, write about bookkeeping tips.
7. Write blog posts about the trends you see in the software industry (i.e. mobile applications, the cloud, etc.) and how you are handling those trends.
8. Encourage your users to submit video tutorials and testimonials of how they used your software successfully.
9. Since users typically aren’t aware of the full potential of your software, write a series of blog posts to describe all of the possible features that are available on your software and all of the possible ways that people can use your software. Help potential and current users to see the full value they can derive from your software.
10. Write a series of blog posts to show how your software works. You can use these blog posts in your sales presentations and for existing customers as a how-to when they are trying to use your software.

Blogging is a great way for collections agents to build search engine optimized traffic and connect with their target market. If you are a collections agency, here are 10 blog posts that you should write:

1. Write a series of blog posts describing how to maintain good credit.
2. Write case studies of clients who used your services and the success stories that resulted from your efforts.
3. Describe ways that people can avoid using your services. For example, describe how to do effective credit risk assessment and how to manage accounts receivables.
4. Make a list of the top ten ways that businesses can hurt their chances of collecting money.
5. Write a series of blog posts explaining the laws behind collections (such as how you are impacted by laws regarding harassment, the Do-Not-Call list, etc.).
6. Answer your prospect’s burning question: “What’s the likelihood that I’ll ever see this money?”
7. Outline the steps you take to collect money for your clients. (You don’t have to give away your secret system, but you should use this post to help explain why you’re worth what you’re getting paid).
8. Create a framework to help prospective clients understand when they should call you in the life of a receivable. When is it too early? When is it too late?
9. Create SEO-friendly knowledge center blog posts that describe the kinds of collection services you offer (i.e. asset recover, arbitration, etc.).
10. Write a series of blog posts describing how to fix bad credit.

I received this excellent sales funnel question from a blog reader a couple of weeks ago. I’m posting the question and answer (slightly edited) here because I think it’s a question and answer that every business owner can benefit from knowing. Thanks again for the question!

The Question:
How do you determine if you have enough opportunities in your sales funnel to hit your fiscal year goal?

Aaron’s Answer:
If you know what your average conversion rate is, and if you know what your average per-customer spend is, you should be able to calculate your answer easily.

• Your average conversion rate is the number of Prospects in your sales funnel compared to the number of those Prospects who actually become Customers. For example, if you have 1000 Prospects and 100 of them become Customers, then your conversion rate is 10%.
• Your average per-customer spend is the amount of money each Customer spends on average in a given period of time (in this case, your fiscal year). For example, if each of those 100 customers (from the above example) spend a varying amount of money but it averages out to $1000 per Customer in a fiscal year, then your average per-customer spend is $1000.

Here’s what you do next:

Using the above numbers, along with your fiscal year financial target, you are going to do some simple math in order to know how many people need to be in your sales funnel (as Prospects) in order to reach your financial goals.

First, divide your fiscal year financial target by your average per-customer spend to find out how many Customers you need. (For example, if you need to make $100,000 per year and each Customer pays you $1000 in a fiscal year, you know that you need 100 Customers).

Then, divide the number of Customers you need (which you just identified in the above step) by your conversion rate to find out how many Prospects you need. (For example, if your conversion rate is 10%, then 100 Customers divided by a 10% conversion rate is 1000 people needed in your sales funnel).

That’s it! In the example above, if you want to earn $100,000, and each Customer pays $1000, then you need 100 Customers. In order to get 100 Customers, you need to have 1000 Prospects.

If you want to go deeper, you can divide the results you’ve just achieved into smaller goals to get quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals. I think those might be more helpful. And, if you want to grow your business, consider these tips to increase your conversion rate or my popular blog post 99 ways to optimize your sales funnel and grow your business.

Disclaimer: There are other factors to consider: Outside risks (like the economy) can have an impact. So can seasonal fluctuations if you’re measuring in the middle of a fiscal year. Also, your sales funnel’s conversion period can play a role in determining how accurate your numbers are. Every industry is different and these things need to be considered and factored in, even if it’s just as a rule of thumb.

Check out some of my other Aaron’s Answers blog posts. If you have questions you’d like to ask, feel free to email them to me and if I think all of my readers will benefit, I’ll post them here. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your info anonymous.

I was browsing through MindMeister.com’s mindmaps recently and noticed that there were a lot of great maps (especially for small business owners) but there was little order to them. You sometimes really have to search for them!

So I created a meta-map — a mindmap that links out to many maps and provides a sort of taxonomy so business owners can find the information they’re looking for.

Here’s the map:

Or click here to view the Business Meta-Map: The Best Business Mindmaps at MindMeister.com.