Accountants play a vital role for businesses and individuals who need to make sense of their financial situation. If you’re an accountant, people need your financial guidance and insight. And you need to use online marketing to position yourself as a skilled and competent professional.
Unfortunately, when it comes to online marketing, you have a distinct challenge that many other professionals do not have: Online marketing (such as articles and blogs and Facebook posts) uses content to help attract potential customers and to position you as the expert service provider. But what kind of content should you include in your marketing?
How to read a balance sheet? No, potential customers don’t want to know that. (In fact, that’s the reason they’re looking for an accountant in the first place… so they don’t have to read balance sheets!).
How to perform financial analysis? No, that would make someone fall asleep at the best of times! (And again, why would someone read about it if they were thinking of hiring you anyway?)
Changes to the tax code? No way! Who would want to read that at all? (Accountants only read it because they have to… no accountant wants to write about it too!)
As important as an accountant’s work is, it can be extremely difficult to talk about it in your online marketing.
So, how do you create compelling online content to help people see how valuable you are without just writing about stuff that they don’t want to read about anyway?
The answer is a combination of two elements that accountants can easily include in every blog:
Value – What you do for your clients. This is the benefit that people get by working with you.
Personality – Who you are. This is the “voice” of your content.
When you combine these two elements in your content marketing, you communicate in a way that attracts potential clients without boring them to death with information that they don’t need to know. Here’s how to incorporate personality and value into your work.
HOW TO INCLUDE VALUE IN YOUR CONTENT MARKETING
The first thing you need to do is figure out what to say.
Forget the in’s and out’s of what you do for a living. Don’t blog about that. After all, no one is really interested in reading about tax code. Rather, they’re interested in knowing that you know the tax code enough to help them.
So, create content that shows your value to your clients. Show case studies of people whose businesses have succeeded because they worked with you. Instead of talking about how to read financial statements, talk about what to do with the business insight gained from financial statements. Talk about what to do with tax returns to make more money. Outline strategies to help people retire early.
In other words, don’t talk about your work. Talk about how people can benefit from what you do and talk about specific things that people can do for themselves after they’ve used your services.
HOW TO INCLUDE PERSONALITY IN YOUR CONTENT MARKETING
Now that you know what you want to say, figure out how you are going to say it.
Start by listing the various qualities that make up your personality. What do people think of when they think of you? What are some things that you like, which can become a sort-of signature for you? For example: Are you funny? Thoughtful? Happy-go-lucky? Enthusiastic? Energetic? Do you like classic cars? Do you like to cook? Are you an avid book collector? Do you like a certain sport?
There are things about you that make you uniquely you. Unfortunately, most clients and potential clients are too busy seeing the spreadsheets to the see person behind them. You can change that around and become more magnetic by letting your personality shine through.
As an example, just watch a cooking show. The ingredients that these chefs cook with, and the dishes they create, look good but could be duplicated by other expert chefs. The reason these chefs have a following and their own show is because of their personality!
Be true to yourself (don’t make up a rock-n-roll personality if it’s not you). Figure out what makes up your personality and then make sure that it shines through in all of your online marketing: Tie in elements of your personality in all of your blogs and articles and Facebook postings and tweets and newsletters and special reports.
Accountant marketing with blogs and articles doesn’t have to bore your clients. Instead, your online content marketing can be highly valuable to them (while at the same time displaying your unique and compelling personality), which helps to position you as an expert that they will want to hire.