How Blogging Grew An Accountancy Firm’s Website Traffic by 383%

Last September I ran a blogging course for one of our clients. They’re a firm of business accountants Toowong based in the City – and they’re the type of practice that’s always prided itself on harnessing technology to keep one step ahead.

Whilst many accounting practices don’t have any blogs associated to their website – this particular practice have three blogs.

Why three blogs?

Well, they have a number of clients and therefore, experience and expertise in understanding their needs in a particular sector. Those sectors focus around:

• Restaurants & Catering
• Artist and Galleries
• Property -  Management / Investment / Development

There’s nothing unusual about these sectors – however, rather than endeavour to just push ‘Accountancy’ news into all of these audiences – they take a targeted approach – providing relevant content for relevant audiences.

Of course – blogging works best when your activity is consistent, regular and purposeful. According to expert bloggers from wordless web, this means that if you commit to blogging every day or twice a week (as my client has) – then effectively, you’ve got to feed your blog with relevant and purposeful content.

As any busy partner or business person will concur with – great content doesn’t just happen. It takes time to create – and without effective planning, those well intentioned blogging schedules get further and further behind.

During the workshop we covered the following:

• What blogging is and why it’s important.
• How to blog –
  • writing for the web
  •  and creating content that compels others to share it, comment on it, amplify it.
  • The art of compelling headlines
  • Creating a blogging system
    • Editor
    • Blogging team
    • Setting clear objectives and deadlines
    • Creating a content calendar (seasonal elements, topical elements)

Each delegate (and there were 7 that originally nominated to be part of the Blogging team to learn about blogging and regularly create content – there are now more!), then had to create their own headlines and commit to creating two articles within a specific deadline.

This activity meant that immediately following the workshop, they had 14 blog post titles ready for creation.

The blogging team didn’t disappoint – and content has been rolling into their three blogs ever since in a consistent, newsworthy and conversational manner.

And it is content that is proving to be far more compelling than the drier news often shared via ‘subscription’ accountancy feeds.

How they achieved this?

• They appointed an Editor – who brilliantly takes a very responsible role and actually ensures everyone stays on track (a fundamental taskmaster)
• They meet at least monthly to discuss topics, seasonality and brainstorm content ideas (videos, case studies, testimonials, client reviews are now all in the forthcoming pipeline).
• They showcase their success back to the Partners and rest of the team to evidence results and impact.
• They also use their blog posts as key content within their monthly newsletters – showcasing the rich mix of expertise and ‘voice’ of the practice via that medium too.
• They’ve made each blog shareable via social media channels by including, Share buttons on each post.  This enables those reading the posts to share into new audiences to amplify reach significantly.  And of course, this unique and authentic content gives the practice compelling content to share into their social media channels too.

The results so far:

In just a couple of months traffic has skyrocketed to their blogs (an increase of 383% comparing pre blogging stats to November – just two months into blogging) and therefore, their website. And it’s relevant and targeted traffic.

They’ve measured reach of their content using both Analytics and other tools – and the impressions are staggering – literally tens of thousands of people have interacted with their content in one way or another.

The blogging team has grown – more of the team see how those blogging enjoy sharing their expertise and experiences.

The Partners recently introduced a Social Media Training Workshop for the entire practice – as evidence of impact from their blogging activity has whetted their appetite to explore social media channels more widely.

Grant Pierrus, who manages Social Media and Blogging Activity for the Practice says…

Over the past few years I’ve been bombarded by success stories of companies who have been using social media effectively.  Driving up their sales and thought leadership amongst their online audiences.  I knew that if we planned and executed a well thought out and integrated social marketing plan we would experience similar results.

As Michelle has mentioned, we created a blogging team. Our professional staff knows their stuff, and I wanted to share this knowledge with our online audience and give the Westbury brand a voice.  Our biggest challenge was getting our team to change their perspective and think about the sort of content that our audience want to read instead of us deciding what they should be reading, Michelle’s excellent training helped with this.

We have been blogging consistently for a few months and the results are phenomenal.  Website traffic has increased, enquiries have increased and of course, we have quite a few new clients too!

So, it’s a fact – blogging works.

If you are looking to integrate a blog or set up a blogging team and need training – then simply get in touch.  We’d be delighted to help you too.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog