Jassen Bowman EA
Jassen Bowman EA

Why “tax tips” are terrible blog post and email content

If you subscribe to most SEO, email drip, or social media feed services for accountants, over 90% of what’s going to get dripped out to your audience is tax tips.

Today, I’m going to explain to you why these services are doing you a disservice, and what you should be writing about instead as you dive further into content marketing for your tax firm.

Why the hate, bruh?
Due to the fact that so many thousands of tax pros subscribe to this email newsletter, I, in turn, get automatically added to quite a few email newsletters sent by you. Basically, whenever one of you signs up for an email newsletter service, that service will offer to scan your contact list inside your email, then add all those people to your new email newsletter. Voila, Jassen winds up on a lot of such email lists.

This means that I see ALL the email newsletters. Yup, all of them. From every service provider that provides turnkey websites, social media, and email content for our industry.

And most of them suck.

Yup, I said it. Not gonna pull any punches on this one.

Each of them sucks to a different degree, and for different reasons. But there are three common characteristics amongst the suckage:

#1). They’re overly technical. Very, very few of your prospects/clients care about the nuanced details of this deduction or that credit or that new Revenue Procedure. They seriously just don’t care. Those details are what they pay you for. Sure, they want hear that some new thing exists that will benefit them — the proverbial what’s in it for me? — but that’s the extent of it. Better way: Here’s the thing, it exists, let’s see if you qualify. That should be the marketing communication — not a treatise on the technical details.

#2). Because they’re overly technical, they don’t actually provide content that people want to read. Your email newsletter, blog posts, social media posts — it’s all utterly worthless if nobody actually reads it. Remember, the modern consumer has a short attention span — they’re not reading your 27-point fact sheet on the Child Tax Credit. They just aren’t. Folks want the quick win, the simple points, easily digestible. For most of your clients, you are likely their only trusted advisor in the entire financial universe. From you, they want to hear about more than … Continue reading

How to accomplish your most foundational marketing tasks

It’s the first Monday of the month, which means it’s time for Jassen to post up this month’s Done For You articles for use in prospect emails and blog posts.

If you’re a current Tax Resolution Academy® Titans member, you can get these emails/articles here. (Trouble logging in??? Reply to this email.)

If you’re NOT a Titans member, then you can learn more about the benefits of our Titans tier here.

So, what exactly are these?

Let me start with two foundational truths that you probably already know, but just in case:

  1. Posting new content to your website on a regular basis is important for both SEO and social media marketing purposes.
  2. Sending emails to your leads, prospects, and clients on a regular basis is important for conversion and retention.

Again, I know you already know these two things. At this point, it’s most likely well-ingrained marketing knowledge that everybody comes to the table with.

But…but! Despite knowing it, most tax and accounting pros still aren’t doing it. Tsk, I say. Tsk!

Come on, repeat after me…

I will do email follow ups and blog posts.

I will do email follow ups and blog posts.

I will do email follow ups and blog posts.

OK, sweet. Now we’re all on the same page.

In order to make these two foundational pillars of your marketing strategy occur, you basically have four options:

  1. Write it all yourself, post it all yourself.
  2. Pay for the content, post it all yourself.
  3. Write it all yourself, pay for the posting.
  4. Pay for the content, pay for the posting.

In other words, it’s some combination of work by you and outsourcing. You can just learn how to do it all yourself (which I actually encourage, even if you ultimately hire it all out). At the other extreme, you can hire an employee (such as a social media manager) or an agency (such as TaxProMarketer) to just do it all for you.

Kind of in the middle, there are a variety of services out there that provide the content to you, which you can then edit to your heart’s content and post yourself. These services exist because many business owners are perfectly capable of handling the posting part, but have a hard time coming up with stuff to write about.

Even further, by at least having something to start from, it’s often easier … Continue reading

Tax Resolution Hot Sheet™ #6: Tax Pro Account, Data Security and Sharpening the Saw

In this issue:

  • Tax Pro Account – A new version of something old
  • Data Security – Are you taking it seriously?
  • Time to Sharpen the Saw

This is Dan this week. I am going to keep it short as today is my 27th wedding anniversary and I am going to spend a wonderful day with my wife.

Tax Pro Account – A new version of something old

The IRS released recently that tax professionals can input a Form 2848 and gain immediate access to a client/taxpayer’s tax account. You can access the Tax Pro Account page at irs.gov with this link.

If you already have an eservices account, then there is nothing special for you to do.  Just login like you were accessing your online eservices account.

The trick here is that your client also has to have an online IRS Account, which they can do here. If they cannot access an IRS online account, you have to do it the old fashioned way.

This new access is an offshoot of the old DA (Direct Authorization) system, where we could access our eservices account and input directly the Form 2848 and have immediate access to IRS transcripts.  The IRS took this away in 2015 due to the risk and potential for fraud.  Glad to see there are bring this back, in a new form.  Only time will tell to see how successful (or stressful on us) this will be.

I suggest you read the info on the Tax Pro Account page as well as the online IRS Account page in grave detail so you understand the process. It will make life so much easier if you can access the transcripts now than waiting for the CAF to process your POA or waiting hours to talk to PPS.

Data Security – Are you taking it seriously?

I have been attending the IRS Tax Forum for almost the last 13 years. As an experienced tax pro, I don’t learn a ton of new things, but I do get a few good nuggets of information each year. There are also a number of topics that you see year after year that you have to get the feeling they are trying to tell you something.

Data Security is just one of those topics. If you are not already getting enough emails (yeah, I know that is an LOL moment), then I suggest you sign up for … Continue reading