Tax Blogs & The Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 Rule, is used to describe any situation where 20 percent of something results in 80 percent of the results. Most companies that have been in business for a few years conform to the Pareto Principle in terms of revenue distribution — 20% of their current clients account for 80% of their current revenue.

I suggest relating this to your blogging strategy:

- Let your existing clients know about your new accounting/tax blog.
- Provide them with the tools to subscribe to your blog; i.e,. tell them how Blogs and RSS Feeds work, what newsfeeders are and how to use them, what chicklets are, etc.
- If they have Outlook, tell them about Newsgator.
- Let them know that this non-instrusive manner of sharing important information is directed to solving their problems, keeping them abreast of current tax issues that effect their industry or individual tax planning.
- Treat this blog strategy as you do any other serious marketing strategy that you do for your current clients.

The CPA Journal Online put it this way when talking about the 80/20 Rule:

“A class” clients are the ones that need your personal care and attention. Your strategy should be to endeavour to “love them to death”. You should have the same objective of “loving them to death” for your “Class B” clients, but on a group rather than on an individual basis. “Class B” clients do not provide you with the same return for your time investment, and so you should limit the time you devote to each of them individually and proffer it to them in groups. This is how you multiply the value of your time–one hour invested in one client can give you only one hour’s results; one hour invested simultaneously with 10 clients can give you 10 hours’ results.

Blogs are a great system for getting the same information out in bulk, i.e., in groups. Is it possible to love a client to death with an accounting blog? I think so.