In 1996 I self-designed my own firm site, posting a ton of information on what was then a relatively obscure area of law and tax planning, Special Needs Planning. The response was tremendous, in that I received a lot of emails thanking me for the information. People telling me that I was the only source on the web where they found any real information about that topic. This made me feel good and over time I built up a pretty decent practice dealing with that type of problem.

I tell you all this because what I didn’t realize then was that I stumbled upon two fundamental truths of marketing:

– relationship building
– positioning myself as an expert

The more amazing thing to me though — I had other planners contacting me to ask who designed my site. That’s where I said “hhhmmmm” and thus began my career as a webdesigner.

As I began and continued developing websites for lawyers and accountants, they all, for the most part, however, insisted on using the same old tired and used format of telling everyone how great they were — instead of telling them what problems they can solve. This really has continued until the pretty recent introduction of blogging.

What I see though is a more evolved form of what I had (again, inadvertantly) been doing with my own first website — building relationship based on sharing information and positioning myself as an expert. That, in my humble opinion, is what blogs should be about.