How often do you see an accountant’s website that doesn’t look like an accountant’s website? I’m willing to bet that almost never occurs. How often have you heard me bitching about crappy professional websites? Plenty.
The one you see above represents a small Australian practice, Alan Lewis Accountants. You can see from this snapshot the firm is on Facebook. I’m not sure about that given my past reservations about privacy and the like. Nevertheless, this firm is using every channel at its disposal to maximize its exposure. It is on Twitter, uses email, provides an RSS feed and as you can see, has a prominent newsletter subscription invitation on the top right hand side.
Reading through a couple of the articles, it’s clear this firm is going to great lengths to ensure that readers see and find easy to digest, friendly and relevant material. It does exactly what all great blog sites try and achieve – address wide issues without drawing direct attention to itself. The article referenced in the illustration doesn’t end with a ‘Let us help you…’ or ‘Contact us so we can…’ Instead it finishes with:
What are some of the ways you’ve used to develop loyalty or improve the lifetime value of your customers?
The invitation is for the reader to share their stories.
What I really like though are the extensive ‘how to…’ types of article. They ask a series of questions rather than telling the reader what they should be doing every other sentence. That makes the content a lot more likely to be acted upon. Take this one about surviving in tough times. A topical subject tackled in an approachable manner.
It would be easy to criticize the layout as a tad folksy and yes, it could be improved – can’t we all? But the fact it is expressing its character in terms that today’s savvy networker will easily recognize makes it attractive, different and welcoming. Do you know of similar examples?
As a side note, it uses the same blog framework used here. It’s a very versatile theme which is simple to customize and make unique. I’m increasingly noticing that new technology adoption in both Australia and New Zealand seems to be at a faster pace than the UK. There is plenty to learn from the Antipodean experience.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Twitter Quitters Say Twitter is Boring (socialmediatoday.com)
- Targeting Baby Boomers, the ‘forwarding generation’ (lostremote.com)
- Australia is social networking capital of the world (telegraph.co.uk)
- Australia Tightens on Economy Upswing (online.wsj.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dbe10db9-00f9-4898-b49d-f87d21ada16e)
