Gina Gwozdz realized just how valuable blogging can be when, as a sole practitioner vying for clients with three other CPA firms in the small town of Bullard, Texas, she started looking to expand her reach beyond writing articles and columns in her local newspaper. Research led her to find a blogging community within the accounting and tax profession, and there she discovered that she could jumpstart her new practice by taking the plunge. She decided to go online and start Gina's Tax Articles at http://glgcpa.blogspot.com.

"I just wanted to get my name known," said Gwozdz, who started her CPA practice in January. "Not only has it been a client source, but to be honest, it forces me to read other people's blogs. They're keeping me up on my industry."

Since her launch, Gwozdz said that one third of her clients - many of whom are young entrepreneurs - have found her online.

"I don't do anything special," she said. "It's just because today's younger generation is on the computer so much. People aren't close anymore, they aren't asking their friends. They're on the computer."

Web logs, or blogs, are online journals that can be created and maintained at a writer's discretion. They can cover any topic and be started for free through Web sites such as blogger.com, wordpress.com or typepad.com.

THE WEB MOVES ON

"The brochure Web site is totally useless and dead," said Michelle Golden, president of St. Louis, Mo.-based Golden Marketing Inc. "The only way that the Web is effective for firms anymore is if they're using it to their advantage by providing useful, meaningful content. This is most easily accomplished with blogs."

Golden, whose blog, online at www.goldenpractices.com, lists links to blogs written by CPAs, said that the accounting profession has been slow to adopt blogging as a communication and marketing tool, as compared to those in the legal profession.

"Lawyers are all over blogs; there are thousands of law blogs and there are two dozen accounting blogs," Golden said. "The most effective blogs are industry niche-based, but a big problem [that accounting] firms have is declaring, 'I'm a specialist in X,' because they are overly worried about the implication that they don't specialize in Y and Z. If they're a small firm, they're worried that they'll disqualify themselves, but if they're a big firm, it's politics. When it comes to blogging, they mistakenly think it's an all-or-nothing deal. Even if somebody is innovative enough to move forward and blog for industry niche X, other partners oppose it, saying, 'I don't want to do a blog, but I'm an expert in Y, and that's going to make me look bad.' This is an unwise sacrifice of a great opportunity for the sake of ego."

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