This is another in a series of case studies from people I interviewed in 2005 about their blogging efforts. Now as we move to 2013, I find it interesting to look back at the early days of business blogging. I will only include cases from people who are still blogging now. These cases have not appeared on this blog before
Jill Fallon is the founder of the start-up company, Estate Legacy Vaults. It provides tools to help families and those who support them, such as estate planners, lawyers and accountants work on family issues in a collaborative manner. She started her two blogs, Legacy Matters™ and Business of Life™ to support different phases of her business.
Legacy Matters addresses issues relevant to the first phase, thinking of legacy in a much broader context including not just financial and legal planning, but also good records, good directions and creating personal and family legacy archives. When we spoke in 2005 her initial offering was Private Office, - a tool to allow for better and more secure collaboration between lawyers, accountants, and estate planners and their clients.
The Business of Life™ blog covers issues related to the next two phases, providing an organizing framework and tools for individuals to organize the business of their lives and keep their affairs in order especially through major life changes
Jill started her blogs in May of 2003. She was spending a lot of time developing her business plans and presentations and getting away from her passion - the core of the business itself - helping people deal with the business of their lives more easily and to enlarge what they leave behind as legacies. So she begin blogging about her business issues as away to get back to the content she cared for and to convey this passion to others. It was also a way to develop and store the content she was developing for a book on these topics. A related objective was to build this body of content to convey her expertise to the market. Until she published her book, her blog was a good way to establish this expertise.
When we spoke in 2005, her original objectives had been largely met and there was still more to do. She was writing on a regular basis and developing a significant body of content. Jill was also connecting with her market and having fun. She had not done much to publicize her blog so she felt that her readership might be smaller as a result.
Her major source of content were publications like the Wall Street Journal, especially their Personal Journal and Career Journal,, Psychology Reports, and Wealth Manager. Wherever possible, Jill tried to track down original sources in the articles she read. She also read many blogs on topics such as politics, marketing to women, medical issues and legal topics. So far not many people had written on her topic but Jill felt the participation will grow as the large population of baby boomers gets older. There are a few others. One of her favorites is “As Time Goes By – What it is really like to get older” which is still active and addresses issues of aging in a very direct way. I am begining to be more interested in this topic. She liked blogs that have a strong, clear voice, a characteristic not often found in business blogs. She would look at them to obtain useful links but was not drawn back. Her own blog was fast way to learn about issues in estate planning.
Jill advised potential business bloggers to make a commitment to keep it up. It is disappointing to find a blog that is not updated. If your business is local, look for local issues. Use interesting related, but tangential, topics to attract more people to your blog and then keep them with good writing.
I am pleased to see both of her blog still active. The Legacy Matters recently had a useful post - Reuniting Photos Lost in Sandy with Their Owners.
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