The Estate Planning Blog™ provides a forum for all estate planning professionals to share ideas and insight on important issues that shape our industry. We encourage all attorneys (members and non-members) and other professionals to write blogs and post comments.
The Estate Planning Blog™ was launched by WealthCounsel, LLC in April 2010 to demonstrate the organization’s commitment to thought leadership in the estate planning industry and to showcase the collective wisdom of its member attorneys. The Estate Planning Blog™ provides a dynamic platform for discourse on thought-provoking topics of the day that can be “read and spread” throughout the blogosphere for the benefit of all practitioners. Unlike most blog sites, The Estate Planning Blog™ is unique in that it is not a single blogger’s viewpoint, but rather an open forum where any estate planning practitioner may contribute insight on important topics shaping our industry. From discussion regarding the role of technology in the law practice to commentary about estate tax repeal initiatives in Congress, this unique blog site is the intersection of collective intelligence and innovative problem-solving.
Why write a blog article for The Estate Planning Blog?
- Become recognized as a thought leader
- Float a trial balloon on a unique topic that you want to explore with other attorneys
- Get your name out into the blogosphere and watch your ideas take on a life of their own
- Contribute to the WealthCounsel brain trust and intellectual growth of your colleagues
Making Your Ideas Stick:
If you’ve read the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, then you know there are secrets to gaining the attention of readers and giving legs to your creative thoughts. We encourage writers to follow the “SUCCES” acronym promoted in this book to make your blog “sticky.”
- Simple — find the core of any idea
- Unexpected — grab people's attention by surprising them
- Concrete — make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
- Credibility — give an idea believability
- Emotion — help people see the importance of an idea
- Stories — empower people to use an idea through narrative
Before you start writing we would like to provide you with the following tips:
- Blogs don’t have to be extremely long. Writing about 400-500 words is acceptable, but longer blogs will also be accepted.
- Provide insight/value to estate planning colleagues (e.g. reflections on estate tax law changes or pending legislation in Congress, case studies or compelling client stories, practice-building tips, legal-technical content, etc.)
- Make sure the information is interesting, relevant, useful, controversial, and/or thought-provoking for our audience. Just think, would YOU read it?
- Be educational, not self-promotional.
- Tell a story – studies show that retention of information is higher when conveyed within the context of a story.
- When people are sitting down to read blog articles they are not sitting down to read white papers
- White space is ok
- Use bulleted/numbered list when appropriate
- Bold words or phrases that you want to stick out
- Think about this thought “can they understand the main idea of your blog
To post an article*, please send an email to: bloggers@wealthcounsel.com
*We recommend our bloggers attach a headshot along with their article.
WealthCounsel reserves the right to review blog articles. We may (or may not) edit the submission for form and basic content before posting the article. When possible, we will acknowledge and give credit to the original contributor and/or author of the article, and we may use the article in any way we deem appropriate for the mutual use and benefit of WealthCounsel members.