Greetings and salutations clients, friends, family and readers. Back around 1995 the Todd Russell Insurance Agency (TRIA) published a newsletter that went out to clients in paper form. Perhaps some folks reading this someday might remember this newsletter and our agency motto that lined the letterhead: Service a Step Beyond.
Now here we are some 14+ years later in 2009 in the digital age where many people do their reading online and many in this format called a blog which offers a fresh way to publish information to a wide audience.
I’m here in the office on this fine Saturday morning as the sun is slowly rising and have been thinking most of the month about a good way to introduce this blog and what it will be. The title has a disco feel to it, doesn’t it?
You can see my desk spot to the right. Kara, my best friend and office working mate for those 14+ years at TRIA is at Orting High School helping to raise money for Project Graduation.
Yup, that’s a guitar by my desk. Got to keep the calluses. It’s not for serenading clients or anything dramatic like that. Sometimes I’ll take a break from the insurance world and work the fretboards. I play in a couple bands, one of them a client is in, and have written a few dozen original songs.
This blog will be a little like the newsletter we published in paper form once upon a time, but we plan to update more frequently.
For those reading who are new to world of blogs, I’m jealous of you. There is a wonderful world of seemingly endless free reading material that awaits you. For those who already know what a blog is, then you can safely skip the next section.
What is a blog? And why should TRIA have one?
A blog or weblog for short is simply described as a chronologically organized online diary usually written in a more personal style. Blogs are typically updated frequently, at least in the beginning, but can vary as far as updates go. We are going to try and update this blog an average of once a week.
Most blogs have something called an RSS feed which conveniently allows readers to subscribe to the feed so they don’t have come directly to the website.
You can subscribe to Todd Russell Russell Insurance Agency blog RSS feed here:
http://www.trinsuranceagency.com/blog/feed/
If you are a client or thinking of possibly becoming one someday (we’re only licensed in Washington and Oregon, just FYI) or simply want to read an insurance-related blog, please subscribe.
There are many different free RSS readers out there like Google Reader which allow you to keep up with your favorite subscriptions. Think of this RSS reader like having a bunch of different magazine subscriptions streaming to you an article at a time.
Some blog posts are a lot like articles and others are shorter. What you’re reading right now serves as an example of a typical blog post.
As mentioned above, blogs typically have a more personal tone than professional. The better ones in many people’s opinion are informational and/or entertaining. For example, I’m not sure how many clients knew I even played the guitar.
Now onto the second question in this section: Why should TRIA have a blog? The business aspect of this blog is that it will give us a chance to share agency-related news, helpful information about the products and services our insurance agency provides as well as general information about insurance in general in the states where we are licensed.
The (somewhat) non-business aspect of this blog is that we will be able to share with friends, family, clients, prospective clients and readers what is going on with our family. Our family is our business and vice versa. For example our oldest son Joel is now helping to scan documents for the agency and working with Kara and I in the office every day.
Being in the small town of Orting all this time, we’ve made a number of friends in the area and would also like a digital place to allow both long time and new friends to see who we are and what we’re doing. This blog won’t get too personal about our family of course, but readers are bound to learn some things you didn’t know.
Comments are welcome
Comments are welcome on this blog subject to moderation using a few basic guidelines:
- Please keep comments on topic for each post and G rated.
- Be respectful to each other and us. No flaming, trolling or other web anti-social behavior.
- No spam. We use rel=nofollow on all external links in the comment section
The TRIA moderators reserve the right to edit or delete any comment or trackback that does not follow the above guidelines.
Todd Russell Insurance Agency now proudly an Independent Agency
The biggest news of the month of January is that we are now an independent agency. I can’t let this first post go by without explaining a little bit about what this means for our insurance agency going forward.
As of January 6, 2009, Todd Russell Insurance Agency has become an independent insurance agency allowing us to place insurance risks through multiple standard and non-standard insurance companies where the agency is appointed. We no longer have any contract that binds us to only place business with a specific insurance company for a specific line of insurance.
What this means for our clients is:
- we can shop around and help clients find the best coverage and premium for the companies we are appointed with at or in between renewal periods
- clients will have more options at renewal including but not limited to changing to a different company should the premiums increase
- more diverse range of insurance products and services available
Three of our directly appointed companies are AM Best A+ rated and have a combined years in business totaling over 250 years experience, so we’re pretty jazzed about the opportunities before us.
January 2009 was also the reboot for our business and while I’d love to stay here and keep typing, I need to get on the phones and working. Thank you for reading and if you have any questions, feedback or concern about this blog, please let us know below.
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