We spend a lot of time discussing how beneficial a blog is to a managed service provider—or any B2B organization, really—as it serves as a simple means of attracting attention from search engines, demonstrating your business’ value, and boosting awareness of what problems you can solve for them. One question remains, however:
How do you get the appropriate eyes on your blog?
We’ve spoken at length about the importance of social media as a business marketing tool. We even include it in our other marketing services. Our blog service, for instance, includes the setup of a third-party tool that will automatically post your blogs to your business’ social media pages.
“Content is king.”
This is a relatively common piece of marketing advice, but what does it really mean?
Simple: Regarding your marketing, your content will communicate most of your message with your audience. It pulls traffic to your website, gives visitors a reason to be there, and gives them ample opportunity to reach out to you. That said, your content also represents your business, so let’s discuss how to ensure your content puts you and your company in the best possible light.
As MSPs, delivering value goes beyond just providing services—it’s about giving knowledge to our clients and prospects. However, with so little time in the day to manage and maintain your existing client base, how can you even think of providing this information, too? This is a question our MSP blog service answers.
Having a blog is critical to B2B marketing—it’s a great way to communicate your services and differentiators to your audience and an amazing way to provide value to your overall website experience.
However, if your blog isn’t built correctly, there’s no point in spending all that time writing and publishing great content. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest problems we see MSPs (and other businesses) run into when building their blogs.
We often say that a business’ website should serve as the centralized hub for all of its marketing efforts. It is where you should direct your prospects and contacts to really hammer home your value proposition and push them to convert. Your blog can (and should!) play a role in all this.
Let’s review some practices that will help you optimize your blog and make it as beneficial as possible.
The task of creating blogs for your marketing might seem daunting. But remember, you're the expert when it comes to the services your MSP offers. You can use your blog as a platform to showcase your experience and insights, convincing readers of your unparalleled expertise.
You want your MSP marketing to be persuasive in getting your target audience to do what you want them to do - turning to you for all of their IT needs. Unfortunately words aren’t always enough. Sometimes, you’ll need to use some numbers (specifically, statistics) to get your message across - the Statistics Appeal advertising strategy.
As business currently stands, each and every company (including those who provide managed services to others) need to be actively engaged in marketing efforts. Without these efforts, prospects are simply unlikely to progress to be the clients a business needs. There are tools, however, that an MSP may use to lead a prospect through what is known as the marketing funnel, or the progression of initiatives that help nudge a prospect to become a lead, and from there a client.
The phrase “content is king” originally stems from an essay by the same name, written by Bill Gates and published on the Microsoft website back in January of 1996. In this essay, Gates described his prediction of the future of the Internet as a marketplace for content.
When working to determine your MSP marketing plan for the year, you may be overwhelmed at the many different options that you are faced with. There are so many choices! However, there’s one foundational strategy that you should start with if you want to propel the rest of your MSP marketing strategy forward: blogging.
I’m marketing my MSP, not trying to entertain people. I just want to sell my products and services, so why should I spend my time writing a blog?
It may be considered a cliche at this point, but the mantra, “content is king” is one of the truisms of digital marketing. Content drives traffic, develops authority, and encourages conversions. However, while original or custom content is hard to come by, syndicated content is a great workaround. However, to take full advantage of it, it needs to be customized.
If you’re active online, you probably come across blog articles that seem to fit perfectly with the time of year that it is or with major events that are happening. There’s a reason for this: these articles perform well.
To have a well-rounded company blog for your MSP, you need to write about many different topics. Our MSP Blog Topics Series was designed to give you insight into topics that you should be covering if you want to make the most out of your MSP blogging efforts.
We recently wrote about the many benefits that your MSP can receive from blogging. However, you’re not going to achieve them if you’re not doing things right.
Here are some best practices that you need to follow if you want your MSP’s blogging efforts to be worth it:
Imagine this: while browsing your Facebook feed, you come across an article posted by your local news station about a hospital in town that just suffered a data breach. While this is a terrible situation for all those involved, this presents a great educational opportunity for your MSP to capitalize on.
As a managed service provider, you know that there are tons of people out there who have no clue how to manage their IT. That’s your niche in the business. You manage their technology, but your business also plays another vital role. You’re responsible for educating your clients about the numerous aspects of their IT infrastructure, as well as informing them about how managed services are helping them accomplish their business’s goals.
In previous newsletters, we've talked about how the use of social networking and microblogging sites like Facebook and Twitter as a resource to drive traffic to your organization's website is quickly becoming the most affordable marketing strategy for businesses of all sizes. Once they get to the site, however, many businesses lack the resources that will keep visitors there. One way to improve the amount of useful information on your site is by using a blogging component.
Much in the same way as more mainstream social media platforms, the blog, or web log, started as a kind of public forum for personal diatribes. Also comparable to other social media platforms, the blog can not only be used to post videos of goats singing along with TV show theme songs, but can also be a potent tool for online marketing; it’s able to accomplish numerous marketing goals in a relatively quick and easy-to-use engine.
