MSP 101: Are Blogs still relevant to an MSP?

If you're anything like me, then you'll wonder if there is any point in having a blog as part of your website. Either because you're starting out fresh with a new website now, or just aren't getting results with your current website and blog.

Therefore, here in this MSP 101 Marketing Pillar Video Series, (always a mouthful), are a few tips and reasons why blogs can be super powerful for MSPs.

INTRO

First up and if you're new here then hi my name is Pete, and I help MSPs and IT Business Owners to be more productive, grow their business, and live a happier, healthier life. If that's something you're into, then consider heading over to my YouTube channel and subscribing for more - cheers!

ARE BLOGS WORTH IT?

Blogs have a huge amount of value to you and your business as a marketing pillar. They help your SEO, they feed the Google machine, keep your site fresh and relevant, they can get you backlinks from other websites linking to your blog posts, they can be good ammo for your monthly newsletters, and it also builds your authority.

One key thing, as with anything to do with marketing, is consistency. If you can start today, in 2021, and post consistently then I'd say, by 2022 you will see a dramatic uptick in traffic, if you post about the right stuff.

But what do you post about? First and foremost you have to make sure you are delivering value. Yes, it's that word that everyone probably hates because they hear it too much - but I'm going to help you out a little more with 'Well what the f**k is this value thing?' this time.

Think about the recent news of the Kaseya breach. Read the articles published by pretty much any news outlet and tell me what you notice - go on, I'll give you a minute... 

OK, did anybody else notice? Pretty much every article that was ever written about the Kaseya breach also mentions another company - Huntress Labs. Well, what are they doing mixed up in all of this?

Huntress labs have one of the best marketing campaigns that I've ever seen. To most people - it's not a marketing campaign, and actually, genuinely - I don't believe it is a marketing campaign. But it is sooooo goood.

Huntress Labs care about their customers, no actually, not just their customers, they care about their industry so much, that when news broke of the Kaseya VSA exploit, they publicly posted all the information they knew about it, and offered to help anybody who had been affected, even if they weren't a customer of Huntress.

It was Huntress who seemed to be providing more updates around what was going on than even Kaseya themselves!

Going back to the delivering value comment - THAT is delivering value. Helping everybody and anybody who needed the help. Providing detailed information on what you should do, steps to resolve it, and advice on what to communicate to your clients.

It's something that I was watching, reading, and wondering why Kaseya themselves weren't providing these updates? So to summarise this, when it comes to blogging for your IT Business and your MSP - if you can hop on the latest news and stay on top of it - this will significantly boost the traffic to your website.

I've seen this myself when I blogged about a 5-day outage with Walters Kluwer who makes accountancy software. Nobody else seemed to be reporting it, and I was one of the first to blog it and keep the blog post continually up to date. We saw traffic to our website skyrocket. So it really can work.

But, outside of breaking news, what else? I'd suggest breaking your blog into a few categories to get you started.

News, where you post about those latest breaking news topics, trending content, and typically anything that hits the BBC News because that seems to be when customers start paying attention to these more widely reported ransomware infections.

Announcements are where you can post anything relevant to your own business. New staff, new services you're offering, offices, events you're putting on, all of the good stuff.

And then personally, I'd create a third category which is around that horrible word again, value. Call it Top Tips, Techie Tips - whatever you wish, but here you can really blog about useful information.

5 Ways to get the most out of Microsoft Teams, how to fix Microsoft's crummy updates and How often should you be patching your machines, which anti-virus is the best?

I'm going to say it again, but They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan is a stellar example of what content you should be creating. The focus is on answering your customer's questions, before they come to you - and NOT in a salesy way.

'Why you should outsource your IT'...Yeah, sounds like a great topic that all of your customers would be interested in. But that's like Burger King blogging about Why you should eat at Burger King instead of at home'.

We already know what the end outcome is going to be - Don't do what you're doing over there, come and spend money here.

It's a very fine line, and over time you need to get good at communicating that information without it coming across as being salesy, because that can easily put people off.

Actually - let me know down in the comments what successes, or failures you've seen with blog posts? Is anyone paying for an outsourced blog writing service and seeing results? Is anybody subscribed to just one of those services where you just copy and paste the content? Does that work? Genuinely interested to know!

Subscribe to the channel if you're not already, and If you want to learn about the biggest mistakes people are making with their websites, still, to this day, then go and watch this video.

Otherwise, thanks for reading and I'll catch you in the next MSP 101 Marketing Pillar Series Video - phew!