Social Tips from the 2018 MSP 501
The MSP 501 Class of 2018 has parting words of advice for best managing social media strategy.
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“If you don’t have time for social media but you’re in charge of marketing — you are the problem. Know the platform that is most used by the target market in your geographic area and focus on that platform. You can’t be equally good at all of them nor is there value in all platforms. Engage, because it is fun and spontaneous. Social media isn’t successful because it is a task on a calendar or because you have some automation tool that you don’t have to touch manually. That isn’t the purpose of social media.”
— Jeremy Reynoldson, Bralin Technology Solutions
“Let’s be honest, folks. If you’re a small business, MSP or otherwise, don’t prioritize your time and money on ‘organic’ social media marketing unless you’re SUPER funny or entertaining or you look like Khloe Kardashian. Because even if you get your fair share of likes and comments, it’s almost impossible to monetize it. This is assuming you have finite resources and are looking at social media as a sales channel. You can’t compete against the big brands, who by the way are solely looking for brand recognition and have a team of experts behind them.
“On the other hand, if you’re looking to engage and network with a small audience, which may include some of your clients, have at it. But if it’s sales you’re after, there are much better marketing tactics to invest in — including paid advertising on social media platforms. Now that’s a whole different story. If done right, you can micro-target specific audiences, sending them to specific landing pages where they can purchase a specific product or service. Don’t send them to your home page or other generic web page — as a minimum, the idea is to capture their email address in return for something of value. Paid social ads are not a silver bullet, but they can certainly add to your funnel when managed correctly.”
— Holly Dowden, Ntiva
“We do some in-house, and outsource the rest. We currently use Pronto Marketing for consistency, and Marketing Authority for consulting and lead generation. It works out well! We have also built a small video studio to create social video content to connect better with the audience.
— Tim Shoop, Digital Boardwalk
“The Expedient team creates much of its own content related to the value proposition that is delivered through our solutions. We also partner with research analysts from companies like 451 Research and Gartner to share expert opinions on topics that we believe will be helpful to our audience. Some of our social activity points back to blog posts on our website in order to highlight important messages. We’re effectively repeating – and also amplifying – topics that we have already published in order to get the most mileage out of a particular message and efficiently distribute it to the widest possible audience that would have an interest on our perspective related to a business challenge, industry trend, or specific solution that we offer.”
— Jon Rosenson, Expedient
“Social media marketing can be very time-consuming. If you don’t get on a weekly schedule, you’ll have trouble keeping up. We use scheduling tools by Hubspot and Later.com to keep our LinkedIn Business page, Facebook business page, corporate Twitter account, and Instagram profile fresh and updated daily. Every day of the week has a theme and the people in our company authorized to post as us know which days and content they are responsible for.”
— Brendan Blowers, PTG, Palmetto Technology Group
“I follow Darren Hardy’s recommendation. You know what they say, model the masters. Darren recommended turning off notifications for everything! On your phone and on your PC, notifications for email, social media [and so on]. It lets you focus on what YOU want or need to be doing and when you want or need to do your work in social media, you do it and then you’re done and get out. I try to do this for everything now.”
— Brandon Bowers, ZenTek Data Systems
“I don’t use social media so my advice is to disconnect. LOL. Get back to face-to-face meetings; often, people use a fire-and-forget approach with social media, unless its a meme or cat picture.”
— Michael Jenks, Mosaic451
“I don’t use social media so my advice is to disconnect. LOL. Get back to face-to-face meetings; often, people use a fire-and-forget approach with social media, unless its a meme or cat picture.”
— Michael Jenks, Mosaic451
The application period for this year’s MSP 501 has closed, and we’ll be revealing the Class of 2019 next week. But our 2018 501ers still have some wisdom to share!
We recently reached out to them for some advice on social media marketing and selling. It can be difficult for MSPs to carve out time for a dedicated social media practice. When you’re crunched for time and resources, what are the things you should focus your time on?
Scores of millennials have made careers out of social media expertise, and even they can’t hit every note. Some specialize in lead generation, others in brand awareness, still more in community-building. There are metrics for traffic, for conversions, for engagement and more. It’s a lot to manage, but these 501ers offer up their tips on where your efforts are best (and worst) spent.
Click through the slideshow above to get some good advice on how to keep a handle on your social media efforts.
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