Who to Connect with and How to Manage Multiple Networks on Social Media
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How do you picture a business to MSP interaction happening on social media? Give be a hypothetical example that you believe actually has a chance of happening in the real world between people at viable businesses, of any age.
I'm trying to imagine what you are even picturing as how this would work. Much like the yellow page situation, people said it would work, but in years and years of testing the results were zero. Not zero sales, zero calls. People just don't look for MSP services, in general. And when they do, they already have a huge list of providers trying to get their attention.
How would an MSP engage customers? Or how would customers engage an MSP?
To some very small degree, I can see using this for customer acquisition and brand recognition, but we are talking about relationship building for the MSP to customer linkage. What would that engagement potentially look like?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
It's not that you don't use it. You don't use it like millennials do.
Right, I use it far, far more than they do. Millennials that I know use persistent, public social media very little. It's one of the complaints about them - they don't socialize to the same degree and often fight for ephemeral conversations - hence the rise of Snapchat.
We could argue and go back and forth about this, but FB is only growing in usage. FB groups are being used more and more extensively and people are connecting more and more on it. I know this for a fact because it social media is what is driving my site and some of my clients sites. It's driving these sites much better than SEO would and at a fraction of the cost (mostly free)
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@IRJ said:
We could argue and go back and forth about this, but FB is only growing in usage. FB groups are being used more and more extensively and people are connecting more and more on it. I know this for a fact because it social media is what is driving my site and some of my clients sites. It's driving these sites much better than SEO would and at a fraction of the cost (mostly free)
You state this as fact but always give an example that I agree is true and show has no relevance. That you give specifically non-MSP examples, to me, solidifies that the MSP to customer relationship cannot exist there.
Of course your business works there. Tons do. That has nothing to do with the situation. Is Facebook growing for the MSP to customer relationship? Find me any data on that, because that is what we are discussing. It is snowing in Virginia too, but that has nothing to do with the weather here. That Facebook is good for connecting some kinds of business with some kinds of customers and that Facebook is growing are not in question and never have been. Why do we keep going back to that red herring when we've thrown it out as not part of the conversation?
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@IRJ said:
It's driving these sites much better than SEO would and at a fraction of the cost (mostly free)
How is it not SEO? It's just Facebook SEO rather than Google SEO.
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SEO has never done much for most businesses. SEO is good to have, of course, but is just one of those scams that offshore businesses run to dupe SMBs into thinking that they can pay a fee and get magic income - as if all of their competitors weren't doing the same thing creating a race to the bottom.
We had this same conversation about SEO as the yellow pages - MSPs work in a market when customers are not seeking them. That makes them very, very different than other kinds of businesses that sell say marketing or deal with customers. I've worked in all of these fields on the marketing end and have seen the range. I know where yellow pages and SEO work, I know where they fail. I've been marketing via social media for over a decade, more than any person I've ever known, anywhere. I have a decent amount of insight into why it works and where there can be exceptions.
SEO is based around the mistaken theory that there is a huge customer base out there actively seeking to find you and failing to do so either completely or by finding your competition. In the MSP market, this is not true. Our customers didn't come looking for us. We aren't losing customers that did come looking for us and then went elsewhere, we just don't get the leads in that manner. They just don't exist. I've worked with a lot of MSPs over the decades and this is pretty universal. MSPs seek out customers, customers don't even know that they need an MSP or if they do, do not go through anticipated channels to find them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
It's driving these sites much better than SEO would and at a fraction of the cost (mostly free)
How is it not SEO? It's just Facebook SEO rather than Google SEO.
SMM in this case. You are not being actively searched, you are strategically marketing
To answer your other question. It's a wide open frontier. I see some solid ways you could promote MSP and other technology companies.
- Use your blog posts and post them strategically in certain groups
- Do what you do best and become helpful in places other than SW and ML. Provide simple solutions and offer advanced ones through your MSP
- Use FB as a portfolio for client projects. Everytime you tackle a difficult project post some info about the job. It doesn't have to be detailed or anything like that, but it could pique the interest of some SMB and other companies down the road to use your services
- Never stop posting. I know you are already know this, because in a way you were part of my determination to never give up. Even if you only have a few ears listening keep going forward and the fire will catch
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@scottalanmiller I think those are also potential benefits of using social media.
What if you were talking to one of your clients about a recent phishing attack while on a visit with them. Later on you see an article talking about ways to protect your business from phishing attacks. You could share the article with that person to provide some value and context to your earlier discussion while simultaneously making the content available to all of your other connections.
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Now if you were providing consumer services, like Crazy AJ's, then I would totally expect social media to play a semi-large role. Except that the more someone uses social media, the less likely that they are to hire support for their personal computer. That's a catch-22, but I would expect it to happen. Consumers love to interface over those kinds of media and it works well. And consumers have different engagement and partnership needs. Their home support isn't like an MSP relationship, you aren't business partners. It's much more arm's length.
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@IRJ said:
- Never stop posting. I know you are already know this, because in a way you were part of my determination to never give up. Even if you only have a few ears listening keep going forward and the fire will catch
Thanks. I guess this is one piece that I've never seen - a person on Facebook regularly reading content posted on FB. My stuff is on FB all of the time and has been for forever, but it gets no traffic. But it gets tens or hundreds of thousands of traditional views. Like literally 10,000:1 ratios. Facebook lacks, in my experience, the network affect needed for professional posting the way that it does for, say, cats.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
- Never stop posting. I know you are already know this, because in a way you were part of my determination to never give up. Even if you only have a few ears listening keep going forward and the fire will catch
Thanks. I guess this is one piece that I've never seen - a person on Facebook regularly reading content posted on FB. My stuff is on FB all of the time and has been for forever, but it gets no traffic. But it gets tens or hundreds of thousands of traditional views. Like literally 10,000:1 ratios. Facebook lacks, in my experience, the network affect needed for professional posting the way that it does for, say, cats.
It takes awhile to get the fire started, but when it goes it goes.
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@GlennBarley said:
@scottalanmiller I think those are also potential benefits of using social media.
What if you were talking to one of your clients about a recent phishing attack while on a visit with them. Later on you see an article talking about ways to protect your business from phishing attacks. You could share the article with that person to provide some value and context to your earlier discussion while simultaneously making the content available to all of your other connections.
I could, but I feel like that would be odd given that I could email them directly or link to them in IM or some other business channel that is more formal, but no more effort. If it is on FB I feel like I'm half hiding it from them. FB is full of stuff you gloss over and skip, it's skippable and stuff gets lost. It's meant to be that way.
If I was only dealing with people my age or older, like my dad, they seem to read everything and have fewer connections. But the under thirty crowd too often goes weeks with only posting, but never reading or responding, on social media making it mostly a black hole.
Given the choices, I get what you are saying, but when would it be superior to, say, email?
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@scottalanmiller If you share it with them directly, you are sharing it ONLY with them. By sharing it socially you are opening up the shared content to that person, PLUS all of your other connections. If you really feel like they will be offended by you sharing it that way, then just email it to them as well!
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@GlennBarley said:
@scottalanmiller If you share it with them directly, you are sharing it ONLY with them. By sharing it socially you are opening up the shared content to that person, PLUS all of your other connections. If you really feel like they will be offended by you sharing it that way, then just email it to them as well!
You mean if I post it to their wall? As an MSP, that seems inappropriate and suggestive.
"Here is that Cryptoware article we were discussing."
Nope, not going to advertise that they are exposed, scared, concerned, etc. Not a good place for an MSP to be
I think because an MSP communications is back channel it is very difficult to move that stuff into the public space. We have way, way too many considerations for that. Security, business exposure, data leakage - when could I do it that would not give away potential information about the customer, their business or their thinking?
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Keep in mind, I've posted to social media, every day... every day since February, 2000. In two weeks, that will be sixteen years of continuous posting. For the past ten years, it has been something like 100+ posts per day.
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@scottalanmiller But if you are connected with that person on Facebook, you won't have to share it to their wall. You can simply share it on your company's Facebook page and it will show up in their feed. There for them to read if they would like when they may not have otherwise seen it.
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Non-business stuff, sure. In rare, but mostly useless, situations I might post to someone's wall a happy birthday or a "here's that hot dog place I was telling you about." But even that, what if they were travelling somewhere secret that I did not know was supposed to be secret and the hot dog place exposed it?
MSPs have a very tight relationship with clients.
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@GlennBarley said:
@scottalanmiller But if you are connected with that person on Facebook, you won't have to share it to their wall. You can simply share it on your company's Facebook page and it will show up in their feed. There for them to read if they would like when they may not have otherwise seen it.
Sure, but then their never see it. Realistically, how many company's feeds to you read on FB? I see exactly... zero. I follow them, but nothing shows up. If someone did that and said "didn't you see the info my company posted on our FB feed?" I'd laugh, of course I didn't see that. It's not that I don't care, it's that I had no idea that I had to search for it.
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@scottalanmiller I follow plenty of company pages on Facebook. The companies that my friends work for and contribute to. I see their content regularly. From time to time I will share that content and then all of my connections will see it.
The more you share, the more exposure you will get and the better the chance that others will see your content as well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@GlennBarley said:
@scottalanmiller But if you are connected with that person on Facebook, you won't have to share it to their wall. You can simply share it on your company's Facebook page and it will show up in their feed. There for them to read if they would like when they may not have otherwise seen it.
Sure, but then their never see it. Realistically, how many company's feeds to you read on FB? I see exactly... zero. I follow them, but nothing shows up. If someone did that and said "didn't you see the info my company posted on our FB feed?" I'd laugh, of course I didn't see that. It's not that I don't care, it's that I had no idea that I had to search for it.
I feel the same way.
Let's change gears here and instead of talking about MSPs let's talk about hospitals or Drs Offices. (nearly the same type of setup as an MSP if you think about it) Would you really want to post any information regarding your visits to a dr on FB? I sure in the hell don't! Nor would I ever want my doctor to link something, anything to me lest people think I have some sort of association with whatever was linked.
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@Dashrender It's obviously going to depend on the content. If you're not seeing the content that a company that you follow is posting it's because they aren't posting enough and nobody is interacting with it. If you consistently post content that is relevant to the network that you have built, it will reach them.
