There is a lot of conversation about thought leadership and content marketing for managed services providers (MSPs) these days — and there’s a reason for that. As MSPs, we have an excellent opportunity to create a buyer’s journey that results in a more predictable flow of qualified leads. Becoming a thought leader is a great way to accomplish that.
When I owned my first MSP, before I even knew the term “thought leadership,” I began by looking for better ways to connect with my team, hoping they would share our MSP’s vision and mission. Back then, our goal was to build a one-of-kind MSP — a company that started with a vCIO relationship that was beyond valuable. We planned to be more proactive and more process driven in a way that would allow our team to delight our customers. I wanted everyone on my team to feel that excitement and how different it was. So, I began recording audio messages a few times a week to share with the team about things happening in the company, but mainly to discuss our mission and why it was essential to our team members and customers.
Then something incredible happened. I had been recording the messages for a few months when I got busy and missed a week. By midweek, I was getting messages from our team. “Where was this week’s message?” they asked. That day, I learned that proper communication aimed at the right audience could be powerful.
When we started TruMethods, I began recording audio messages for our members. Since then, I’ve recorded probably well over 1,500 audio messages. If you had told me a decade ago that I had to record thousands of messages and webinars, I never would have started. But I just started with one week and let time go by, and you know what? I still have this discipline in place today.
When my son, Gary Jr., began building out the marketing function at TruMethods, thought leadership was at the center of our approach. We started using pieces of my audio messages on social media and repurposed them into blogs. We did the same with my webinars and my team built white papers, training guides and eBooks from the content webinars.
All you have to do is start with a discipline you can follow. For instance, write a 500-word blog post or record a three-minute audio message weekly. Eventually, you may want to start a podcast.
I always say that time can be your friend or your enemy. And for me, time has been my friend for thought leadership just by doing a little every week.
