Project Overview
Abacus IT is an IT MSP working primarily with credit unions, banks, and small businesses.
I worked with Abacus IT’s Head of Operations and Marketing, Matt Embry, in developing content goals and a content roadmap in alignment with their day-to-day operations.
Abacus IT is a project I worked on during my time as founder at Writrly. “We” refers to myself and the dedicated writer I trained for this project. See tasks performed for my individual contributions.
Content Goals
I worked with Abacus IT as a contractor and was their first content hire.
In creating a content strategy, I asked Matt what their revenue structure looked like. As an MSP, they relied on:
- Monthly subscriptions for their remote support plans
- Ad-hoc IT project management and compliance audits for banks and financial institutions
- Network set-up for small businesses within their vicinity.
Unlike in SaaS where content might be focused on key features, Abacus IT’s service-based structure meant the organization offered different products and services to different types of businesses.
In developing a content roadmap, I asked the following clarifying questions and determined content goals around that:
- What services are most commonly inquired about by new clients? What do they typically end up buying instead? - Identifies the clients’ entry points, their problems and beliefs, and which solutions match their needs instead
- What services do you typically upsell clients on after getting their business? = Identifies services and products that are actually selling, and how to structure them
- What target audience are you likely working on next? = Identifies a clear end-user and ensures the content is specifically targeted to who their sales teams are working with next
- What does your team spend a lot of time on when it comes to interacting with clients, old and new? = Identifies redundant questions and helps prioritize which topics to cover in building a knowledge base
I developed the following content goals based on Matt’s answers:
- Create resources that will serve as educational material / onboarding documents for new clients
- Develop a knowledge base based on FAQ to eliminate redundancy in support and sales
- Develop resources that sales and support can share on calls, and that prospects can freely share within their own organizations
- Create SEO-competitive articles on branded software and products (WithSecure software, Fortigate Firewall, Datto servers)
Output and Deliverables
Based on their key services and products, the content strategy revolved around four primary pillars. We developed a library of resources in alignment with the goals above, including:
Cybersecurity
- How are IP Reputation and Threat Intelligence Data Connected?
- What Is Next-Generation Antivirus: Everything You Need To Know
- The Rise of DDOS Attacks and How Banks Can Protect Themselves Against It
- NAS Explained: What Is Synology For?
- How To Strengthen Branch Office Security With Fortigate Firewalls
Disaster Recovery
- What Should An IT Disaster Recovery Plan Include
- What Is RTO and RPO In Disaster Recovery
- What To Do When Your Server Goes Down
- IT Disaster Recovery Templates: How To Write One From Scratch
Small Business Network
- How Do I Set Up a VPN for My Small Business?
- Secure A Small Business Network: Guide, Checklist, and Advice
- How Much Does a Server Cost for a Small Business?
Office 365
- 15 Microsoft 365 and Office Features To Supercharge Your Productivity
- How To Streamline Information and Resources With Microsoft Sharepoint Online
- 8 Most Common Office 365 Problems and How to Fix Them
- What Do I Do if My Office 365 Account Has Been Hacked
Content tone
These articles are:
Specific and instructional
The resources provide clear, actionable step-by-step instructions that demonstrate Abacus IT’s expertise in the areas of compliance, project management, virtual support and project management, and disaster recovery.
Native-sounding
Content written around more complex topics don’t shy away from jargon, especially if they’ve been written with the intention of demonstrating Abacus IT’s expertise in a specific industry or end-user’s problems.
These are articles that have been written with decision-makers such as VPs, CEOs, and business owners in mind.
Approachable and informative
Resources that are written with the intention of being support documents or instructional articles are more approachable.
We translated complicated topics into easy-to-digest information and structured content in a way that it answers the readers’ “why does this matter to me and my job” questions.
Key Objectives
Abacus IT’s monthly budget allowed for four articles a month. Unlike other projects where clients had budgets that allowed them to dominate with an SEO-led strategy, Abacus IT’s content strategy was a mix of:
- Identifying easy and inexpensive SEO content opportunities, particularly for branded search terms (WithSecure, NAS, Fortigate)
- Creating articles that can be proudly distributed by their sales and support teams - as support documents or ungated lead magnets
Tasks Performed
- Identify an ideal content distribution channel and create content around that
- Define cross-functional content goals and objectives, particularly with support and sales teams
- Develop a content roadmap using keyword research and monthly stakeholder interviews
- Develop practical, instructional articles to serve as knowledge base articles and support articles for end-users
- Create the initial batch of content to set baseline standards, eventually training another dedicated writer to the project
Approach
My primary criticism of most MSP/IT blogs is that they focus on:
- Incredibly broad topics that were not specific to any industry or use case
- Seemingly random assortment of articles that do not identify the MSP’s expertise
- Repetitive, generic articles with no practical value
It’s obvious when a company’s blog page exists because executives think it’s the “right” thing to do - despite not having a real strategy behind it.
In building Abacus IT’s strategy, I focused on:
- Identifying clear end-users to create targeted articles that spoke directly to their problems
- Narrowing the focus on Abacus IT’s top services and products, according to sales and support teams
- Practical, instructional how-to articles with relevant explanations to the user’s problems, but focused primarily on providing step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot or approach problems
Why didn’t you go for SEO?
The articles are SEO-informed, in that they include the best practices for on-page ranking, but are not driven mainly by metrics like search volume.
There was a huge overlap between Abacus IT’s expertise and the topics covered by websites with incredibly high domain scores.
Going for an SEO-focused strategy would be a complete waste of their monthly budget, and would not be in alignment with their already-existing customer touchpoints, which were primarily referrals within their network and upselling opportunities.
Although getting featured on SERPs was a nice-to-have, the primary objective of producing content was so that end-users had Abacus IT had proof-of-expertise online that they could easily share during their 1:1s with clients and prospects.
Topic Ideation
Topic ideation was a mix of keyword research and stakeholder interviews. I started by asking the following questions:
- What services are most commonly inquired about by new clients? What do they typically end up buying instead?
- What services do you typically upsell clients on after getting their business?
- What target audience are you likely working on next?
- What does your team spend a lot of time on when it comes to interacting with clients, old and new?
Given that the budget allowed for 4 articles a month, I wasn’t keen on treating SEO as the primary distribution channel.
Although the strategy wasn’t SEO-driven, I still used Ahrefs to determine the opportunities for keywords and titles.
For example, general disaster recovery queries were too competitive from an SEO standpoint and didn’t really align with the primary content goal, which was to provide actual helpful articles to clients and new customers.
Guided by the keyword difficulty metric, I focused on smaller, more practical articles within that keyword cluster. Instead of general queries, I went for specific titles such as:
- The Difference Between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
- What Should An IT Disaster Recovery Plan Include
- What Is RTO and RPO In Disaster Recovery
- How To DR Test Successfully
- How to Test a Disaster Recovery Plan
Not only were they more “achievable” from an SEO standpoint - these titles were specific enough that answered very specific queries that were coming from Abacus IT’s clients and prospects.
Results and Impact
Abacus IT’s content strategy mainly revolved around providing resources that their sales and support teams can use to reduce support redundancy, improve onboarding experiences for new clients, as well as provide ungated lead magnets and resources to prospects.
During our collaboration, I also set up their Google My Business page and created GMB posts that linked back to their website.
This led to an increase in impressions and inquiries - without a very hard focus on acquiring new leads through SEO.
Note: At the time of writing, some of the branded articles successfully ranked in SERPs on Google. I looked through the top-ranking resources for some of the queries recently and they have since been outranked by more recent articles