Which social media platforms should your MSP actually be on?

There are more social media platforms than ever. And it's easy to feel the pressure to be on all of them, all the time.

My view on this is to resist that pressure. It’s far better to do really well on one or two platforms than to be average across several. A half-hearted presence everywhere is worse than a strong presence somewhere specific.

So here’s my 5 minute, platform-by-platform verdict for MSPs. Just my opinion. Please, no hate messages (I'm looking at you, X and Reddit users 😃).

LinkedIn: Go all in

If you’re only going to be active on one platform, make it this one. LinkedIn is where the decision makers are. Business owners, operations directors, finance managers. They’re on LinkedIn every day, and the platform is actively rewarding consistent, human, non-AI-generated content right now.

Every day you should be making connection requests to the kind of people you'd like as clients. Then post at least every 24 hours and do a LinkedIn newsletter once a week. This is where you build the audiences and grow relationships. Some will turn into clients.

I’ve been doing this for seven+ years, and recommending it to MSPs. And I’m still convinced it’s the single best organic marketing channel available to an MSP.

Don’t spread yourself thin across other platforms until LinkedIn is genuinely working for you. Most MSPs never get there because they don’t stick at it long enough.

YouTube: Be there, even if the audience is small

YouTube is the world’s most used platform for watching video. That alone makes it worth having a presence on.

I’ll be honest with you: building a big YouTube audience as an MSP is genuinely hard. We’ve put significant time and effort into our own channel and our audience is still relatively small. But that’s partly because we’re targeting a very specific niche (you!) rather than chasing random subscribers for the sake of it.

The value of YouTube for an MSP isn’t necessarily a massive subscriber count. It’s the fact that your videos live there permanently. They’re searchable, and a prospect who wants to check you out before getting in touch can watch you talk for five minutes and decide whether they like you. That’s powerful.

Instagram: only if your clients are there

Instagram isn’t a natural fit for most MSPs. But there’s an exception to this rule.

If you’re targeting retail businesses, hospitality, restaurants, or any sector that uses Instagram to reach their own customers, then Instagram is where those business owners spend their time doing their own marketing.

And where they spend their time is where you should be.

For most MSPs targeting professional services or B2B businesses, Instagram probably isn’t worth the investment. But if your ideal client profile is in a consumer-facing sector, it’s worth a look.

Facebook: Useful because it's the "universal platform"

Almost every business owner is on Facebook. Which makes it a genuinely useful place to have a presence, just not in the same way as LinkedIn.

The best approach for most MSPs is to find and join local business owner groups and participate. Don't be a sucky salesperson, just being visible and helpful. Local business communities on Facebook can be surprisingly active, and being a familiar, trusted face in those groups puts you front of mind when someone mentions their IT is driving them crazy.

Facebook ads are also worth considering, particularly for retargeting people who have already visited your website. The targeting options are excellent and the cost per click is often lower than Google. If you’re going to run paid social at any point, Facebook is where to start.

Reddit: Useful for a vertical or niche

Trying to reach local business owners and managers on Reddit is tough compared to LinkedIn but if you operate within a specific vertical or niche, Reddit will give you access to those people.

The downside is that Reddit is sometimes like the Wild West, probably because it's a lot of angry people hiding behind anonymous user names! At the very least it can be an amazing research platform and show you what matters to the people you're trying to reach

X / Twitter: Move on

I’ll be blunt. X is not worth your time for MSP marketing. What’s happened to the platform under its current ownership has driven away a significant portion of the professional audience that made Twitter useful for B2B.

TikTok, Threads, and everything else: not yet

TikTok has produced some remarkable business success stories. I know people with genuinely impressive audiences there. But for most MSPs, it’s a distraction rather than an opportunity. The content format is demanding, the audience skews younger, and the time investment required to do it well is hard to justify when LinkedIn is still so underdeveloped for most MSPs.

Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon and the other emerging platforms fall into the same category. Not because they’re bad, but because the opportunity cost is too high. Every hour you spend building an audience somewhere new is an hour you’re not deepening your presence somewhere that’s already working.

Get LinkedIn right first. Then YouTube. Then, if you have the capacity and the audience is clearly there, consider expanding. But most MSPs never need to go further than those two.

The simple rule

Go where your ideal clients actually are. Build one platform properly before you touch another. And never let the pressure to be everywhere distract you from being genuinely useful somewhere.

Which platforms are you currently active on? And which ones are you wasting time on that you’d be better off abandoning? Let me know. I read and reply to every email (yes even from angry X users).