Social Media Strategy for Independent Insurance Agents
The purchasing world has changed dramatically in recent years. Today, insurance agents need to use multiple marketing channels to reach their potential customers, and social media marketing should play a significant role in the overall marketing plan. Today's generation of buyers are looking to social media to learn more about their insurance options, and social media networks provide an opportunity for the independent insurance agent to expand his/her reach to potential customers. This can be a daunting task, however, as many agents do not know where to start. Like many other aspects of your business, you need a plan. Below is an overview of how to create a social media strategy for independent insurance agents.
Define Your Social Media Marketing Goals
A good strategy always starts with defining your goals. For social media, you should use the SMART framework when setting your goals.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
An example of this would be:
"For Twitter we will share industry relevant articles that are not about our company and services. We will post this type of content 2 times a day, 5 days a week. The target for each post is 3 likes and 2 retweets."
Determine the Best Social Media Platform(s) to be on
There are many options for social media platforms to work with. Do you need to be on all of them? No! All you need to do is choose the platform(s) where your customer base is actively participating. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube are the major platforms, and each can appeal to a distinct audience and serve a different purpose for your business. If you find that your targets are on multiple social channels, you can customize your messages for each platform.
Create or Optimize Your Social Accounts
A social media audit is another necessary element to your social media strategy. First and foremost, your social accounts should be ‘complete’. They should have the following, where appropriate:
- Links to your website or other social accounts
- A description of the products or services you offer
- Your value statement or unique selling proposition
- Contact information, such as email, phone or address
- A consistent look, such as image or message, that allows your company to be recognized across the different platforms
- A call to action for platforms such as Facebook
It is also a good idea to conduct an inventory of your social media presence, to determine whether or not unauthorized pages are representing your business. Do you have multiple Google+, LinkedIn or Facebook business pages and could some of them be deleted? The idea is to be concise, easy to find and present the same business image and message.
Create a Content Plan
Great content that appeals to your client base, as well as content that displays your business's personality is essential to social media marketing success. When you are putting your content plan together, you should keep the following in mind:
- What is the purpose of your content?
- What types of content do you want to post?
- What percentage will be your own vs. other's content?
- Where will the 3rd party content come from?
- Frequency of posting
- Best times to post
It’s also a good idea to create an Editorial Calendar and make sure it reflects your goals for each of your social media accounts. There are many examples and templates of editorial calendars available for download and you can customize it for your own purpose.
Measure Your Results and Make Necessary Adjustments
To run an effective social media marketing campaign, continuous analysis and adjustments must be made. There are many tools available that provide analytics to determine what is working and what is not. The social networks themselves also provide some amazing data to help you optimize your content, frequency and best times to post. Are you reaching your goals? If not, you should make some adjustments. Are certain types of posts getting more engagement for you than others? If so, make some adjustments to the type of content you share. Tweaking your strategy is an ongoing process and using analytics can help you achieve your social media goals.
Like any other project in business, you need to have a plan in place, execute it and be able to measure the results. Social media marketing is no different. With Social Media, you can calculate your ROI using a variety of tools quite easily. Here’s a Short Guide to Social Media ROI from Buffer to help explain how.
Since many independent insurance agents work with a small staff, it can be a real struggle to find the time for social media marketing and it often makes sense to outsource their social media marketing. For more information on this and how we can integrate social media into your own marketing strategy, please contact us at Advanced Insurance Marketing.