With over 900 million users on Facebook alone, social media is now one of the primary ways consumers interact with brands.  In fact, many companies (insurance agencies included) are reporting they have more unique visitors to their social media pages each month than to their regular websites!

So stemming from last week’s email on getting started with social media, I wanted to share some additional tips to really have your social media take off.    Knowing it can be tough to get customer engagement as an insurance agency, I have focused on ideas that I know work for agency owners.

I have seen some of the ideas below triple or even quadruple their existing fan bases in just days.   For one agency, these ideas grew their fans 100-fold! (It’s probably worth mentioning they had less than 20 to begin with, but still.)

Below you will find all of these tips.   If you have done something unique within your agency that is not listed below, we would love to hear what it is.

 

Implementation

1. Socialize your culture.   Encourage your agency to find opportunities to share events, experiences, and even pictures.
2. Cultivate the relationship.   Social media isn’t about pushing your great money-saving quotes.   Rather, you should try to find content that you would only share with a long-term friend.
3. Require a certification.   This doesn’t mean you send every employee who wants to use social media to a class, but rather you should have some set guidelines that every employee understands when using social media.  (This includes their personal social media accounts as well.   Remember that people on your company page will find their way to your employees’ pages if they’re on there.)
4. Share your vision.   If you have goals you want to accomplish with social media, share them with your employees so they can catch the vision as well.
5. Give them freedom.   Allow your employees to incorporate their own voice and judgment within the content they share.
6. Infuse personality.   What kind of voice defines your brand?   Whatever that voice is, try to incorporate it into your content.

Content Ideas

1. Community news and events.   What is going on around the community that would be of interest to others?  Are there any events you will be sponsoring that you could share with your audience?
2. Highlight customers.   Your agency most likely has a number of commercial customers that would love to be highlighted through your social media sites.  (To take it a step further, offer exclusive deals with these partner companies to fans of your social media sites.)
3. Charity functions.   Does your agency participate with a particular charity?   Take photos of your next event to highlight it.
4. Have contests.   Contests are one of the most tried and true ways to grow your fans.   Have some fun here.  You can do photo contests or charity drives.   Shoot, you could have a contest to where the male employee with the least amount of “Likes” has to shave his head.
5. FAQs.  What are your customers’ and prospects’ most frequently asked questions?
6. Tell a story. Have there been any funny stories that have happened to you or your employees that you could share?    
7. Solve a problem.   What is keeping your customers awake at night?  How can you make their lives easier?
8. Take photos.   Photos of your employees, the office, events, or anything else will add some variety and freshness to your content.  Photos will also humanize your business.
9. Use video.   Video has a much higher engagement rate than any other content and you can use it to spotlight interesting stories or people within your company.
10. Create inforgraphs.  Do you have some interesting statistics, numbers, locations, or dates to share?   An inforgraph is much more visually stimulating than just written word.
11. What is the competition doing?   Now don’t just copy the competition, but you can see what content is resonating with their audience and springboard from there.  (This also allows you to see what type of content isn’t getting any type of response as well so you can avoid it.)
12. Conduct surveys.   This can be a great place to ask you audience questions about improving your agency.
13. Stir up some controversy.   Now don’t go crazy here, but by taking a contrarian view to a certain subject, you can engage your audience.

Listening

1. Pay attention. Use Google Alerts to find out every time someone mentions your agency.  (I would also set them up to include any specific products and services or even your management team.)
2. Monitor the competition.  You can find a lot by searching through your competitions social media sites.   What market segment are they pursuing?  Do they have some competitive advantages they are highlighting.
3. Find the influencers.   Who are the influencers within your community?   How can you reach out to them via social media?

 

What to Avoid:

1. Being faceless.  People want to see your personality come through.
2. Being inconsistent.   If you’re going to start doing social media, make sure you don’t stop.
3. Being pushy or salesy.   People don’t want to hear about how much money you can save them.   They want engaging, unique content.
4. Ignoring issues or complaints.   Complaints can and will happen online.   The key is how you address them.   Try to do so quickly and politely.