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Most insurance agencies existed before social media exploded as the de facto marketing initiative all small businesses must master. In that vein, Denise Zimmerman of imediaconnection.com wrote a must-read blog post, “7 things social media can’t do,” offering the following limitation, “Social media can’t change the inherent popularity, appeal, or success of your brand.”
Simply put, if you’re not already cool, participating in social media won’t make you cool. Insurance just isn’t that interesting to the layperson, so if you’re operating behind a curtain and participating just to be “out there”, chances are, it’s not doing much good. In general, people only care about “your brand” if you affect them is some positive, negative or useful way. If you’ve helped a lot more people than screwed, your brand is probably ripe for social media since the “popularity, appeal or success” will be based on positive experiences. But ripe and ready are two different things.
To be clear, Ms. Zimmerman is not stating that you CAN’T change popularity, appeal or success. The key word is “inherent.” If the inherent goal for social media is to solidify customer service, strengthen bonds with existing clients and improve the perception of your business, than you CAN change popularity, appeal or success. If the inherent goal is to play along because everyone else is, change is less likely.
It’s all about setting the objectives and sticking to them. If you have a colorful past, consider how it might be re-hashed and plan accordingly for the worst. If you’re unknown, decide what you want people to associate with your agency’s brand (quick and friendly service, charitable endeavors, serving the local community, niche insurance expertise) and build your social media presence accordingly.
We all want to be perceived as pillars of the community, but the ultimate goal of marketing, social or otherwise, is to generate business. In this case it’s done by driving audiences from a blog, Youtube channel, Facebook page or Twitter feed to your website where they can share information and become a lead. The lack of an intuitive insurance website or agency management system means you risk losing the biggest measure of ROI for any social media program, actual customers using the website to request your services.
Without a website or management system, there should be no social media. It’s presence alone ensures someone (or thing) is working 24 hours a day to harvest potential leads with little or no human effort. Establishing and analyzing specific social media ROI metrics is more complicated and will be discussed in a future post.
If you take nothing else from this post, understand your agency represents a brand. Aside from actual insurance services, everything from the look of your website and wait time for a policy to the manner in which employees answer the phone affects perceptions of the brand. With that in mind, every conversation, post, comment, video or online communication should reflect the objectives and values agreed upon by agency owners.
Over time, the consistency of useful content will compel people to follow your updates and become fans, which is one step closer to becoming clients.
February 24, 2010 at 10:00 am
This is a great article in that it gets right to the point of what people are doing right and what people are doing very wrong when it comes to the Internet.
In regards to the Internet there needs to be value. Just like with the Insurance Services that you offer your Social Media program has to provide the people who come in contact with it a value. That value is translated into their perception of your abilities in the insurance world and whether or not they would like to work with you.
If has taken me almost a year (1 Year in March) to get traction on my website (http://www.ryanhanley.com) but I am honestly starting to see the payoff for that work.
Just think Value, Value, Value NOT Sell, Sell, Sell…
Great Article!
Ryan H.
February 24, 2010 at 10:20 am
You nailed it Ryan. The concept of “value” is so important to every aspect of business whether you’re on the buying or selling end. From a social media perspective, knowledge and expertise optimized and shared publicly as a sort of outbound customer service add tremendous value to your “brand”, both for building clientele and helping gain web traction. It’s good to see insurance agents such as yourself leading the charge.
Thanks for reading and sharing.
Nick