It goes without being said that social media is anything but traditional for insurance marketing strategies. Whether you’re posting on Facebook or tweeting, your mindset should also be anything but traditional. Instead of just thinking outside of the box, use it as a soapbox. Stand above the rest and shout your message to a mass audience. Demand attention! Realistically, you want to reach as many people as you possibly can, in the shortest period of time with the best results – astonishing results!
How can you do this? You can take your social media content to the next level in three simple ways:
Get creative with what you already have.
You don’t have to go completely back to the drawing board, but take a different approach to what you’re already doing. For example, if you’ve already posted photos of the office, switch them up for the season. Showcase what’s going on! Or, use tools to enhance and add graphics to previously posted photos, this is eye catching for seasonal events and holidays.
Another way to use what you already have, is to piggy back off of a previously successful concept. For instance, if you had great traction with a call to action post or contest, entice people for the next one, by mentioning how successful the previous one was. “Since you all enjoyed last week’s tasteful debate, we’re interested to hear how to feel about…”

Be positive! Positive energy is infectious; it’s something worth spreading!
Positive and motivational statements can be used for all of your insurance marketing strategies, but are they known as some of the most shareable content posted on social media.  Be sure to give credit to the author of the quote. Aside from a reference point, the use of the specific author could become a conversation starter on your pages as well!

Be unpredictable! Consistency lays a foundation for a solid follower and fan base, but you have to keep your audience’s attention!
It’s great that your fans have something to look forward to, whether it be your weekly call to action post, or your motivating Monday quote, but it is just as important to be spontaneous, as it is to be consistent! Enlighten your audience with random facts and tid bits of knowledge they may not know. Or begin a conversation about a tasteful topic that people may not expect to hear about from an insurance company! Prove to people of all ages that you are “in the know”! Turn a few heads with a simple Facebook post or tweet!

Social media is an amazing non-traditional marketing tool to reach clients and prospective customers. Once you’ve become comfortable with the basics, stand on that soap box of yours and let people know you’re there. Be anything but traditional, you may even surprise yourself!

Not known for having “hashtags” or “likes”, LinkedIn is quietly becoming the next best thing in Social Media.  Today, more corporations and recruiters are utilizing LinkedIn to get positions filled, and potential candidates are taking notice.  Launched in May, 2003, LinkedIn has become omnipresent in today’s business world.

Building a quality network is the greatest value a company has in using LinkedIn.  The easiest way to build your network is to work at it all the time.  We’re not saying that you should spend all your time on the site, but make time every day for building connections.  Also, including a link to your profile in your email signature lets your professional contacts know you’re “linked in.”

With the ability to search for second and third degree connections through your immediate network, don’t run right out to talk to these people.  Ask those in your network if potential candidates would be a good fit for you and your company.  Much like dating, use your “matchmakers” to get you an introduction, or at the very least introduce yourself to the candidate by mentioning your mutual contact.

Once you contact a potential candidate, connect with them.  Not only will this build your network, but this will lead you to other candidates with the right qualifications for your company.  Once you hire a candidate and you’re ready to move on to the next, don’t forget the connections you made during the hiring process.

LinkedIn is not a replacement for the way you currently recruit.  It is, however, a way to do it better.  At the end of the day, you will still have to make phone calls, interview candidates, and hire the best person for the job.  With LinkedIn, the recruiting process becomes more efficient and more effective.

If your company is active on social media as a part of your insurance agency marketing, you know probably know that many of your employees are also active online. They probably have Facebook and Twitter pages, and maybe even LinkedIn profiles. As a business owner, you have to consider what might happen if someone says or does something inappropriate on the Internet.

Consider this: An employee has a problem with a client, and complains about that client on Facebook. The client sees that your employee is talking badly about them publicly, and drops you as their insurance agency! Nightmare, right?

The sad part is that situations like this happen every day. Social media should serve as an extension of customer service, and that’s why it is so important for you, as an employer, to create a social media policy for your employees. Your team should be made aware that policies on harassment, ethics, and company loyalty extend to all forms of communication, both inside and outside the workplace. But how do you go about creating this policy? Here are some tips:

A great social media policy can prevent online mishaps while at the same time encouraging employees to utilize social media in a productive way. By creating and asking employees to sign your policy, you’ll be sure everyone understands the role of social media in your company!

Social Media isn’t just for Twitter and Facebook anymore.  More people are utilizing Foursquare to let their friends and family know what they’re up to.  This application is a location-based check-in system allows customers to boost your business’s status in the community.

“Foursquare unlocks your city and makes your world a more interesting place,” writes Carmine Gallo, author of ‘The Power of Foursquare’.  He continues, “It informs, illuminates, and inspires.  For small businesses, it can help attract, reward and engage customers in ways that were never possible.”  Gallo’s book give seven tips that educate business owners how the application can help them.

• Connect your brand
• Harness new fans
• Engage your followers
• Create rewards
• Knock out the competition
• Incentivize your customers
• Never stop entertaining

With the November 15, 2011 revamp of Foursquare.com, your business has the opportunity to get noticed without a customer “check in”.  Users who sign onto Foursquare via the web at certain times the website will suggest places they should visit.  For instance, sign in at 11:30am and they will suggest great lunch spots near their office.  The same will occur later in the day around dinnertime.   Foursquare is committed to helping your business connect with your customers.

Compatible with other Social Media tools, when your customers “check-in” they are able to notify not only their friends who utilize Foursquare, but Facebook and Twitter.  For every check-in, Foursquare users have the ability to “unlock” different achievements:

• Mayorships
• Reward points
• BadgesDeals

Foursquare helps your business connect with your customers in a new way.  It also brings attention to your business and community.  “Unlock” the possibilities.

Businesses of all sizes have embraced social media as a way to build communities, market their services, and form relationships with customers. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Google+ are popular. However, one platform that is often misunderstood is LinkedIn.

Officially, LinkedIn is a professional networking site. The site allows users to input their work history in a resume-like format and form connections with others, much like the Facebook friend system. However, that’s usually as far as most people take it. But if you’re a business owner, you should know that LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for generating business.

If your LinkedIn profile is sub-par, you may be damaging your credibility. By maintaining your profile and remaining active on the site, you will show potential customers that you are a credible expert in your industry. This way, they’ll remember you next time they need someone in your field. Here are some tips:

If this seems overwhelming, don’t worry! LinkedIn is actually extremely user-friendly and will guide you along the way. The most important thing is to keep up with it. Sign in a few times each week, participate in discussions, and you’ll be on your way to building your business in no time!

Utilizing social media can be instrumental in increasing your company’s exposure, but you must utilize social media strategically! The first step to a successful social media strategy starts with community building. Community building ensures not only that you have a significant fan and follower base, but that the individuals you’re connecting with are the right fit for your business. The use of social media is meant to be an interactive initiative, so it’s important to interact with the correct users in order to maximize your results.  There are certain ways to successfully build a strong community that will contribute to the success of your business.

Community building, like anything else, starts first with identifying your objectives.

• What are you trying to achieve from this and what goals are you going to set?

This leads into phase two of community building: you must know your audience. This is a crucial component in achieving success. You have to know who you are communicating with. Do the research!  The more local your content is, the more relevant it will be to your specific community. Understand the likes and dislikes of your fans and followers, but also give them a place to voice their opinions. Just as you want to be relevant in the real world, you need to be relevant in the digital world! Your friends, fans and followers will become more than just social media users in the end!

Once you’ve established who your audience is, it’s important to retain the members of your community. How can you do that? Be creative!

• Use “call to action posts;” give your fans and followers a reason to comment.
• Use tasteful humor and enlighten people with unique information.
• Most importantly, be reputable. Once it’s out there, it’s out there! Be well aware of what you’re posting and where you are receiving your information from!

Once your community is built to the best of your ability, you can’t just stop there. In order to take it to the next level, you need to further your interaction. The best communities are those that merge their social and real world relationships together! Allow your users to put a face to a name, humanize your page by stepping out from behind the computer. Attend local events, participate in things happening in the community and interact with fans and followers on a personal level.

Community building is essential for optimizing your presence in social media. Identify your goals, do the proper research to understand your audience, get creative, and finally, get involved!

We all know how to promote our insurance social networking sites online. We place links in our email signatures and on our websites, but many of us are missing out on an entire outlet to share our links: the offline world!

Here are a few tips for promoting your social presence offline:

• Signs. Hang window clings on your doors asking customers to check in on Foursquare, like you on Facebook, or follow you on Twitter. Do the same at desks and counters by setting up table tents.
• Promotional materials. Display your social links on every piece of promotional material you distribute. This includes business cards, brochures, pamphlets, and print advertisements. Your website is already on all of these items, right? Your social links should be too!
• Voicemail greetings. This may seem like a stretch, but it makes perfect sense. Think about it: someone is trying to reach you, but he can’t via phone. Social media is the next best thing, so instead of just taking a message, your voicemail can direct him to another outlet to contact you! This one particularly pleases customers, as you’re giving them multiple options to get in touch with your company.
• Your vehicle. If you have a company car that already displays your company’s name and website, why not add your Facebook or Twitter link? These sites are easy for potential customers to access on-the-go via smart phones. They can like your page or follow you on Twitter as a way to “bookmark” you for later, something they’re not likely to do with a typical website.
• Move offline events online. If your company is sponsoring an event or contest, take advantage of the opportunity to drive traffic to your social sites. For example, if you’re hosting a pumpkin carving contest, have each contestant upload a photo to your Facebook page. The photo with the most ‘likes’ wins!

There are an unlimited number of ways to promote your online presence in the offline world. Get creative! Think of all the touch points you have with your customers – phone conversations, events you host, promotional merchandise you hand out. When it comes to sharing your social media links, there is no such thing as an idea that is too crazy!

Do you have suggestions for other ways to promote your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, LinkedIn, or other sites? Share with us!

Following the news that Google has acquired Zagat to bolster local reviews, more attention that ever should be devoted towards asking your clients to review your performance and give you reviews on your local listings.

As a business owner you obviously want multiple five star reviews, all of which declaring you to be the best insurance agency ever, but the somewhat elusive local review is not the easiest to obtain. Also, you may be thinking that you want the review but only if it is going to be positive and five stars. After all, I don’t want BAD reviews all over my Google Places account. After reading this post, you may have a different opinion of the local reviews.

How to Attain Good Reviews?

The first step to good reviews is to always keep customer service in mind when you are interacting with your clients. There will be the occasion where a customer is irate or upset about something that has happened to them. As a business owner, it is your job to do your best to serve them and offer helpful solutions to their problem. Many good reviews can come from experiences that start out negatively and are turned around with exceptional customer service.

Make it as easy as possible for your customers to leave you a positive review with a combined strategy of making the effort to provide the best customer service possible and directing customers to a page with buttons to all of your local listings. From there you simply e-mail, post to Facebook or Tweet out the link to your Local Reviews Page. Now, leaving a great review for your business could not be easier.

When a person posts a review on your Google Places listing, they are taking the time to let you, and the rest of the world know how their experience with your business went. Whether they had a negative experience or an exceptional experience, you will reap the benefits that a review can give your listing.

Granted, if every review you have is a 1-star review with negative comments about you or your employees, you may want to speak about the interactions they are having with clients. But if you have some good and some bad reviews, that is fine. Your company’s reviews are authentic customer accounts from people who have used your services. Remember that your reviews are essentially word of mouth insurance marketing for your agency. These referrals can get people to pick up the phone or drive to your brick and mortar location so they are important to monitor and stay on top of.

What to do with a bad review?

It is a very real possibility that someone could leave a negative review about your business on your listing. So what is the best way to deal with a negative or less than satisfactory review?

Monitor and respond; you may think that a bad review will hurt you more than help you but you should think more about the content of the review. I hear all the time that “I only want positive, 5-star reviews”, the reality is even bad reviews are filled with keyword rich text. Here is an example of a 1 or 2 star review that I have seen;
“I do not recommend anyone to this agency………….them, it speaks for all the representatives……… I was a previous customer………back to get auto insurance with them when I was transferred to ******………to tell me that my auto policy was cancelled due……….and I STRONGLY DONT RECOMMEND anyone to this company unless you wanted to be treated like dirt. They are not the only insurance agency in orange county!!! “
If you look at the review it is pretty harsh but, there are few keywords that a search engine will find that can help return this local listing as a relevant search result for someone searching for insurance in Orange County.

When it comes to reviews, it is a best practice to respond to the less than stellar comments by offering an explanation or helping the customer ultimately find what they are looking for. By responding to the review, you are seen as a proactive business owner that really cares about his customers and that can go a long way for developing future business. You will be seen by the online community as someone that wants to do right by people, find out how to improve for next time or even offer a mends.

Be Proactive:

Give your clients an outlet to express their feelings on your site. Offer your unsatisfied clients a form to vent before they take their frustrations out on your local listings or review sites. This may not catch everything but it gives you the opportunity to respond to a review before it is public.

Once you receive a negative response, follow up with the customer immediately and try to make amends. Customer service should always be paramount in any interactions with customers but now, providing a high level of customer service can lead to an increase in traffic to your site and revenue to your agency.

Your local listings should be a large piece of your overall SEO strategy and can really produce great results when utilized correctly. Taking the time to ask your clients to review you and your agency is very important and will give you valuable feedback on how you can continuously improve the way you serve your clients.

Social Media Week has begun! Since 2009, Social Media Week has expanded to a biannual conference now hosted in 12 cities across the globe with over 600 events. The best part, it’s FREE! September 19th-23rd: Beirut, Berlin, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Glasgow, Los Angeles, Milan, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver are hosting events on social media.

Think distance is a challenge? Think again, after all, this is social media! There are conference events held directly online, as well as a daily recap provided by Livestreams’ Social Media Live allowing you to rewind and watch top events of the day, while tracking what’s going on for the next! And in true social media form, the conversation will take place simultaneously through twitter:  @socialmediaweek,  #smw11, and #nokiaconnects.  In addition to traditional twitter conversations, SMW RealTime is directly on the Social Media Week website, providing attendees with a way to track their schedule, follow specific sessions, connect to other attendees, and take part in new events across the globe.

Nothing is off limits when it comes to the content of Social Media Week. Events cover content ranging from “Social Media in Politics” and the “Psychology of Social Media” to “Celebrities in Social Media”. So whatever it is you’re interested in, there is certainly an event that will suit your needs perfectly.

You can never know enough when it comes to social media, so register today and instantly become a part of this season’s Social Media Week conversation!

The importance of an optimized Google Places listing is a vital piece of your overall SEO campaign. For many businesses, capturing the local traffic will greatly increase their leads, conversions and revenue. Since the Google Places update that brought along the blended search results of Places listings integrated into organic SERPs, Google has continued to refine and reject listings that it feels do not fall within the proper guidelines. If your listing has been dinged for spam or needs some sprucing up, here are a few guidelines you should follow when setting up or re-optimizing your Google Places listing.

-Categories: Your categories should not contain any type of geo-information such as city or state information. The categories can a place where you may want to stray into trying to fit your keyword terms but resist the urge. Your listing will likely get flagged for spamming the categories section. Instead select the categories from Google that are the best fit for your business. If necessary, create your own descriptive custom category but be cautious with your keyword usage here.

-Business Name: Real Name no geo-terms or keywords stuffed into the title. Your Places title should be the same name that your business is known as in the real world. Do not add additional terms to help yourself rank higher-your listing is very unlikely to be published. Keep your business name the same through all of your listings.
EX. If your website’s Title Tag says . Uniform, matching data is very important to Google.
-Street Address: This should be an actual brick and mortar location, no PO boxes. If you have more than one location there should be individual logins for each address with a separate login. Contact information should match across all listings and citation sites and the information should be crawlable on your website. The crawlable data should match with the listing information on your Google Places listing.
-Local Phone Number: When searching for a local business, many people want to have a local contact phone number to call, not an 800 number. Like your address, your phone number should be crawlable on your website to allow Google to match up your listing information and your website.
-Local Area Code on Place Page: Same as the address and phone number, the zip code of your business will have a lot to do with your agency appearing in Places SERPs for a given locale. It is not impossible, but more difficult, to target a city that is out of your area code without a local link building strategy.
-Inbound links and Page Authority of your website: The amount of inbound links and page authority of your site also plays a role in how your Google Places listing ranks. A site appears to be more relevant and popular when it has many backlinks and will likely rank ahead of a brand new site with very few links. A technique that works really well to improve your backlink profile is to actively blog and build links pointed back to your product pages.

To begin to rank you need understand that Google looks at your local listing and wants to match up the information from your site to your Google places page. If your information is all correct, the listing is more likely to appear in search engine results. When you have confusing or misleading information, Google will definitely be less likely to publish your Places listing near the top of the page or even display it in SERPs at all.