Feedback from your customers can be one of the most valuable tools in your internet marketing strategy. By way of the “old school testimonial,” the local SEO review takes it to the next level. At this point, your agency has probably gathered a plethora of testimonials from your customers. You should have even put them on your website. Now ask yourself – how can I make testimonials have an even bigger impact for my agency? The answer is simple; ask your customers for local SEO reviews!

What is a local SEO review? Basically, it is a testimonial that a customer leaves on your local search listings – i.e. Google local, Yahoo maps, etc. It’s important to get authentic reviews on your local listings – this will not only boost consumer confidence in your agency, but it can also push you higher in the local SEO listing results. If your agency’s local listing is not only well optimized, but also has 10 5-star reviews, you’re going to rank higher in the local results than an agency with no reviews.

So how do you get local reviews? Just ask! It really is as simple as that. In the same way that you ask customers for testimonials, you can ask them to leave reviews on your local listings. You can send your customers a link to your local listing, whether it is Google or Yahoo, and ask them to leave their testimonial there.

Here are some examples on how to ask:

• “I’m glad you’re happy with your new auto insurance quote. Would you mind leaving your feedback in a review on our local listing? Here is the link.” Or “You can find it here.”
• “Thank you for your testimonial. Would you mind leaving this as a review on our local listing too? Here is the link.”
• “It was our pleasure getting this claim worked out for you so quickly. Would you mind leaving a review of our service on our local listing? You can find it here.”

Do you have reviews on your local listings yet? Get started as soon as possible – start asking your customers for their feedback today. Have any creative ideas on how to ask your customers to leave authentic reviews to your local listings? Shout them out on Twitter, @Astonish_Shawna.  Just remember – all you have to do is ASK; if you do that, then you’re headed in the right direction!

I know what you’re thinking – “how can an employee of the month contest help my social media efforts?” Too often we overlook the little things in the larger scheme of our internet marketing strategies. Social media is a key tool in personalizing your agency and business efforts. There are many different ways you can achieve such personalization, and your employees are integral to the process.

Agencies often focus so much on their brand in social media that they forget about the actual social aspect. Clients and potential customers can have a hard time putting real faces to your business name. Holding internal contests, like an Employee of the Month program, can help to meet that goal of showing the consumer your agency is full of real people, just like them. Speaking as the recent winner of the Astonish Results Employee of the Month vote, I can tell you first hand that this actually works. The point of social media is to get social with your audience and your clientele. Check out what happened when Astonish announced the Employee of the Month:

Both our employees and our clients were engaged in the posting. We also shared it on Twitter:

After we sent out this Tweet, my professional twitter account (noted in the Tweet) received a plethora of additional followers from our insurance agency partners.

Sharing this type of information is not only fun for your social media manager (or you) to do, but it also meets the goal of personalizing your business to employees and consumers alike. Culture is everything – your employees need to feel it and your customers need to feel it. Not only are you rewarding your employees with such a contest, but you’re also giving your customers a glimpse inside your company and its office culture. You’d be surprised how seemingly little things such as this boost consumer confidence in your brand and your business.

What are you doing within your agency that could work to personalize your social media? Do you hold similar internal contests? Share your feedback with me on Twitter, @Astonish_Shawna.

In my last couple of posts, I’ve discussed some of the numerous ways you can promote your blog and increase traffic.  This week, I want to outline one more very important piece to the blog promotion puzzle: social media.

Social media promotions can be a lot more powerful than you think – and it’s not just Twitter and Facebook. You can also promote your blog through online community sites, blogging sites, etc. Social media can be a great gateway to both your blog site and your website. Let’s look at the different ways you can use social media to your advantage when promoting your blog:

How do you use social media and guest blogging to your advantage? Do you have any success stories? If so, share them with me on Twitter, @Astonish_Shawna. Until then, happy blogging!

In my last post, I discussed one of the ways you can promote your blog and increase traffic – blog appearance. While the appearance is an important piece to the puzzle, it’s not the only solution to the never-ending need for blog promotion and increasing traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing are two very important aspects in creating a comprehensive blog promotion plan.

Having an effective SEO strategy for your blog can be easier than you think. Once you have your SEO focus (i.e. a list of target keywords), you simply need to integrate that focus into your blog without impairing its effectiveness or usefulness to the reader. Here are some ways you can do this:

Another, perhaps underutilized, way to promote your blog is through email marketing. While you don’t want to spam strangers with links to your blog, you can promote your blog to your current list of clients and prospects. Building an email campaign around your blog is an easy way to get more readers, engagement, and visitors. The folks at Encharter Insurance are using this practice to full advantage. They have implemented a monthly social media newsletter that blasts out through email. This newsletter not only promotes their seven insurance blogs, but it also promotes their Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. The newsletter they have created basically serves as an email marketing campaign for their blogs and social media accounts.

As I said in my last post, it is important to engage visitors on your blog, but it is also important to bring them to the blog in a way that is relevant to what they need. Someone might be searching for auto insurance in your area and find your blog – the information you provide them could make or break a new policy. It’s important to make sure you’re posting relevant and useful content.

What are you doing to promote your blog through SEO and email marketing? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna and shout out your practices and ideas!

When you think about the meaning of a press release, what comes to mind? Well for one, that word “press” certainly stands out—insisting that the content will be used to garner media attention and positively promote your agency. But with the constant evolution of the Internet, press releases have changed—and so have their purpose.

Modern press releases force the writer to go beyond just pitching the story. With the birth of the e-Release and digital content, press releases are no longer the bait used to hook a reporter, but now present an opportunity in which the writer can develop genuine, relevant, keyword-rich content which can directly affect their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts.

When implementing a press release strategy you have to first understand what actually makes a good press release. A successfully optimized release can only be crafted from timely, highly-valuable news. Not only is the content a tool in which you can highlight and promote your agency, but it also acts as a resource for your clients—so making sure that the information you provide is not only interesting, but also informative, is crucial. Keep in mind you are going beyond just marketing your content and ideas to media outlets, you now are directly pitching to the consumer. Strive to create content that your clients and prospects not only want to read, but content they also want to share.

Once you have a great topic you need to start putting the pieces together. Since your release should be informative and intriguing, determine which of your keywords would work best—and make sense. If you are writing a release about a certain insurance product, naturally you will want to incorporate your product-specific keywords into the text. If your content is a bit broader or is more focused on your agency culture (perhaps a new CSR was hired, your company is expanding, etc.) consider using more general keywords; something along the lines of “California insurance agency”, “New York insurance”, and so on. But, like any good piece of content you should begin by just writing. Don’t get bogged down on this new idea of integrating your keywords, just let your words flow—you’ll be surprised how naturally some key phrases or terms will appear within your text, when you weren’t even trying.

When it’s time to really focus in on optimization there are 4 key places you should attempt to integrate your keyword:

Working your keyword into all of these areas of your content may seem like a daunting task, but before you shy away, remind yourself that these are simply best practices. Never “stuff” or force keywords into your press release, if it doesn’t fit or sound natural in a suggested area, move on and continue writing. Below is an example which highlights how you can begin to integrate your keyword(s) into your Headline and Lead Sentence:

It’s important to also note that not every keyword or agency reference needs to be linked. You want to aim for keyword density when crafting your release. Keyword density applies to how many times the keyword is used naturally and genuinely throughout the content; meaning you may have it linked in the first sentence then mentioned an additional 4-5 times throughout your text. A common best practice for any type of content is to only link a keyword every 100-150 words; this helps you avoid looking spammy.

There are many other ways you can strengthen your press release efforts, and ensure that you are creating the most effective content. From the overall structure of the release to your voice and tone, here are some additional tips and tricks that should lead you to PR success:

• 3rd Person Tone – always, and I mean always, write from the outside looking in. Avoid using “I”, “we”, and “us” whenever possible; it helps you to avoid looking overly promotional.

• Inverted Pyramid – always include the most relevant, poignant information first. Make it a habit to answer who, what, where, why and how within your first paragraph.

• Quotes – and statistics also add that extra pizzazz that hooks a reader, keeps them interested as well as allows you to showcase your agency’s credibility and expertise.

So what’s the point of all this? SEO-inspired press releases really are a win-win. Not only are e-Releases easy to get published online – thus allowing you to reach out to media outlets and gain publicity – but they also provide the writer with the unique ability to control how and where your keywords are used. When you pitch a traditional press release to a reporter, they most often take liberties with it; molding it to fit their personal broadcast or article. With the e-Release, posting to sites like PRWeb allow you to manage exactly how your content appears, where your keywords are placed and better yet where your optimized links go.

Your business’ offsite blog can be one of the most advantageous sources of traffic to your website – but how do you effectively promote it and increase traffic? Our friends at Search Engine Journal recently outlined some useful ways of boosting your blog performance.

The first avenue, although seemingly obvious, is your blog appearance. The look and feel of your blog really can make or break its performance. If your blog theme contains harsh colors and the layout is confusing, visitors will bounce right off of it – this not only raises your blog’s bounce rate, but your time-on-site and traffic rates also suffer. There are three important things to consider with your blog appearance:

A great blog that encompasses all of these qualities is the St. Louis Insurance Blog from ABS Insurance Group. ABS has incorporated the color theme from their website (red, white, grey) but also added a cool color (blue) to soothe the reader. They also added a local touch with a picture of St. Louis in their blog header. The blog navigation is clearly outlined, showing the different pages under the header, social media links boxed to the right, as well as categories and blog rolls to the right in designated sections. This blog shows the user that it’s local, easy to navigate, and no trouble to read.

Remember, as with your website or Virtual Insurance Office, it is important to engage visitors on your blog, showing them you have the information they need to keep visiting. Do you have more ideas for effective blog themes, layouts, and general appearance? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna and let me know!

LinkedIn is a great resource to use to brand yourself professionally and your business. But how do you go about using it? The Insurance Marketing HQ team has put together some simple steps to help insurance agents get started with LinkedIn and utilizing it in an effective manner.

Generally LinkedIn is a place to network and connect with other businesses, their owners, and employees. It all does back to the goal of social media for insurance marketing—to get your agency brand and name out there, and find leads via social networking and share your expertise.

When you first immerse yourself within the social media game, you are constantly bombarded with information about the heavy-hitters

You are told to focus your efforts on Facebook, Twitter and blogging—build a community, engage in conversation and form relationships—if you want to become a successful social media ninja then you have to tackle the biggest and boldest social sites first.

But what happens next?

Once you’ve found your social groove, and developed quite an active community of followers, it’s time to embrace a well-rounded, more blended social strategy. There are a variety of additional community-inducing platforms that you can weave into your current social media efforts.

One, which we at Astonish Results regard very highly, is Flickr—the photo and video-sharing tool. Over the past 2 years Flickr has certainly been evolving its clout as a social media outlet, although Facebook and Twitter still tend to steal the spotlight. However, despite the competition, Flickr has also experienced rapid growth and integration within various aspects of digital marketing. It currently hosts upwards of 5 billion images and its branding benefits are steadily increasing.

With the array of both personal and professional reasons to use Flickr, it’s important that agency owners focus on implementing this social resource as a means to:

• Enhance the company’s personal interaction with current its clients
• Build greater awareness and visibility of their agency brand
• Humanize their agency and showcase their individuality
• Conduct outreach campaigns and contests; driving potential clients and& increased traffic to your site(s)

Still skeptical? Astonish Results has seen incredible traction from our branded Flickr account. As a company we share an abundance of photos including snapshots from holiday parties, candids of our fearless leaders out on the road, agency visits and more. By promoting the images through our Facebook and Twitter accounts, we not only encourage clients and the surrounding community to comment, but also provide them with an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at Astonish culture. Allowing the consumer to step inside the world of your agency – and view things from a more personalized perspective – is a great asset to your branding and credibility.

So how can you begin to harvest the power of Flickr for your independent insurance agency?

Take a look at some of these helpful hints to get you started:

If you’re ready to take your social media efforts to the next level, why not begin with Flickr? With the ability to interact, comment, categorize and build up strategic contact lists, the platform provides you with the perfect opportunity to increase your online presence—all with the simple upload of photos. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Are you active on Flickr? Feel free share best practices with us below, we’d love to hear what you’re doing!

It can be difficult to come up with new blog content, especially when you’re posting multiple times a week. It’s easy to fall into a rut of re-purposing the same content ideas over and over, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Start thinking a little simpler about your blog content and you might be surprised at what you come up with.

An easy win for blog content ideas is to use the seasons as your inspiration. With each new season comes more liability and insurance related issues that you can capitalize on. For example, summer is quickly approaching and there is a plethora of blog ideas you can gather from the season. One post might involve liability insurance for homeowners with swimming pools. Another post could involve car insurance for those who are breaking out their convertible cars for the season.  The possibilities are endless.

Here are some more summer insurance topics you can cover for your blog posts in the upcoming months:

• Umbrella/Liability Insurance: swimming pools, parties/cook-outs, grilling
• Home Insurance: vacation homes, beach homes, secondary homes
• Renters Insurance: vacation rentals, beach rentals
• Auto Insurance: convertibles/sports cars, motorcycles, classic cars
• Watercraft Insurance: boats, jet skis, yachts

Do you have any good ideas for blog topics this coming season? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna and let me know what you’ll be covering this summer!

A huge part of having a successful online marketing strategy is to remain a local business while still appearing big enough to have an online brand. There can be a struggle between staying local and opening your brand to the online market. Staying local keeps you in your comfort zone, but it can limit your opportunities for leads. While with your online presence, you open your business up to the whole state and beyond, bringing in new opportunities.

Before you had an online presence, you may have built your book of business through word of mouth, referrals, and the locals in your area. While it is good to keep that momentum going, turning your company onto the internet requires you to think outside of your local bubble. There’s a fine line between appearing to be small-town and appearing to be big business. Although you don’t want to lose your local appeal, you do want to build your brand to reach outside of your town. Keep in mind that you are licensed to serve your entire state, not just your town.

For example, if someone calls you for auto insurance on the other side of the state from you, your first “local instinct” may be to send that lead to an agency closer to them. Stop right there! Just because technically that lead isn’t local to your physical office location doesn’t mean you cannot serve that customer. You don’t need to see the customer in order to get them the coverage they need, so why discard such a valuable lead? Instead, take that potential customer’s information and see what you can find them for auto insurance rates in their area.  You can use this as an opportunity to show the potential customer that although you are an online brand and can help those throughout the state, you’re also a local business and you understand the needs of local people. Customers will appreciate you being able to stay local while serving “non-locals.”

Think of those throughout the state you’re licensed in as your locals. You are not restricted to selling insurance within a 10 mile radius of your town, so you should be welcoming in leads from all over your state. Obviously there can be restrictions for certain products and/or areas, but don’t simply take a local only stance. That is a quick way to lose business and deter from the development of your online brand.

Remember, you now have two locations – your Virtual Insurance Office and your brick and mortar location. Finding the balance between staying local and building your online brand is all about your attitude and the attitude of your entire staff – do you have the right strategy? Tweet me @astonish_shawna and tell me how you’re doing with balancing local and online strategies.