“I don’t have time”—it’s one of the biggest concerns agents have about social media. For most, finding time in their busy schedule is one of the biggest concerns.
But you don’t have to dedicate hundreds of hours to see a return from social media. A well-defined strategy (and a few time-saving tools) can help you strike a balance between the time you invest and the value your investment adds.
When it comes to social media planning, there’s no right or wrong level of involvement. The most important factor is consistency. Start by setting goals for your agency’s participation. Whether it’s regular interaction with customers on Facebook, a tweet every few days or a weekly blog post, you can strengthen your social media presence by having clear goals in sight.
Here are three levels of social media involvement to consider based on the time you want to commit and the goals you set are outlined.
Listen (one to two hours a week)
This should be the first step of any social media strategy. After you’ve set up your agency’s accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, study what people are saying on the platform. Check sites like Google Places or Yelp! for customer reviews of your agency. Friend your customers and follow their updates, track your competitors’ tweets, and watch how people respond. Note what’s working, record the questions and topics that dominate the conversation, and think through how you’d respond.
By first using social media as a listening tool, you’ll learn best practices for status updates, tweets and blog posts before creating your own. Plus, you can apply what you’re learning from online chatter to shape quoting and in-person conversations with your customers.
Time-savers
- Clearly outline actions and responsibilities within your agency to prevent redundancy, maintain focus and meet your social media goals. For example, you could assign a single person in your agency to review Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for one hour, twice a week.
- “Like” competitor Facebook pages from your personal profile to more easily follow their updates when you’re online.
- Search Twitter and third-party directories like WeFollow and Twellow to identify popular profiles associated with insurance. Create Twitter lists to organize the people you follow by category (customers, competitors, etc.), and use programs like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to monitor your Twitter lists at a glance.
- Use a reputation management tool to monitor what people are saying about your agency. Consider using free services like SocialMention and Google Alerts, or more robust paid services like ChatMeter, LocationMonitor or Trackur.
- Create a Google Reader account for one-stop monitoring of key insurance blogs and publications. Content hubs can save you hours a week by better organizing content for quick review.
Be sure to read the next issue of IN&V for the second article in this series on social media time-savers.
Matthew Marko (matthew_marko@progressive.com) is a marketing process manager for Progressive Insurance. He works to provide local marketing strategies, tools and cobranded collateral to help independent agencies grow their businesses. He prepared this article for ACT. For more information about ACT, contact Jeff Yates (jeff.yates@iiaba.net), ACT executive director. This article reflects the views of the author and should not be construed as an official statement by ACT.