Last week’s issue of IN&V included the first article in this series about social media time savers, and the following is the rest of the discussion overview. Here are two more levels of social media involvement to consider based on the time you want to commit and the goals you set are outlined.
Respond (2-5 hours a week)
After taking some time to listen, join the conversation by responding to questions, posts and comments with a helpful link or thoughtful answer. Note that while answering questions or directing people to another online resource builds goodwill and trust, whereas “hijacking” an online conversation to explicitly promote your agency can undermine your efforts.
Provide helpful advice over time and associate comments with your agency through hyperlinks or a simple signature with contact information. Remember, showing your value doesn’t require you to give “pro bono” advice. Asking the right questions and outlining relevant points customers should consider can demonstrate the value of an independent agent and lead to a follow-up phone call.
Time-savers
• Focus on a few active online communities rather than jumping around looking for every opportunity to respond. You’ll get to know the members better and your participation will build credibility that can lead to references across the social network.
• Develop an FAQ of common topics, your responses and online resources you can share. Using these responses as a starting point can save time when responding to similar questions or comments.
Publish (5+ hours a week)
The final level of social media engagement is proactively communicating with your audience. Although most businesses prefer to jump right into engagement, by listening and responding first, you’ll be more comfortable with the medium and your audience. By starting slowly, you’ll also have a better understanding of the time you have for social media, and you’ll be more likely to provide the consistent presence necessary to build trust.
Time-savers
• Put a process in place to keep your involvement consistent and efficient. Assign a producer, CSR or a marketing intern from a local college as your social media manager to ensure a single point of contact. Make sure they work alongside everyone in your agency to get questions answered and develop content without bottlenecks. Remember that effective social media engagement is timely and human. Delayed responses and overly-corporate language limit your effectiveness online.
• Share any quality information you think followers may be interested in—it doesn’t always need to be about insurance. Not only can this save you time developing your own content, it will provide value to fans, followers and readers and increase the chance that others will share your content with their communities.
• Distribute the work among a few employees to keep it manageable. This adds variety to your posts and prevents disruption due to vacation, job changes or illness.
• Mix up your content. A thought-provoking question can be as effective as a blog post and takes a fraction of the time to compose. Discussing community events or commenting on your favorite sports team can also engage your audience without the research and writing time longer posts may require. Plus, consumers will appreciate seeing the personality of your agency and its employees.
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.