Point/Counterpoint: Social Media Marketing

For a small business, is it better to focus on one social media platform than try to be a jack of all trades?

YES.

Have you ever heard the old saying “go fishing where the fish are”? That’s how I view social media marketing.

Instagram and Snapchat are extremely popular apps right now, but their users are primarily much younger—and probably not looking to purchase insurance anytime soon. You want to put your time and energy where your ideal target client is hanging out. For the majority of personal lines agents, that’s Facebook.

Facebook is by far the largest social network, and it’s heavily used by the people your agency wants to reach. A 2015 Sprout Social report showed 73% of adults age 30-49 use Facebook. By contrast, if you’re a commercial lines agent, LinkedIn might be a better focus for you than Facebook because it enables you to reach out to specific industries and job titles.

Social media can get really complex, really fast. It requires content creation, image creation, scheduling and monitoring. Every social network is a little different and requires a slightly different strategy. If you want to focus on using social media as a tool for your agency, pick which one will help you best achieve your marketing goals and reach your desired audience. Then focus your time and energy on growing that specific channel.

Add that social media platform to your business cards and email signature. Invite your clients to connect with you there. Develop great content and take time to respond to people when they comment or send a message. All social networks offer great mobile apps that can notify you when you have a comment that needs response. Consider running paid advertising campaigns.

Don’t dilute your efforts by trying to be everywhere online. Instead, make one network really strong and watch your results improve.

—Robyn Sharp, insurance social media marketer, agencyupdates.com

NO.

Social media can help you connect with clients in ways you never could before. But the trouble with social media is that new channels emerge on a regular basis, and the channels you thought you knew how to use effectively can change from day to day.

That’s why it’s important to maintain a presence on several channels—and regularly monitor the activity and return on investment of those efforts.

If you’ve clearly defined your target client, you can customize each of your social media efforts to an incredible degree, adjusting your messaging across multiple social media channels depending on each audience.

As the logic and structure behind each of those channels change, your approach will need to change accordingly. The analytics each platform provides tell you which messages resonate most with each set of target clients—and which don’t, making your marketing efforts instantly more efficient.

Perhaps most important, marketing plans can often be wrong. Social media marketing is a fast, cost-effective way to test your messages and tactics, giving you near-instant feedback to help you adjust across multiple channels. Maintaining a presence on multiple social channels helps you figure out which efforts are working better with which audiences, and may just offer up some marketing insights you’d never have found otherwise. Some pretty awesome potential clients could be hiding on a social network you may not have chosen right off the bat.

As with any marketing effort, social media posts you publish just because you feel you should won’t be terribly powerful. But social media posts across a variety of networks, targeted toward a variety of users and monitored regularly, can turbocharge your efforts in ways that weren’t possible a decade ago.

—Ivy Sprague, manager of operations, Ellipsis Virtual Writers, a virtual content creation agency