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Grow Your Business: Social Media Marketing for Insurance Agents

By Tara Seboldt

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Over 4.5 billion people are active on social media. This is an opportunity to actively connect with potential clients on social media channels. However, you shouldn’t jump into social media without a plan.

This guide will help you get a better understanding of social media marketing for insurance agents. Keep reading to learn why social media is important and how to use best practices in your social media strategy.

How Can Insurance Agents Take Advantage of Social Media Marketing?

Social media is an incredible tool to help you grow your client base. The purpose of social media marketing for insurance agents is to build relationships — not necessarily make direct sales.

Growing your sales through social media doesn’t happen overnight. First, you must establish rapport with your audience. You can earn trust by posting helpful content that’s engaging and relevant to your followers. As your social media followers engage with your content, they move further down the sales funnel.‍

For example, a landscaper comes across your social media post answering a common insurance question. As you continue to post relevant content, the landscaper begins to interact more with your page. They might like or share your posts or comment to ask questions. They decide to start their own business and are now in the market for landscaper insurance. Your insurance agency is now their go-to for a quote because of your social media presence.

Here are a few social media goals for your agency:

  • Increase post engagement rate
  • Generate new leads
  • Drive website traffic
  • Improve brand awareness

Tools for Social Media Marketing

The thought of coming up with social media posts, designing images or videos, posting to your pages, and monitoring each platform can easily be overwhelming. The good news is there are endless tools to help you manage your social media profiles.

Scheduling Tools

Manually posting content to each social media network can cut a lot of time out of your day. Social media scheduling tools automate the process, so you can focus on other areas of your business.‍

Scheduling tools range in price and complexity. Free tools, like Facebook Business Suite, let you upload images and videos, write captions, and set a time to post. Paid tools, like Buffer, generally have more features like team collaboration, allowing multiple users to manage social media pages.‍

Analytics Tools

Analytics platforms help you track the progress of your social media goals. Every social media platform has some analytics built into your business page. These basic reports give you information on posts, such as the number of likes or shares. You can use these stats to calculate metrics like engagement rate or percent of new followers.

You can also use paid tools that will calculate analytics metrics for you. Tools like Hootsuite give you an entire dashboard of analytics for every social media platform.

Design Tools

Visually appealing social media posts are more likely to catch someone’s eye. Luckily, you don’t need to be a graphic designer or have fancy video editing equipment to create great social media designs. For example, with Canva, you can easily design attractive social media posts. They even offer pre-made templates for different social media platforms.

Using a combination of tools to design, schedule, and monitor your social media posts eliminates much of the hassle and saves you time when managing your social media page.

Best Practices for Social Media Marketing

Following current best practices will help you get the most out of social media marketing. Here are five of the most important practices you should implement in your social strategy:

1. Develop a Brand Voice

You’ve probably seen posts from Wendy’s Twitter account. The brand has made a name for itself on social media by being sassy, sarcastic, and witty. This consistent brand voice helps Wendy’s stand out from the crowd.

Your business can do the same thing by developing a consistent brand voice. Choose a tone that resonates with your target audience and will earn their trust.

For example, you can present yourself as a trusted resource on complex insurance matters. Your brand tone can be empathetic while sharing simple answers to customers’ insurance questions.‍

2. Engage With Followers

Social media marketing for insurance agents isn’t just about posting content. You’ll also need to engage with your followers. You can answer questions, reply to comments, and reach out to customers who have an issue.

Let’s say you post about the importance of cyber liability insurance for business owners. A follower comments on your post asking what types of scenarios are covered. You respond with several situations included in cyber policies. By promptly answering your followers’ questions, you make them feel valued. Each time you engage with followers, you’re building your community.

3. Choose the Right Platforms

It’s hard to keep up with all of the different social media platforms available today. From TikTok to Instagram to Facebook, how can you manage social posts for each platform?

Simply put, you don’t. You should only actively use accounts on the platforms where your potential customers spend time. Are most of your customers over 50? You may not have much success on TikTok, where only 14% of US adults 50-64 years old use the app.

Instead, focus on platforms where you are more likely to create warm leads for your business. Twitter and Facebook are often good places to start for insurance agents.

4. Do Your Research

Start your social media reach by observing your competitors. Go to their social media pages and take note of what they’re doing. Are they getting lots of likes, comments, and shares? Or does their page seem abandoned?

You don’t want to copy what competitors are doing, but it’s a good place to get an idea of what type of content works in your industry. It can also help you pinpoint your brand voice.

5. Post Quality Content

An impressive 83% of marketers believe that the quality of your posts is more important than the quantity. While you should post consistently, posting more content doesn’t necessarily translate to more engagement.

Rather than posting everything, think of the value your post offers to followers. You could share an answer to frequently asked questions from your clients.

Quality content can be humorous as well. Think of Allstate’s recent campaigns using the personification of Mayhem. These posts are on-topic for an insurance business while using humor to convey the message.

Improve Social Media Marketing for Insurance Agents

A social media marketing strategy focuses on building a community around your business. Setting the right goals, using social tools, and following best practices will help you turn followers into new customers.