North American recently hosted a webinar designed to help independent agents leverage social media to stay in front of their clients and improve prospecting. AIP Marketing Alliance attended this webinar featuring Katrina Reger, Digital Marketing Manager for Blue Compass, and wanted to share some of her suggestions.

According to Reger, you need to strategically select your social media platforms. You do not need to be on every channel, and you don’t have the time to moderate all of these sites with your sales and marketing posts. For the insurance industry, you should focus on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Why?

• 49% of U.S. adults making more than $75,000/year use LinkedIn
• 50% of internet users with college degrees use LinkedIn
• 4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn drive business decisions
• LinkedIn conversion rates are three times higher than other major platforms
• 70% of users say LinkedIn is the most trusted social media platform, followed by Facebook (32%), Twitter (30%), and Instagram (28%)
• She also noted Twitter users are younger, more highly educated, and wealthier than the general public.

The next step involves recognizing the purpose of your social media efforts. Why are you using social media to promote your business? You should have four main goals.

1. Grow Your Brand: Raise awareness of your business/personal brand as you need followers, shares, impressions, and views to make your brand stand out from the competition.
2. Drive Sales or Conversions: Generate more leads to drive your bottom line through website clicks, form completions, phone calls, and even direct messages.
3. Improve Customer Retention: You can stay in front of clients on a daily basis without sending an email, plus you can develop a reputable brand by gathering testimonials and positive reviews by making yourself available and quick to respond to inquiries.
4. Turn Your Customers into Advocates: With COVID-19’s effect on our business environment, word of mouth and referrals are even more important in 2020. Clients can use social media through comments, likes, tags, and mentions to share your brand with others.

Once you start using a social media platform, you need to tell your visitors/users what you want them to do. Promote your business goals by adding a button to your page, such as Contact Us, Learn More, or Read More. Your contact should feel natural with a solid call-to-action, professional imagery, and even including videos.

You also should remain active on your selected social media platform by interacting with your connections. On LinkedIn, the algorithm designed to rank your posts higher for your followers depends on the people you know, interacting with your connections and their content, and even getting involved with LinkedIn groups. For Twitter, their algorithm focuses on recency of publishing content, engagement with your content (retweets, clicks, favorites, impressions), rich media posted (i.e., videos, images, GIFs, and now, emojis), and activity on the platform.

One way to get more eyes on your content involves “tagging” accounts in your posts. If you are talking about a carrier’s products or content, take a minute to tag their corporate page. You also can tag clients if you want to ensure they see the post on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. This strategy also works for your brand and community involvement, so don’t forget to tag other social media pages in your posts.

LinkedIn also allows you to follow clients and prospects. By taking a minute to read their activity, you can start putting your name and face in front of them by posting a comment or click “like” or the other LinkedIn options. Sooner or later, those comments and likes could lead to a potential conversation and sales conversion.

The last step AIP Marketing Alliance wants to share involves making your content conversation-worthy without causing a potential compliance issue. Reger talked about the good and bad of social media due to many of today’s noteworthy happenings in the world where some businesses and people have learned the “hard way” about their social media posts.

With our involvement in the financial services industry, you need to understand compliance when posting materials on your social media pages (business and personal). Don’t be afraid to share competent materials like a useful or skilled resource, video, or image that will spark a conversation or ask a question.

Social media also is a perfect avenue for the next couple of months with the numerous holidays on the schedule, including Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. You can tailor a message around these holidays to specifically make a positive impression and initiate a conversation. For example, life insurance messaging around Christmas usually is a great idea as families get together and remember the loved ones they’ve lost over the years.

AIPMA also recommends that any posts made about a carrier or product are sent through that carrier’s compliance department for review before posting online. This statement goes for all videos, images, and even content as each carrier handles compliance differently for social media.

If you need some direction on posting the “perfect” Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn post, Blue Compass distributed this flyer with information, including characters and graphics. You also can contact the AIPMA marketing team at marketing@aipma.com as we have experience creating social media posts and graphics for our independent wholesalers and agents.