What’s in a Blog? Local Insurance Blog Topics – Part 2

This post is part of a series on insurance marketing and training sponsored by Astonish.

In part one, I discussed why blogging is important and the first rule of finding compelling insurance blog ideas – blog about what you KNOW. Part two is all about how to blog about local events and happenings to attract more visitors to your site.

Blogging about what’s local is an important part of your insurance agency’s blogging mix. Not only is it designed to help your blog naturally attract web visitors from the areas you’re hoping to sell insurance, it gives people a reason to come back to your site.

That’s important because people aren’t always thinking about buying insurance. It’s not like buying gas, groceries, entertainment, or clothing. Writing about what your prospects care about is a good way to keep them coming back to your site. It keeps your brand in their mind so that when they are ready to purchase insurance or switch insurance providers they may think to call your agency first.

So what do your prospects care about? One of the things they care about is their local community. So how do you tackle the second strategy? Lucky for you, we have some tips to get you started!

Blog about What’s LOCAL

Blogging about what’s local means blogging about ways your agency interacts with the local community or communities in which you have prospects. That doesn’t mean you need to start volunteering and fundraising for local charities, however that is one of the most effective ways to write about local initiatives your prospects care about.

It’s also one of the most effective ways to get people to not only read your blog post (since you can ask the charity to share a link to the blog post with their audience, which creates greater exposure), but also to share the blog post on their social networks, which can support your site’s overall SEO in a very positive way!

Another way to blog about what’s local is to blog about state or city news that affects prospects, especially if it’s anything related to insurance. For example:

• Writing about the importance of general liability insurance for businesses that sponsor a float in an upcoming city parade.
• Writing about an amazing incident where a local resident warded off a home burglary and link it to the importance of having homeowners insurance. The crime blotter of local newspapers can become your best friend when thinking of ways to blog about what’s local and relate it to insurance.

Consider blogging about local businesses and nonprofits your agency partners with as well. This can create more exposure for your blog as well as it can introduce your brand and your blog to the partner’s online audience.

One last tip is to write about upcoming events taking place in different communities. Give people a reason to come back to the site each week or month to see what’s going on.

In the final part of this multi-part blog series on finding compelling insurance blog topics, I’ll share how to blog about what’s trending.

About the Author: Adam DeGraide is the Founder and CEO of Astonish. As an Internet marketing veteran and sales guru, DeGraide has spent the past 15 years creating “The Greatest Digital Marketing System in the World.” His company, Astonish, offers a complete digital marketing system built specifically for the insurance industry that combines the best digital marketing tools such as: websites, CRM, SEO, SEM, social media, blogging, email marketing, mobile marketing, and text message marketing, with powerful sales training and agency consulting. Hundreds of agencies across the country are leveraging the Astonish system to increase their revenue. Learn more at www.Astonish.com.