Social Media

[randrew54]

I have been advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin but I haven't seen any postitive results. What are you doing with social media that is working?

[d's insurance store]

I have been advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin but I haven't seen any postitive results. What are you doing with social media that is working?

Mr. Andrew...I would venture a guess that many or most who are advertising in the ways you describe are having the same result, or maybe the email is buzzing with people trying to sell you something...

After a lot of study, and a couple of attempts at swimming in this pool, I'm starting to conclude that it requires almost full time effort, with constant and consistant content contributions through the Facebook/Twitter/Blog sources with something new and significant to say to your audience in order to gain any traction. Unless you're advertising FREE INSURANCE!!!, I just don't see where the small ads in these media are doing anything to attract new prospects. The only way I think any of this can effectively work is if you have a concentrated niche or two or three and tightly focus your ads and other content contributions to that audience, positioning yourself as an expert, with something real and valuable to say, other than BUY FROM ME. I'm just not seeing much success from anywhere in the broad based insurance sales/all lines/personal/commercial audience. It's just not focused enough to cut through the clutter.

There appears to be this myth that just by positioning oneself on Twitter or Facebook, or starting a random thought blog, you can and will attract a group of loyal followers who will read your every word and then send off your postings to their friends and so on and so on, taking you and your agency viral, and then your email box will fill with hungry prospects and your phone lines will ring so often the wires melt. Well, in all honesty, except for the concentrated tiny niche markets, who really passes the name of their insurance agent along unsolicited just because a windshield claim or theft claim got paid without hassle?

[Rainmaker]

Well, forgive me but nothing against facebook, and twitter and all that, but - let's face it those are personal social media platforms. LinkedIn is dedicated exclusively to professional networking.

We encourage our clients to build robust LinkedIn profiles, develop polls, join groups, post updates, etc with LinkedIn and they are generating results.

You can drive yourself crazy trying to manage all of these different social media platforms, PICK ONE that is effective for you and stick with it.

Cheers

[gregcw]

What would you all say are the greatest risks that an agent or broker has regarding his or her active participation in social media?

A dissatisfied customer writes something unflattering on your Facebook wall or tweets about a bad claim experience.

My question, once this does happen how should a situation like this be handled?

This is not as potentially damaging as when someone posts something negative on a SearchEngine site like Yahoo! I did a search for insurance in Newport Oregon and on that page they listed the agencies and give consumers space to make comments about the agency/business. I got a negative comment on my listing. On the plus side I was able to make an additional/rebuttal comment. I was also able to look at other postings by this consumer and learn that there were a lot of businesses that she had bad things to say about but only one that she had positive things to say about. This business was once one of my customers and his business could organize a trip to the bathroom; with a little help. I also had 2 1/2 stars when most of the agencies listed had none.

[FFA]

I just wrapped up my Ethics Training. Social Media was a topic of discussion - the wave of the future. HMMMM. I always though business was business and social media was not business. Soon enough, its all going to be over crowded with nothing but business.

Maybe an Angies List set up should be the way to go. Al least, they fact check eliminating the slander that could go on.

Talking with a friend of mine that runs a business out side insurance, they had his daughter at 18 years old managing the social media. It produced little results. She recently left for college and now they are lost as she does not have the necessary time to dedicate to this. Now he has the cost of hiring and training someone else.

He firmly believes that this is the way to go even though through almost 9 months, it has produced little to no results. Not sure why he is thinking along these lines.

[d's insurance store]

I think I understand the concept of how social media can/might help a retail business, including insurance, but for the life of me, I don't see any conclusive proof that it works except where an insurance agency already has established a high profile within a community and the social media just dovetails and reinforces those community activities that can or might eventually lead to an insurance sale.

This environment where I'm bombarded with offers from companies willing to sell me a 'kit' or set of instructions on how to get up and running with social media for my agency just doesn't convince me it's the current big thing to spur quotes and sales. That I can sell a policy to Jane Doe, add her to my contact list on Facebook or Twitter and have her add me to her lists, and then send a shout-out to her and everybody else on our combined networks about how I saved her $80 every six months just doesn't fit with my reality that suddenly my email box is going to fill up with quote requests from her friends list because I saved her some money.

I may be stuck in the dinosaur era where indoor plumbing was considered an advancement and having and using a computer makes me like a Star Trek character, but social media? Not yet, at least for me.

[lenrobbins]

I'm a Los Angeles insurance agent, and believe social media is fine as long as the advice given is general in nature. I write articles on various life insurance subjects, but never using company names or doing anything of a sales nature. I think that being truthful in your comments and encouraging the questioner to seek help from an insurance professional is a reasonable thing to do.
http://www.lifenetinsurance.com

[LadyBroker]

I think if you are a retail products or service company and post some coupons or specials on your wall, it's worthwhile. Otherwise, it's not anything that I would find particularly useful as a marketing too. I have hundreds of friends, and while I 'like' business pages, I often hide them because they post some inane comment every day that just fills up my wall. If I want to see if a local shop or restaurant has a Facebook special, I just go to their wall directly.

How effective, really, can your Facebook marketing efforts be when your potential customer gets hundreds of posts in a single day; no one reads those, who has that kind of time?

Anyway, just my humble opinion.

[FFA]

Since my last post on this topic, my friend in the other industry still believes this is the wave of the future even though he has got nothing out of it. He caught his daughters replacement using their time on her page, not the company page.

Sometimes I wonder how I have lived this long not having cell phones, texting, computers and nuns wacking my knuckles with rulers all them years. Sister T. passed a few years back. Do you think St Peter turned her away for what is now known as corporal punishment in school? I'ld go home tell my dad I got wacked and he simply stated I should not have been doing what I was doing to get wacked. He was right. He never made up an excuse for me. Made me take my punishment like a kid that deserved to be punished. No Cops. No Lawyers. Everyone got over it the next day and got on with life.

[d's insurance store]

I think if you are a retail products or service company and post some coupons or specials on your wall, it's worthwhile. Otherwise, it's not anything that I would find particularly useful as a marketing too. I have hundreds of friends, and while I 'like' business pages, I often hide them because they post some inane comment every day that just fills up my wall. If I want to see if a local shop or restaurant has a Facebook special, I just go to their wall directly.

How effective, really, can your Facebook marketing efforts be when your potential customer gets hundreds of posts in a single day; no one reads those, who has that kind of time?

Anyway, just my humble opinion.

I'll stand by my other comments, and let you know that I agree with your posting as well. I remain unconvinced that there is some way to tie in retail, personal lines insurance products with any Social Media outlet and really achieve any tiny bit of credibility in the marketplace in the hope of acquiring new clients.

Commercial niche insurance? Absolutely, if your social media presentations are confined to the area that you're working..but broad based, all lines? No way.

[waltmarkers]

People have been talking a lot about social media as facebook and twitter. But what about blogs?

I started a blog that I link to from my agency website on blogger. Unfortunately, I don't post too much on it, and I'm still working on striking a balance of facts / interesting.

http://insurancesavvy.blogspot.com

The idea is to drive traffic to my website and be seen as a trusted adviser. But I think that's everyone's idea....

I'd appreciate some input from this crowd on what I'm doing well / what I can improve..

[salutq]

Interesting discussion i think. Anyways giving my 2 cents , i think social media is important if you are a small business and don't have the luxury of a big advertising budget. Plus as per reliable estimates, people are spending more and more time and social media. So by setting up a face book and twitter presence , not only can you create your space on social media, but also since it is free, you can build your brand which will help bring you in leads and brand recognition in the long run. I for one totally think that if you are not on social media you are missing a big opportunity to interact with prospective customers and get those juicy leads.

[ticktock]

Social media seems to be a decent bet especially when you see how important reputation management is nowadays..at least thats what i think

[independent guy]

What would you all say are the greatest risks that an agent or broker has regarding his or her active participation in social media?

A dissatisfied customer writes something unflattering on your Facebook wall or tweets about a bad claim experience.

My question, once this does happen how should a situation like this be handled?

I noticed that on one of the company Facebook pages, of a company we represent. I don't have any interest in dealing with it. Despite the company new media person asking them to talk to the company or agent about it, he went on posting negative things every day until they banned him. What a pain, for little gain.

[Pathway]

Your web site does not have an Alexa rating so that means your SEO and or coding are not configured. My web site: http://www.pathwayinsurance.net/ has a significantly higher Alexa rating than any insurance agent web site that I have run across in the US, but that is due to the age of my web site plus effective SEO stratigies. You can either hire a reputable SEO consultant or start learning SEO yourself. (I did it myself)

It takes a long time to get good page rank for organic SEO, companies that specialize in getting you quick rankings may also get you black listed!

Jack Thomas
www.pathwayinsurance.net