Beta Testing

I’m not sure what to do.”

One of the primary reasons why insurance agents don’t jump into the world of social media — such as blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and the myriad other Web-based avenues for reaching out to the world at large — is that they are unsure how to go about it, according to an agency consultant, coach and mentor who said there’s a lot of resistance to using such tools in the agency universe.

It can be a mind-boggling experience, agreed Pat Alexander, and one that she was reluctant to delve into for a long time. However, because in our world today “technology is in permanent state of beta testing,” it can be approached as something to try out and see what happens, she explained at a recent agency management seminar hosted by the Independent Insurance Agent of Texas.

According to Forrester Research, young people generally have adopted online social applications and while those over the age of 35 may have been slow to embrace the new technologies, they represent the fastest growing sector in the social media space. (See “Agency Innovators: How Agencies Leverage Social Networking,” by Patricia-Anne Tom on page 16 of this edition of Insurance Journal.)

Around 81 percent of insurance agencies have Web sites, but only about 23 percent have a social media presence like Facebook or Twitter, agency consultant Alexander said. Nearly half of agencies use some form of e-mail marketing, but only 6 percent use blogs, which can be an effective tool for communicating an agency’s particular expertise or passion.

Some agencies are concerned about the errors and omissions risks that might arise out of the use of social media outlets. But, said Alexander, consider all the phone calls and e-mails that go out of the typical insurance agency every day. Can the agency control every conversation or every word and comma that appears in all those calls and e-mail messages? If you have the right social media tools and policies for your agency you can actually control the results, Alexander said.

Many agents are reluctant to blog because they view themselves as insurance people, not writers. However, most bloggers are not professional writers, Alexander said. They just started blogging about some subject about which they are passionate. If you can go talk to a client about a subject, you can blog about it, she said.

Some see social media as just fad, Alexander said, but many thought the same thing about cell phones, e-mail, electronic files, direct bill and online rating. One way to look at it, Alexander explained, is that an agency’s blog or Web site is its electronic home base, and “outposts” like Twitter, Facebook, Google profiles and search engine optimization can be used to drive online traffic to that home base.

The bottom line with social media seems to be, just get out there and do some of your own beta testing and see what happens. It may be more rewarding than you think.

Topics Agencies