To start with, the insurance business is about helping people when they need it the most. So it makes sense that social media for insurance agents should be about helping people understand how to protect themselves, their families, and their property.
As you grow your agency, you provide protection to more and more people. It’s important work in an uncertain world. It’s a helpful thing to do for people, and if someone ever needs to rely on a policy bought years ago, they might even call it a blessing.
Something like social media can seem trivial when compared to the genuine good insurance agents do for their policyholders, but a look behind the curtain might reveal greater possibilities than most people realize.
In the right hands, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can be indispensable tools for educating clients about insurance options they may never have considered.
Big Questions
By necessity, successful insurance agents are also teachers. It’s part of the job to talk one-on-one with potential clients to form a clear picture of their needs. Before you can begin to sell, you’ll need to explain what products and services are available and how they can help.
Ongoing conversations open up possibilities that can be to everyone’s benefit:
- How can a classic car lover know that the insurance for his 1969 Ford Mustang requires a different type of policy than his 2015 Toyota Camry?
- What’s the difference between boat and personal watercraft insurance?
- Is a flood insurance policy necessary in addition to a homeowners policy?
- What about insurance for the jewelry a woman inherits from her grandmother?
- What if someone’s snowmobile fun gets out of hand?
- If a roommate borrows a car and has an accident, whose insurance company is responsible?
Hey—if a client calls and starts asking these kinds of questions, the only approach is to answer as well as you can. The personal touch never goes out of style.
And social media for insurance agents is another way to deliver that personal touch.
World of Opportunity
People live on Facebook and Instagram. When they have downtime, they like to explore the world with their smartphones. Global Web Index reports that social media captures 30 percent of users’ online time.
With all its potential, social media is here to stay. When you’re trying to keep your small agency running smoothly, you don’t need unnecessary additions to your to-do list. But without maximizing the potential of social media, your business is missing out on countless daily opportunities to grow your business and reputation.
Well-established insurance companies have been incorporating social networks to communicate with staff and customers for years. According to Forbes, “there is a world of opportunity in that realm of hashtags, comments, and likes.”
Let’s consider Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla of the internet. For some people, Facebook and social media are synonymous.
That big gorilla influences the way people in all kinds of fields do business. HubSpot reports that 43 percent of B2B markets have acquired customers through Facebook.
So what makes engaging Facebook posts for insurance? Let’s take a look at some life insurance marketing ideas:
- Story-based: A company called Life Happens uses stories with titles like, “Thank God I have life insurance because when my mom passed away I had to pay for the house.”
- Product-based: Social media can educate consumers about available products. For instance, the difference between term and whole life insurance.
- Question-based: Get to the heart of the matter by asking questions like, “Why do you need life insurance?”
The Value of Time
In some ways, social media for insurance agents is a straightforward proposition involving telling stories, introducing products, and asking questions.
What do you get in return? Capgemini, a consulting firm, listed a bunch of ways successful use of social media can help insurance agents and their clients:
- Mine customer data to help customers arrive at better underwriting decisions.
- Service policies and offer self-service options, improving customer satisfaction.
- Provide customers with claims-related information, particularly in times of natural disasters.
- Provide information about upcoming maturities or surrender payments.
- Identify emerging needs of customers to improve products and services.
- Attract the right industry talent through social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram.
That’s a lot of good stuff that could help your business. However, brainstorming, planning, and executing successful, year-long insurance social media campaigns require time and expertise.
Even if you know how to run such a campaign, consider your most finite resource—time, which otherwise could be applied to your already expansive to-do list rather than to the ins and outs of Facebook and Instagram.
But don’t fret, Boba Fett.
Social Jazz specializes in helping small insurance agencies get the most out of social media. Leave the brainstorming, planning, and execution of your Facebook insurance posts to us. After you spend a few minutes telling us what’d you’d like, our system randomizes and automates posts for the entire year.
#Crucial
Just as you’ve applied yourself to learning all you can about the insurance business, we’ve focused on learning all we can about providing effective social media content for insurance agents such as yourself.
Not to brag, but we’re pretty good students of the game and have come up with a successful playbook. As we understand them, the rules go something like this:
- Be consistent.
- Understand hashtags.
Inconsistent social media messaging doesn’t work. Sure, you could sit down and write a post about umbrella policies. But can you do it two to three times a week for 52 weeks? (Of course, the answer is yes, but that brings us back to the value of your time.)
Now, let’s consider the all-important hashtags. In our experience, they are deceptively complicated (#crucial).
If someone is following you on Facebook or Instagram, they will see your posts about classic car insurance or life insurance awareness month. But marketing ideas won’t reach prospects who are not following you.
The right hashtag can attract eyeballs and get your message in front of people who have yet to click the “follow” button. It’s the digital equivalent of a billboard. Instead of driving in their cars, people are scrolling on their phones.
But, #realtalk, if no one is searching for the hashtags you use, it’s like putting your billboard up in a cul-de-sac instead of along I-95.
Again, you’re capable of doing your own research, but you don’t have to. Social Jazz can be your social media expert. It’s what we do. It’s our jam, as the kids used to say.
Partner with us, and save that time and energy to focus on your jam.
Social Media for Insurance Agents
Since we’ve already established that questions are important, here’s a good one: Why not join the Social Jazz team and let us reach potential prospects on Facebook and Instagram for you?
Social Jazz payments are month-to-month, but you can set up messaging for the year and forget about it. When you sign on with us, your social media goes on autopilot.
If you want to keep the same plan the following year, that’s all good.
If you want to make changes, that’s all good too.
We also handle the design. We’ve got a creative team that crafts and designs high-quality messages. Our catalog of posts is unique to us, and we have ways to make those posts unique to you.
We also don’t believe in messages for messages’ sake. Almost every post we put into the ether of the internet for you will include a Call to Action. For those two to three times a week, your posts will reach new people and generate potential leads.
The industry term is “engagement,” and we’re all about it.
With a Purpose
As we mentioned, you’re the expert when it comes to your business, and we’re the experts for ours. However, we also know something about the insurance business.
We have a panel of industry experts who review our potential posts and make sure we’ve got the facts right. That ensures that what we’re doing for you is specific to your needs.
We’re not just taking work off your plate; we’re stepping in to amplify your message in creative and effective ways.
We call Social Jazz’s tried-and-true approach the ABCDs of Social Media:
- A—Answer your consumers’ questions.
- B—Help them Buy whatever products and services
you offer. - C—Connect with them through your brand, things you
post about, pictures of your team, and more. - D—Encourage customers to Discover new information they might not have considered, such as, “What is an umbrella policy?”
Again, you can do this on your own, but your time might be better spent following up on leads while we dream up new ways to engage potential clients with posts about life insurance awareness month and how to keep your boat safe in a storm.
Serious Business
Social media is inevitable. It is the future and cannot be avoided. And we realize a percentage of insurance agents around the country aren’t comfortable with that idea.
Social Jazz saw a need and decided to take it seriously.
What does that mean?
Insurance is a consultative sale. Consumers need to see their agents as credible and authoritative. You’re asking them to trust you to be there when things go sideways.
We mentioned it before—as your business grows, so does the number of people you’re protecting from all manner of unhappy surprises.
By extension, everything you post on Facebook or Instagram reflects on you, positively or negatively. Social media for insurance agents can have an element of whimsy and fun, but it should never do anything that might detract from your credibility.
We all love SpongeBob SquarePants. Who doesn’t? But although a post of everyone’s favorite fictional sea creature can be funny, it might not be the best way to protect your reputation and earn people’s trust.
The right look also projects the image you want people to see. Remember, we have a team of creative designers who are fascinated by the interplay of lines, shapes, colors, and textures. They understand how to bring the elements together to create a professional presentation.
In short, we want our customers to be proud of their social media.
Good Traffic
From our point of view, active social media is awesome social media.
It’s about shaping the right messages, making them look top-notch, and getting them in front of potential customers again and again.
Just as a billboard that’s blank most of the year doesn’t do much good, the haphazard posting of social media for insurance agents won’t catch the optimal number of eyeballs or generate a serious amount of leads.
At Social Jazz, we keep the engine running week after week and, if you want, year after year.
We’re not saying you can’t do it. We have faith in everybody’s ability to learn and grow. You don’t build an insurance agency without knowing how to tackle problems and find answers.
Feel free to consider Social Jazz as one of your answers.
Why not set your social media on autopilot while you focus on converting the increased web traffic into customers? Social Jazz can do the work for you, and you can reap the rewards.
In Closing
We can apply all sorts of metaphors to social media. We can see it as:
- a game to play
- a network of friends
- a family glue
- a necessary evil
- a tie that binds
If we’re talking about social media for insurance agents, it’s best to think of it as a tool to help you grow your business so you can protect more and more people.
We understand the importance of what you do. Thanks to the products and services you offer, people can have easier times through life’s ups and downs than they otherwise would.
While you’re caring for your customers’ needs, trust us to consistently project your message with polished professionalism. We can and will generate more business, and it’ll be as easy as you please.
Fare thee well for now, but if you’d like to learn more about how we can automate your social media, we invite you to check out socialjazz.com. Come visit for a spell and see how we can help.