Social Media is NOT about building brand value.

Social Media is NOT about marketing your agency.

Social Media is NOT about selling more policies.

Social Media is about being available to clients andprospects!

When you make yourself easily available to clients and prospectsyou build brand value, market your agency, and sell morepolicies.

Let's learn through a story:

Your client is talking to a friendover a cup of coffee in the office break room. The friend, inthe course of conversation, mentions that she is finally moving outof her apartment and buying a house. You are a good agent andyour client is very satisfied with the service you've provided herover the years so like any good client, she tells her friend itwould be silly to do business with anyone but you and writes downyour phone number.

The friend, after working togethermany years, places a large amount of value in your client'srecommendation. So she goes back to her desk after their breakand immediately picks up the phone to dial your number, only tofind the line is busy.

In 2011, phone numbers are veryrarely busy. But after several attempts throughout theafternoon the friend begins to get anxious. Buying a house isstressful business and she wants to get the insurance part of thedeal out of the way early.

So the friend calls one of yourcompetitors that she passes everyday on the ride to work. She hasevery intention of giving you a shot at her insurance program. Butyour competitor picks up the phone and his quote is “good enough.”So the friend purchases the other guy's policy.

In this story, you lost the friend's business because you werenot available when you were needed. To a certain extent, thisexample is farfetched. Busy signals are a thing of the past. Butthey weren't 10 years ago. Ten years ago this was a veryplausible scenario understood as part of doing business.

This is what is happening if you do not have a presence onsocial media. Prospects are actively shopping for insurancerepresentation and if you are not making yourself available theyare going to choose to do business with someone else.

I'm not saying you need to give up traditional forms ofinsurance sales, hire a vice president of social media, buy aserver and start posting three blog articles a day. But you doneed a presence online, because people are shopping in onlinecommunities and it's not just Gen Y.

Start small
If your specialty ispersonal lines create a Facebook page. If you workpredominately in the commercial lines market create an account onLinkedIn. Start with one social media platform and getcomfortable with it. Take a few minutes every day to updateyour status, start a discussion, respond to questions, post anevent, post a picture of a client or invite someone to coffee.

Build your presence online just like you built your book ofbusiness, slowly and with care. You should be proud of youronline presence, because for some of your clients that is going tobe their first impression of you.

Here are three things I want you to do today, right now, to getyourself started in the social media world (if you don't have onaccount on any of these platform create one, it takes 2minutes):

1. Log into Facebook Searchfor your favorite client business or personal. Write a twosentence comment about why you like doing business with them.EASY!
2. Go to search.twitter.com. Type in cityand state where you do business and follow 10 people and/orbusinesses who are active yourcommunity. EASY!
3. Sign into LinkedIn.Create a company page for your business. Write one reallyawesome sentence on why people should buy insurance fromyou. Then invite five current customers to follow yourcompany. EASY!

It should take you approximately 35 minutes to do all three ofthese things. If you can't spare 35 minutes in your day to bemore available to your clients you are fooling yourself, notme.