Rick Gilman, APR, CMP, is executivedirector of the Personal Lines Growth Alliance, a virtualassociation dedicated to improving the competitiveness of theindependent agency distribution channel within the personal linesmarket.

With this column, I begin the fifth year of writing forAmerican Agent & Broker. it's true—time flies whenyou're having fun. It's been a blast writing this column andsharing my thoughts, insights and myself withyou.

In the first four years I wrote slightly more than 20 percent ofthe columns about specific social media platforms–from Twitter back in 2009 to Foursquare about a year later. Some, likePinterest, I covered twice because a lot had changed with the platform.Many insurance agents had tried, with some great success, differentways to curate imagery that attracted followers and resulted inexposure to their agency.

If there's one overriding message from taking this look back,it's that independent agents are some of the most creative businessowners I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

Learn by doing
I've always been the typeof person who learns by doing, at least when it comes to technologyor social platforms. Whatever the software product, I generallycrack the “virtual” plastic wrap on the jewel case only when I havea specific project to work on. I find working on sample files as atraining platform isn't as effective opening my project in anotherwindow and immediately appling what I just learned.

I have subscribed to Lynda.com for the past 3 years. It is an onlineplatform of video tutorials on everything you can think ofinvolving software and designing for print or online and mobile. Itwas founded in 1995 and has more than 100,000 videos supportingmore than 2,000 different courses. There are various pricing plans,from a one-time use to an annual subscription.

This is one platform I can unequivocally recommend. Lyndaconstantly adds courses and expands the scope of training. In fact,I just discovered there is an iPad app that provides access to allthe video..

The training videos are presented in detail and are around 5 to6 minutes long because the instructions are broken down intosegments. A search feature allows the user to search by text forspecific “how tos” that will take you to the relevant video, makingit easy to find exactly what you need to learn.

The training is not just graphics or programming-based butincludes business-based information. You can also find videos ontopics like “Blogging for Your Business,” “Facebook for YourBusiness” and “Social Media Marketing with Facebook andTwitter.”

Dealing with change
I'veoften written about the challenges people have handling the pace ofchange. In my February 2010 column, “Responsibilities of Change,” I wrote howeveryone within the agency needs to be responsible for dealing withchanges. Leadership must have a plan that is communicated toeveryone; the plan should have gotten input from the differentareas within the agency, too. Only then can the opportunitiesoffered by change be truly leveraged.

Often, only your public-facing staff, the CSRs or receptionists,notice the coming change. Maybe your clients are communicating withthe office less via phone calls and more by texting. Or perhapsyour CSRs are answering the same questions over and over, whichcould more easily be addressed by adding the information to thewebsite in a FAQ section. Or you could consider how you leverageyour customers' time on hold by recording a customizable messagethat changes to answer current questions your staff is getting.

Your agency also can use text messaging to proactively sendvaluable information to your clients relevant to currentsituations. My January column “Text Benefits” discusses the power of textmarketing and the differences between it and email marketing.

Using SMS (short message service) communications is a moreeffective means of connecting with clients and prospects.Statistics show that consumers respond more emphatically to textingthan to email:

• 8.6 trillion text messages are sent eachyear
• More than 99 percent of texts are read and 90 percent of themare read within 3 minutes of receiving the text
• 79 percent of cell phone owners text

Change is inevitable but how we perceive it, learn about it andrespond to it depends on what our role is. Find a way to haveregular conversations with your staff about what they are seeing,how they are interacting with the clients and prospects and whatdifferences they may be aware of.

Related: Read “Word of Advice to Agents: 'Like' New Media“

Consider your customer-facing staff as one of those cagedcanaries that old-time mine workers took along to alert them onwhether the air quality had become poisonous. But these “canaries”can alert you to social media changes or shifts in how consumerswant to interact.

This isn't to say you wouldn't be aware of these changes, too;it's just that it doesn't hurt to get multiple perspectives. Youryounger staff probably spends more time on social media sitescommunicating with friends and businesses than you. As theirexpectations or interactions with businesses change, your agencycan learn from that and adapt.

Future Shock
In the 1970 book “FutureShock,” futurist Alvin Toffler argued that there are psychologicalconsequences to the rapidly increasing pace of change. He definedthe term “future shock” as a personal perception of “too muchchange in too short a period of time.” This was nearly 45 years agoand, thanks to Moore's Law, the pace of change has grownexponentially since then. I can only imagine what Toffler wouldhave written if his book was published today.

Toffler's concern over our ability to adapt to change wasflawed. Societal change doesn't occur overnight, even though it mayappear to do so. In reality, change, even when considering Moore,happens more like the frog in the boiling water.

If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will hopright out. But if you drop the frog into a pot of room-temperaturewater and then slowly increase the heat over time, the frog willnot even notice until it's too late.

Our businesses and society in general are more like the frog inthe room-temperature water. But unlike that frog, changes aren'tgoing to kill us but allow us to thrive.

It's good to look back occasionally to see where we've comefrom, but don't let the exercise frighten you when you realize howfar we've come. Instead, take a lesson from technology futuristDaniel Burrus when he says, “You cannot change the past, but youcan shape the future based on the actions you take today.”

As I wrote in my May 2011 column “Social Media ABCs,” begin by assessing yourneeds. How do you communicate with your clients? How are youmarketing to your prospects? What is your agency's appetite foradopting a social media workflow?

Once you've assessed your needs and how they can be handledwithin your existing marketing and communications activities,ensure you needs aren't in contrast with your brand. If they are,then decide if it is the direction to improve and grow yourbrand.

Then cultivate a culture of social media engagement. Finally,define what your agency is going to do in the social mediarealm.