I am constantly meeting people in the industry whether it be at council meetings, trade shows, or networking events and one topic is very prominent on everyone's minds right now: social media marketing. People who heard I am on Twitter or Facebook or other social media marketing sites usually approach me and ask me one of three questions. "Where do I start?" "Does it work to get sales?" "How do you quantify the time you spend on all of this social media stuff?"
I usually laugh or smile and reply to them with the question of where do I start with this: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." I know if you are not online on Facebook or Twitter or a blog, it can be overwhelming. My suggestion to them is to pick one and start there. You can find so many resources online now that can show you how to set up a Facebook account or how to set up a page for your business online. You just have to get online and let your fingers do the walking. When I get asked "Does it work to get sales?" My answer to that is, not if that is the main objective. I started marketing on Facebook, Twitter, and my blog as a way to be able to share the information about insurance to anyone who was interested. Insurance can be confusing and I wanted a way to communicate with as many people as I could as quickly as possible in a way that is easy for them to understand. That is after all what we do with our clients on a daily basis right? We give them real-life scenario situations as to how specific coverages would protect them. This just allows us to do this on a much bigger scale. You are an expert in your field; why not share that information with people who are looking for it? I have gotten sales out of it yes, but that was not my primary objective. It was a perk of me sharing my knowledge and interacting with people online. With the last question as to "How do you quantify the time you spend on your social media?" I ask them, how do you quantify handing out your business card to someone at a cocktail party or a networking event? You can't always quantify something immediately. That is why I call this Social Media Marketing, not Social Media Sales. Of course you can quantify something online by how many followers or fans you have, but that is only part of it. A more effective way to quantify this would be how many interactions you have with your fans and followers.
The social online network is a fast growing community that now allows you to tell people what you do and to reach beyond your local town or city, if you choose to. As of February 2010, Facebook from its inception in 2004 has reached to over 400 million active users with the average user spending 55 minutes a day on the site. Twitter, since it started in 2006 has over 106 million users, with 300,000 new users a day and over 55 million tweets sent every day. With everyone researching online now, it is important that you be where the eyeballs are. Think of a Facebook Fan page, a Twitter account, or a Blog as another business card for your agency.
This type of marketing is no different than what we as agents five or ten years ago did with local efforts where we seen as a resource in the local community. It's just that now our community has grown from maybe ten thousand to millions of people that you can share information with. Agents are still a valuable resource; we just need to be where the cocktail party is so that when someone has a need, they think of us.
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