Negotiating the social media maze

But where does your brokerage begin? 

 

A novice in the field may recoil at first sight of the rapid proliferation of social network platforms – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+,  Pinterest, Tumblr, MySpace, etc. Which social networking platform is best for brokers?

 

Let your target market be your guide, brokers say. It’s all about finding the social networks your existing and prospective clients use most frequently. 

 

This, in turn, seems to depend in part on the line of insurance you are selling.

 

For example, Facebook appears to be the social network of choice for brokers selling personal lines auto and home insurance. As befits the term “personal” lines, brokers like the medium for its ability to connect brokers with consumers both individually and on a group basis. 

 

Zac Sutherland of Sutherland Insurance said his main goal in using Facebook is to increase awareness of the brokerage’s brand. At his brokerage, an official ‘company’ Facebook page is under the direction of a single administrator. Also, Sutherland promotes the brokerage brand using his own personal Facebook account.

 

On the brokerage site, “I think we’re at about 150 connections, or 150 likes,” Sutherland said. “But if I link that to my Facebook page, where I have 700 to 800 connections, and the content gets pushed out from there, that’s where you really see it explode. That method on Facebook is where I found we have the most new business lead generation.”

 

That method also makes it difficult to track results, brokers say. 

 

Usually, a consumer’s response to a broker’s Facebook messaging is not instantaneous, said Sutherland. They may be sharing the content emanating from the brokerage within their friends’ circles, but that activity is largely invisible to the broker.  

 

Still, any content sent out on Facebook serves as “a constant reminder” of the brokerage brand, Sutherland said.

 

“I will have people come to me, maybe old friends from school or university, or people who know a friend of a friend,” he said. “My name will come up because I am constantly hitting them on Facebook. It’s very difficult to track, but it’s free.”

 

Not all lines of business may be amenable to Facebook, brokers say. For example, Ryan Mitchell says his brokerage, Mitchell Sandham, focuses on VIP personal lines and financial institutions insurance.

 

“For us, LinkedIn is where our senior executives are, where a lot of presidents and business owners are, so for us we share industry and coverage updates on LinkedIn,” Mitchell said. “It increases our retention by strengthening our current client relationships. From that, we get referrals from those current clients. 

 

“For us LinkedIn is a nice value-add opportunity. It’s not too invasive, it’s not too intrusive. We provide key updates every month, and that strengthens relationships with current clients.”

 

Whichever social network the brokers select as their ‘home base’ platform, content generation is critical. Several brokers say they do this primarily by way of blogging.

 

“The most valuable part of social media that I’ve been using has been the blog,” said Mila Araujo of Ogilvy & Ogilvy Inc. in Montreal. “I started my own personal blog as the director of insurance for Ogilvy, and it has its own home on its own site. I connect myself to Ogilvy through there.

 

“I identify myself as the director at Ogilvy, but it’s my own personal blog. Once the information started being populated in the blog, we used the information there to distribute over the different social networks – Facebook , Twitter, LinkedIn – and as a result of that, different connections happened.”

Many say the best way to get comfortable using social media is for individual brokers to establish personal accounts, and use those accounts to experiment and test the waters.

 

Araujo said her brokerage is getting employees to learn how to use social networks in a somewhat different way. “One of the most interesting things that we’ve done here is using social networking within the team,” she said, citing the brokerage’s use of Yammer. “We use it internally. 

 

“This has helped our entire staff understand the culture of social media, understand how to interact, and that prepares the company to start taking the external approach. Because if the internal don’t understand, then you are going have trouble when clients are involved and all of a sudden you are in the public eye.”

 

Other free internal social networks are available, Araujo said. The key is to explore them.