Another Reason Why Social Media is Taking the World By Storm

So we know a few things about social media.

1. We know it is so popular because people like getting recommendations from friends, not companies. They trust friends. When a friend tells me to go get a Chicken Biscuit Sandwich from Chick-Fil-A because it is the best thing they have ever tried in the fast-food world: I go try it!
We ignore 100s of millions of dollars worth of national advertising paid for by Chick-Fil-A, but when a friend on Facebook says, “Hey you have to try this!” Guess what, humans want to try it.

2. This next bullet-point is a topic we have not touched before. It was a TED conference talk, but I don’t have the link.

SOCIAL MEDIA HELPS DEFINE WHO WE ARE, FASTER AND TO LARGER AUDIENCES.

In the isolating age of the Internet, we all want people we care about, who once cared about us, or who might care about us in the future, to know who we are and what we are becoming as life unfolds. We want people to know that we are:

A Lowe’s fan not a Home Depot fan, a Coloradan, a Texan, an Oakland A’s fan, a fan of an insurance agency, a video game fan, a fan of skiing at Snowbird, a dueling piano bar fan, a dad, a grandfather, a scholar, a fiction reader, a fan of Chick-Fil-A Biscuit Sandwiches, a willing protestor of Egypt (Egypt’s revolution began with 85,000 fans organized through Facebook), a gala apple fan, a political ally of a presidential candidate, an avid painter, a singer, a secret fan of tumble weed, and a Jerry Seinfeld fanatic. (This is a random list and is not about me in any way.)

We want to define who we are to the world and Social Media helps us do that in a newer, faster way to a larger audience.

1. Your clients want to tell their friends at the end of the day that they just saved $689 on insurance.
2. They want to tell their friends that they didn’t know independent insurance agents existed, but that they can do great things.
3. They want to tell their friends that their insurance agent is smarter than their friend’s agent.
4. They want to tell their friends how well their claim was handled.
5. They want to be define themselves through social media.

How do you facilitate that need?
How do you convince people that you are a professional online?
How does this agent (www.thetruthaboutinsurance.com) do that? These articles are funny, compelling, full of facts and free.
When it is time to buy, do they go find anyone, or do they find this guy?

One more quick hint of the day...

If you have dabbled online with a website at all, it's time to go to these two places today:

http://www.getlisted.org/

and

Google local listings


I know for some of you this is SEO 101, but for others this is pretty advanced stuff. I'll talk at more length about these later.

Facebook

This is going to be quick.

How many clients do you have? How many friends do you and your employees have on Facebook? Add those three numbers together, divide the number in half.

Your Facebook friends + your employee's Facebook friends + your agency's clients / 2 = the # of followers you should have on Facebook

That's how many friends your business should have following it on Facebook.


Here are some quick suggestions on how you might get them to befriend you:

1) Tell your clients that you are paying the 634th friend that joins the fold.
2) $500 for the best success story posted on your company's wall. ABC Insurance agency saved me $489 and got me MORE coverage. How impactful would that be?
3) $30 to the best description of an independent agent provided by your clients.
4) $100 to the best description of your Homeowners Insurance coverages.

Etc., Etc., Etc.

Get the net! Make Facebook work for you. Get your following involved and actively reading and posting on your wall.