Which Social Media Platforms Should Insurance Companies Use?
June 18th, 2019 by
In a world where a new social media platform gets launched every other week, it can be difficult to know which platforms to embrace and which ones to ignore. This can be particularly difficult when trying to identify the platforms your audience is already on. As a rule of thumb, you should try to be active on the platforms that matter to your clients. However, as I am sure you know, this is not realistic for everyone, especially a small team or a one-person operation. As an insurance provider, here are the top social media platforms you should be focusing on. A carefully crafted strategy for each platform can boost both brand awareness and lead generation.
We’ll start with the big one, Facebook. According to Statista there are 2.32 billion active users on Facebook as of 2019, meaning your audience is probably on this platform. If you don’t already have a free Facebook Business page, this is where you should start. You want your Facebook Business page to be in line with the messaging that you’ve established with your current branding. Once your Facebook Business page is set up and optimized, you‘re ready to start sharing content with potential clients.
When writing posts for Facebook, you should aim for a mix of promotional posts, informative posts, and engagement posts. You do not want your feed to be purely promotional posts where you’re constantly pushing your products or services. While this is an important aspect of posting on social media, it can get repetitive. Adding in informative posts, such as industry updates, breaking news, and fun facts, or engagement posts, such as polls and questions, can help break up your feed and encourage customer interactions and sharing. Engagement metrics are one factor Facebook considers when prioritizing your content within the newsfeed.
While having a good organic presence is a great start, it’s not always enough. According to Hubspot, organic post reach has dropped to 6.5%, meaning that the majority of your audience (and even fans of your page) is not seeing your posts. To combat this, you need to have a strategic promotion schedule in which you methodically choose key posts to promote with ad spend behind them. This will help with brand awareness and will likely result in new fans of your Facebook Business page, as long as you’re targeting the right audience.
YouTube
Another giant in the field is YouTube. Statista reports there are 1.9 billion active users on the platform. Videos are the most engaging form of social media content, so YouTube is a great place to promote your agency.
Some might think of YouTube as a platform exclusively for hair and makeup tutorials; however, it’s a great platform for placing easy-to-digest content in front of potential customers. For example, if you are an insurance provider that provides coverage from multiple insurance companies, then a video that analyzes all of your insurance companies and their plans might be the best and most efficient way to get this information in front of your customer instead of making it a long page of website content. A video is more digestible and you can let your creative juices flow when it comes to the direction of the video.
By being active on your YouTube channel and posting videos, you can share your content on different social media networks. Hosting videos on YouTube also lets you embed video content on your website or in newsletters. Content on YouTube can be shared easily, which is great for utilizing assets across platforms.
There are 3.3 billion users on Twitter according to Statista. While Facebook prioritizes what users are seeing, Twitter does not. Newer or smaller business with less engagement might have a better chance of getting in front of their audience or a new audience on Twitter. Twitter is known for being a text-based medium, but don’t limit yourself to just 280 characters. Twitter is also a great space to share videos and infographics that are centered on your top products and services.
If you’re wondering if Twitter is the right platform for your business, you should know that your target demographic is already there. The mascots of the major insurance providers, Flo (Progressive), the Gecko (Geico), and Mayhem (Allstate), all have their own Twitter accounts. They’re also on pretty much every other social media platform.
You Have to Start Somewhere
In a perfect world, you’d have a healthy presence on every social media network, but being active on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is a good jumping off point for building a productive social media strategy. As your business grows and you get a handle of the networks you know are suited to your audience, you should expand to other networks, like Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. However, be conscious of stretching yourself or your team too thin. Being consistently active on a few social media channels is better than having a sporadic, unplanned presence across every platform. If you’d like more information on leveraging social media to generate more business for your agency, contact our team at Search Influence for a digital marketing analysis.
Images
