Social media is a lot more than just posting insurance quotes to Facebook or LinkedIn. Learn a few simple steps to get started!

Your plan doesn’t have to be complex, but should identify objectives, goals, metrics, KPIs, etc.

Objectives: this is your ‘why’ – why does your business exist? (Your social and digital marketing plan should directly align with your business objectives.)

Goals: identify specific ways you will achieve the objectives. (Goals should be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.)

Target Audience: think about the people you want to reach most. Where are they? How do they communicate? When do they communicate? How often? What do they expect?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): how will you measure success? what does this look like compared to your objectives?

Reporting: which data will you collect? how will you determine insights? how will you track and report progress?

Social Media Plan Example For The Insurance Industry:

Joe is a independent insurance agent. He works on his own and he currently gets business through referrals, as well as word-of-mouth. He sees an opportunity to use the internet (website & social media) to increase his leads.

Objective: create awareness & increase leads.

Goals: Support internal/external advertising (e.g.: hard collateral same key messaging as website content); increase website content; increase social media posts; capture leads

Target Audience: Joe knows that most of his clients are in the trucking industry; he likes working with them and would like to expand that portfolio. Based on current traffic to his website, as well as his LinkedIn & Facebook pages, he knows that 65% of his ‘fans’ are male between the ages of 25-45 and they’re business owners/operators.

KPIs: Joe knows via analytics, as well as anecdotal evidence from social media, that his target audience has questions surrounding certain subjects. He knows that if he produces answers to these questions and shares across social media/website, the probability of attracting more organic, social, direct & referral traffic is increased. Which, theoretically means a greater chance of leads.

Therefore, Joe knows that he should use branded traffic (awareness), as well as conversion on website (leads) for his KPIs.

Visitor Flow:

Potential client visits Facebook -> clicks on post about trucking -> takes them to website to the blog/article/page with more info -> Page would also have a CTA -> Clicks CTA -> lead goes directly to Joe.

Reporting: Joe wants to ensure that there’s ROI on the effort it takes to develop this social media & digital marketing program, so he would look at the following:

• Conversation Rate = # of Audience Comments (or Replies) Per Post
• Amplification = # of Share Clicks Per Post (or Video)
• Applause Rate = # of Favorite Clicks Per Post
• Economic Value = Sum of Short and Long Term Revenue and Cost Savings (Avinash)

If Joe can show the ROI, he knows that the program has been successful in achieving the objective. If he can see that there are areas that need to be tweaked. If there are, the incredible thing about digital/social media is that the program can be tweaked in real-time  and he can still have tremendous results from the campaign.

Other Blogs:
Social Media and Digital Marketing for Insurance Brokers
Does sex sell insurance? One insurance broker thinks so
Insurance and Social Media: 4 ways to leverage social for customer service
Social media is new rule in insurer catastrophe response

Need help getting started? Give me a buzz! 🙂