A strong social media presence can be challenging for B2B insurance agencies. Many B2B companies struggle to show their professionalism and build an audience through social media marketing. Consider the following tips to help ensure that your agency maximizes its social media marketing efforts.

Create your own online persona

Your social media presence should have a well-defined personality. Informative, useful, engaging, timely and relevant are all characteristics that B2B social media accounts see when creating their online personas. Decide what your voice will sound like online. Will you be formal or informal, speaking to individuals or businesses, and appearing as a reporter or editorial contributor? Will you be participating in company employee events, creating contests, reporting on industry or regulation changes, or all of the above? Your agency’s goal is to build rapport and a sense of community with both clients and prospects. But first you have to define your social media persona.

Create a written strategy that includes a lead scorecard and buyer persona

When creating your marketing strategy, ask yourself the following questions:

Who is your online target audience – and how diverse is this group? Start by creating a lead scorecard.
What are the best social platforms to target this audience? You may have to research the different platforms to see which social media platforms are most relevant to your clients and prospects.
What type of content will your target audience find most useful? Will it be infographics, feature articles, tech support info, breaking news commentary, regulatory updates, or a combination of all of these?
What are your short term and long term social media goals? Perhaps your short-term goal is simply to share content consistently. Your long-term goal includes an advertising budget to grow and engage with potential customers.
How do your competitors use social media? You can learn a lot about do’s and don’ts by studying your competition.

Comment on news and regulations relevant to your target industries

Providing feedback on breaking news and changing industry regulations is a great way to demonstrate your industry knowledge and provide your clients with insights on how to make sense of these updates. This can lead to higher engagement levels and increased exposure for your social media pages. You can use Google Alerts and social media alerts to monitor industry keywords and stay on top of dynamically changing events.

organic vs. paid jobs

Once your insurance agency consistently publishes quality content, you can consider booster posts and ads. You may need guidance on this, as budget can be spent quickly, and multivariate split testing with attractive visuals and custom graphics can greatly improve your reach and ROI.

Build a respectable follower base

Looking professional and showing a respectable following and engagement level is half the battle when starting an insurance social media marketing initiative. The most important platforms for your agency to leverage are: LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, likely in that order, although your target markets may influence this. LinkedIn and YouTube can be very valuable to B2B businesses. Very much a business-centric platform, LinkedIn is a good place to start. Then take advantage of YouTube with video clips, recorded webinars, or even simple audio over PowerPoint updates. Try to build your follower base as quickly as possible, to a respectable number. For example, this might be 500 followers on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Although 5,000 or more would be nice, initially your agency will strive for a basic level of professionalism and credibility.