Driving Engagement with Social Content Marketing

Posted on November 20th, 2020 by nms
post-thumb

For digital marketers, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have provided exciting new ways of reaching audiences. With a user base approaching 4 billion people the world over, social media is perhaps the most important aspect of online marketing. The insurance industry has adopted social media as a powerful tool, offering a more personalized and connected relationship between agencies and their customers. As in many forms of digital marketing, content is the key for success. Leveraging the power of social media, along with innovative insurance web design, can unlock new potential for insurance agencies of every size and type. In this guide, we will explore social content marketing best practices, allowing you to build engagement with your social followers.

What is Social Content Marketing?

Digital marketing utilizes many strategies to attract and retain audiences. Content marketing is one of these strategies, supplementing the insurance web design and advertising initiatives already in place. By focusing on the development of informative, relevant, and entertaining content, marketers can achieve specific goals, including:

  • Building brand awareness
  • Providing details to inform purchasing decisions
  • Encouraging interaction between a company and its audience
  • Driving traffic to a company website
  • Telling a company’s story, sharing its personality, and creating engagement
  • Setting the stage for business growth

Social content marketing uses the same practices, only the content is developed for social media platforms. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter facilitate engagement, allowing followers to comment, share, and like individual content pieces. Best of all, social media is an interactive environment, giving insurance agencies and their followers the tools to have meaningful exchanges, such as answering questions about a product or service or to handle concerns.

A Simple Fact About Social Content Marketing

Diligently posting content to social media channels is one thing, but gaining the support and trust of a given audience is another. How can insurance agencies get the most from social content, and how can they drive engagement with their followers?

Insurance agencies and brokerages need to understand one important fact about social media: while these platforms can be used to sell products or services, their primary role is to develop connections – relationships – between a company and its customer base. Focusing on building relationships over sales can be difficult for online marketing professionals; it requires a fundamental shift in thinking from traditional marketing practices. In social content marketing, this is the mindset that influences how content is developed and shared with followers.

Getting the Most from Social Content Marketing

Now that we understand why social content marketing is so powerful, how can we achieve our goals? Just like insurance web design, social content marketing requires creativity, style, and media to build engagement. Some of the best practices in social content marketing include:

Using images to tell stories – no one wants to read a wall of text on social media. Instead of overwhelming your followers with details, distill text into smaller chunks and supplement it with liberal use of images, including illustrations, photos, infographics, and charts.

Building engagement with contests – social media makes creating and hosting a contest easy. There are several ways that contests can be formatted, and each allows for user engagement and sharing. Have your followers like, share, and comment to enter a contest, or have them tag their own friends. You can even have followers create themed posts and tag your company for entry. Be sure to follow posted contest rules, and you will have a vibrant and engaged audience in no time.

Adding social media buttons to emails, websites, and newsletters – it is relatively simple to drive a steady stream of new people to your social media channels. Add buttons to all of your other marketing materials – these iconic buttons can even be added into your insurance web design – and users will click through.

Making use of hashtags – hashtags were popularized by Twitter, but they can be used across social media platforms. Incorporate relevant hashtags into your social content. This can generate interest as well as help others discover your content, especially if your hashtags are trending.

Being aware of current events – recent news stories have captivated the attention of broad segments of the public. These events have allowed companies of every type to share their own thoughts about concepts like racial justice and equality, personal safety, and natural disasters. Posting your company’s position on these events helps to humanize your profile, further building trust among followers.

Social content marketing works hand in hand with insurance web design and with the many online marketing strategies available to insurance businesses. By focusing on engagement opportunities on social media, you will build a connected and interactive audience and ultimately drive business growth to your agency.

About Agency Tsunami

Agency Tsunami is the digital marketing division of Neilson Marketing Services, who has provided the insurance distribution sector with innovative marketing and communication solutions for over twenty-five years. With our Agency Tsunami program, we have implemented an integrated marketing strategy that includes optimized, professional websites supported by high-quality SEO and Social Media for hundreds of insurance retailers and wholesalers. Our goal is to help your insurance business perform and generate new opportunities. Give us a call at (800) 736-9741 to learn more about how we can do that for you.

Shares