Making Social Media Work for Your Insurance Brokerage – Part Two

In our last post we took a peek at the “where” of Social Media marketing for insurance brokers, there’s still a little more to touch on with that topic. So we’ll start with that this time and then move on to the “why” of Social Media marketing – metrics.

Beware of Facebook

This is a relatively new problem and as such one that you might not have realised until now. Facebook is under serious pressure to deliver returns to its investors; its post-flotation share price is not the best of news for the company. So how are they addressing that issue? Well, it turns out they are making it harder to communicate with people who “like” your business page.

In times past when you created a post on your Facebook page, the post was shared with everyone who liked your page. What’s the case now? Well it seems that Facebook are only going to share your post with around 10% of your followers. If you want to reach the rest; you’re going to have to pay for it. This is expensive in fact a recent estimate shows that if you have around 50,000 followers and want to reach them all daily over the course of a year – it’s going to cost you £250,000+ per year. There’s no way to make that investment seem sensible and it means you should seriously consider making your Social Media mark on a different network for the moment.

OK, that’s the last we have to say on the “where” for the moment, now let’s look at the “why?”

Developing Social Media Metrics

Measuring interaction lets you see if your marketing efforts are really touching people and making waves in the right way. Real people talk to you, computerised accounts can’t do that and it’s real people that will spend money and promote your brand when they really engage with you in social media.

Before you start any form of marketing activity you need to identify how you’ll measure success. In the world of social media it’s become common to do that based on “Likes” on Facebook, or followers on Twitter, etc.

We think those are bad metrics and here’s why. Earlier this year the BBC carried out an investigation into Facebook likes and found that nearly 6% of Facebook accounts are fake and designed to add “likes” without being connected to a real person. In fact it’s easy to get likes on a page – you can buy them in pre-designed packages online. The trouble is that fake accounts aren’t people. They aren’t going to buy from you and they certainly aren’t going to promote your brand to others.

That means you need to measure social media on something more than just; “is there a connection between our account and other people’s?” The best way to start is to measure interaction. The more people are engaging in conversations with your social media presence – the more impact that it’s having. In the long-term these regular interactions will sustain your presence even if you haven’t posted for a day or two and better still those people who are most involved in talking to you on social media are likely to become brand ambassadors for your company too.

Interaction is a great starting metric for your social media campaigns; in the next part of this series we’ll take a look at what other metrics might help you judge the success of your social media marketing investment.

 

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