With the coronavirus pandemic ruling out face-to-face meetings for the foreseeable future, many insurance professionals are now turning to digital means and social media platforms to network and drive leads.
In this guide, we talk you through how you should be using social media to enhance your business.
Become active on LinkedIn
For those who aren’t already active across LinkedIn, now is the time to set up both a personal and company account on the platform. If you do have an account, invest some time in updating your personal profile to ensure it is up-to-date with your current position and a suitable profile picture. Similarly, your company page should also be completed – with basic information filled in, a cover photo, and an optimised version of your logo.
If you need any assistance setting up a personal or company profile on LinkedIn, contact us to discover how we can help.
GET
CONNECTED
Once you’re confident your LinkedIn account is presentable, the next step is to make sure you’re connected with your colleagues and clients. This helps you to keep up with industry news or company updates while the usual face-to-face interactions remain stunted, whilst also remaining front-of-mind with clients by putting yourself digitally in their view.
Alongside connections, LinkedIn also allows you to ‘follow’ individuals whom you may not know personally but whose content and business insights you are interested in e.g. Richard Branson. You can even further expand your network by joining relevant groups of like-minded professionals e.g. Insurance Professionals UK.
START POSTING
Once your profile is set up and connections have been added, it’s time to start posting. Whether you’re using your personal or business account – make sure your content is relevant, engaging, and professional. Common ideas for content include promoting upcoming events, company news, product launches, and celebrating achievements – to name a few.
Stay on trend with Twitter
Twitter is another great platform to keep you informed about trending topical conversations, industry events, and news threads. As with LinkedIn, it’s important to follow reputable accounts and ensure that your Tweets adhere to your company’s social media guidelines (if applicable). If you’re unsure of what accounts you should be following, Lloyd’s is always a safe bet – along with publications such as Insurance Times, Insurance Age, Insurance Post. And just like LinkedIn, Twitter can be a great tool for monitoring the views of both your industry peers and your target audience.
BECOME A LINKEDIN PUBLISHER
One way to stay active on LinkedIn is by publishing your insights. With the lockdown pushing more insurance professionals online than ever before, now is the perfect time to start showcasing your expertise via LinkedIn articles. Whether it’s a blog regarding your new e-Portal, or a timely thought leadership piece about how the industry can support SMEs – such articles can not only increase your personal following
on LinkedIn, but potentially lead to new
business too.
ENGAGE WITH COLLEAGUES
AND CLIENTS
While we’re not currently able to bump into clients at events, or catch up with a colleague over a coffee, it’s still incredibly important to keep in touch. As we’re all now in the habit of catching up on work-related matters via email, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, LinkedIn provides a more casual platform to actively engage those within your network. Taking the time to interact with content shared by work friends or clients can also go a long way in maintaining relations and nudging along business conversations.
THINK
VISUALLY
Creating an engaging social media post isn’t
just about content; presentation also plays a fundamental role. Considering that your goal is to quickly capture the attention of someone scrolling through their newsfeed, one simple way to do this is to include an eye-catching (and relevant) image - posts with relevant images receive 94% more views than those without. Visual consistency is also key in establishing your brand’s identity online, that’s why we suggest developing and using banner templates which contain your brand’s logo, colours, and font.
ORGANISE
YOUR CONTENT
Beyond creating engaging social media posts, it’s also important to think ahead and create a content calendar. Having a calendar in place allows you to better plan upcoming content and provides a structure for your social media activity. For example, you could create distinct campaigns around a specific product or service each quarter and also factor in space for reactive posts at an upcoming industry event. Hand-in-hand with this more organised approach comes the scheduling of content. Using social media management tools such as Hootsuite, it’s possible to schedule social posts for specific dates and times - months in advance. Scheduling social content also greatly reduces the risk of a making an error when live posting and can be used to create a buffer period to ensure that you always have some content planned for the future.
HERE TO HELP
If you have any questions, we are happy
to talk this through in more detail -
call us on 020 7265 7890 or contact us here.
