how to use social media to start selling insurance potx

Those are points I don't hear many people talking about because usually the ones starting these conversations are people who sell social media marketing services.. Having said all of tha

Do People "Like" You? How Social Signals Affect Selling

Insurance Now

By: Jason Hornung – President Jason Hornung Agency, Inc

I spend quite a bit of time perusing sites like Producer's Web to see what topics are trending among my peers so that I can be timely with the information I provide

One of the most prevalent items I see is from guys and gals that want to figure out how to use social media to start selling insurance.

The vast majority of chatter centers around different strategies that an agent can use on

Facebook, Twitter and Linked In to drive leads for your agency

While success can certainly be had using these mediums and the methods that others have

developed, it's been my experience that the road to success in the social media arena is long and hard for insurance agents

They all take a consistent and concerted effort to pull off - an effort that needs to be continuously repeated As soon as you stop, it's done Plus, you have to walk the fine line of mindset

There is a fine art to taking someone from the social mindset into the buying mindset, which is the process you have to go through if you want someone to become interested in talking about their insurance from a social media platform

Those are points I don't hear many people talking about because usually the ones starting these conversations are people who sell social media marketing services

My advice is that if you are going to engage in this type of marketing, make sure that you put things in place to directly measure your results You should be able to tell exactly how many leads you generated from each social media outlet and exactly how much money you made selling insurance to those leads

Otherwise you really don't have any idea how affective your social media campaigns have been

or are performing

Having said all of that, I want to introduce you to a concept that I don't see anyone else in the insurance space talking about - social signals

If you are not familiar with that term, a social signal is basically the Facebook "Like" button, Google +1 button and any other social media sharing button that you can put on your website These social signals have become a double whammy for online insurance marketing that can have an enormous, direct impact on your ability to start selling insurance by marketing online

For the rest of this article, I'm going to lay out three reasons why these social signals are

absolutely huge and how you can leverage them to your benefit pretty quickly (depending on where you are already at with marketing online)

Reason #1 To Use Social Signal Now:

The first and most powerful reason to use social signals on your website is what we call in the online marketing space "the viral co-efficient"

Here's what that is:

Each time someone uses a social sharing button on your site - whether that's the Facebook like button or Google +1 button or any other social button for that matter

It gets posted to the news feed of the person who clicked it, which means all of their friends see that they just "liked" your website

A fair percentage of that person's friends will click on the post going back to your website

because people usually have the same interests

This generates free traffic to your website Also, many of these people will click a social sharing button on your site - thus posting to their news feed and broadcasting your content out their friends

If you content is interesting, engaging and or helpful enough to people, it can really mushroom and make your content spread virally across the web

Any content that "goes viral" starts this way And that's the viral co-efficient in a nutshell It's a way to generate free traffic to your website If your website is doing a good job of selling

people, you can pull leads and appointments from this free traffic

Reason #2 To Use Social Signal Now:

This next one is a bit more abstract and is going to take some background explanation before most of you understand it, so bear with me as I lay the framework for this reason

It really has to do with psychology Dr Robert Cialdini wrote a book called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" If you haven't read this book yet, you need to right away as it will have a profound impact on how you market and sell insurance both online and in person

In his book, Cialdini discusses research he conducted over a twenty year period - the majority of

it in selling situations where he had infiltrated different organizations like car dealerships

From all of his research, he distilled down what he calls six "weapons of influence" that trigger automatic responses in people's brains When a sales person or marketer utilizes these weapons properly, he or she can effectively persuade their prospect

One of the most powerful weapons he discusses is that of social proof The most commonly used method of social proof over the last 100 years is the testimonial

However, social signals have become an extremely powerful method of social proof that you can use on your website to start persuading people and selling insurance more frequently

Think about it - if you land on a page that has 75 people that "like" it versus one that has zero, which one are you going to trust?

Of course it's the one that already has been confirmed as likable!

Reason #3 To Use Social Signal Now:

Once you have a website established, your prime objective is getting traffic to that site so you can generate leads and sales off of it That's really the only reason to have a website, in my opinion

The Hold Grail of traffic is organic search - getting free clicks to your site from Google, Bing, Yahoo or any of the other search engines when people type in a keyword phrase you are

targeting

In order to obtain organic traffic, you have to go through a process called search engine

optimization or SEO for short This is a combination of doing things on your page and off your page that make the search engines like your website and thus rank it higher

The goal being to get your website onto the first page of the search engine, preferably into the #1

- 3 slots for most traffic

Up until recently, the biggest off page factor in search rankings was links coming back to your website The sites with the most links, the most relevant links and the most high quality links would rank the highest

However, Google found out that many businesses were manipulating their ranking algorithms with aggressive, paid link building - and they don't like that

So they've been going through round after round of algorithm updates to penalize the businesses that engage in that practice

One of the newly implemented ranking factors that is playing a huge role now is social signals

Sites that are using these social signals and have a fair amount of them on their pages are ranking higher than sites that don't use them

Social signals are basically the new backlink in the SEO arena If you are looking to increase your organic traffic, then you MUST implement social signals

You really need to ask yourself: "Do people like me?" If you aren't giving them the chance to

do so on your website, you are missing out on a boat load of chances for selling insurance!

Do you want to start increasing your insurance sales by marketing on the web?

Are you unsure about what to do or where to start?

Would you like a seasoned insurance pro with years of successful experience marketing online to take you by the hand and guide you through the whole process from point A to point Z?

Well, then you need my Agent's Lead Machine Internet Marketing Mastery training program! Click here to see the details and proof this works!