Social Networking’s Value to Insurance Agents and Brokers – Making the Case
“Soon, being the loudest and broadest messenger in a medium consumers don’t trust simply won’t count as much as being the most authentic, available, and accessible brand in the media consumers do.” – Experince: The Blog by Augie Ray
The business of being insurance agent or broker relies on building trusted relationships. The era of mass marketing was a threatening and scary time for insurance agents. The impersonal era of “big” everything, mass mailings, cold calling and blast email all had the effect of disenfranchising the independent agent and broker. They got lost in the “clutter”.
There has been a transformation and societal shift. Consumers have had it with the impersonal “push” marketing of yesterday. Spam filters, do-not-call lists, DVRs, and the like give the public the power to say, “I have had enough”.
Social networking is fostering fundamental changes to the way people communicate, gather information, form opinions, and build relationships. Social networking is all about listening, building community, engaging in a conversation, sharing an experience, being transparent, engaging, being interesting, and adding value. In short, Social networking is about building and strengthening relationships. This is encouraging news for independent agents and brokers. The meteoric rise of tools like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are all telling us that customers want to do business with people who they “feel” like they know and trust. Independent agents can use these tools to their advantage over the impersonal national “logos” by creating a human “face” with a local presence. This should be reason enough for agents and brokers to get in the game and implement a social networking strategy.
