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Whether you’re a seasoned social media warrior, or just getting started with social media in your insurance agency, we want to make sure that your social media channels are running smoothly. For that reason, we think it’s important to have a yearly checkup on all of your social media networks to ensure nothing is going wrong.
If your agency hasn’t already gotten started with social media, we would encourage you to check out our past posts, Mastering the World of Social Media, The Power of Response in the Social World, and 4 Tips to Ramp up your Social Media. These articles should help with providing a solid foundation for your social media channels to start up on, as well as giving you some tips to keep things consistent along the way.
With that out of the way, let’s get started on 8 steps you can take to ensure that your social media channels are running smoothly with a regular checkup. We’d like to thank State Auto for putting together this Social Media Audit Sheet for you to print out and fill out as you follow along as well. Let’s get started.
- Set a goal for your social media marketing.
Sometimes we get so caught up with a task that we forget why we originally started. With social media, we should always be focused on setting goals and crushing them. There needs to be a purpose as to why we are continuing to make use of social media marketing. Remember, social media is just one more additional channel to communicate with your customers on, and the more connections you establish online, the more customers you have that are experiencing a positive customer experience to set up long-term, loyal relationships with your agency.
- Review your social media channels.
Figure out which social media channels are your best, worst, or potentially abandoned. You may be active on Facebook every day, but do you own a Twitter profile that hasn’t seen activity in the last two years? If this is the potential case for any of your social media channels, be sure to do some updating. If you have a social media channel that hasn’t seen any posts in a long time, it looks like a business that is closed down online. Be sure to clean everything up so you make a strong impression on all of your visitors.
- Select your appointed admins.
How many people in your office have control over your social media profiles? This should be limited to the right appointed staff, so you may want to clean up who has access to your accounts and update your passwords. This is especially relevant if you’ve let go of any staff members recently.
- Review all of your profiles to ensure they are complete.
An incomplete profile could also be a poor potential first impression on your visitors. Be sure that you’ve filled out all of the optional information you can provide for your audience on all of your networks in case they are looking for more information on your agency. This is absolutely critical for contact and address information as well in case a potential lead finds you on social media and wants to connect with your agency. Additionally, this can affect how you are perceived on certain networks like LinkedIn, which is why we put together our article on How to Become a LinkedIn All-star.
- Is your audience still growing?
Are you tracking your metrics and statistics on social media? We use the marketing powerhouse Hubspot to track all of our social media platforms on one dashboard, but each individual does supply their users with trackable information and metrics to focus on continued growth. Most social media networks even allow you to track performance on individual posts as well. Be sure to see what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and adjust accordingly.
- Consistency is key.
Consistency is key to the success of all things marketing, whether it’s with your agency’s brand, your blog, or within your social media. If you post to Facebook every day then suddenly disappear from Facebook for two days in a row, your audience will notice. Be sure to keep your posts consistent, and always try to post at the most optimal times possible. We’ve prepared this social media “cheat sheet” to help with the best posting times for each network:
- Are you linking to your social media channels on your website? And vice versa?
Yes, this tip is key for your insurance agency’s SEO. If someone first arrives at your website, it should be easy for them to find all of your social media channels online. Additionally, if they find you on social media first, it should be very easy for them to navigate to your website. Plus, if you take the time to apply this fix, Google will notice that you have credible back-links, which should help your SEO strength so you can rank higher in Google search results.
- Keep an eye on your competitors.
Last, but not least, always keep an eye on your competitors online. It’s not all about how well or poorly your competitors are performing online, because there’s no way for you to immediately clarify whether or not they invested money in boosting their posts to reach a wider audience. Instead, check what channels they are active on, where their voice is, and any details on their strategy that your agency may not be capitalizing on already. You may have some takeaways on some new ideas for your agency to implement.
After going through this checklist, your social media channels should be pretty healthy. We’d suggest doing a “social media checkup” at least once a year to be safe. If there are any other suggestions you have or strategies that your insurance agency includes in your social media checkups, let us know in the comments section below!
