This may be hard to believe, but there is such thing as being too involved with your social media accounts. While not having enough of an online identity is a problem, making your agency saturate Facebook and Twitter with constant updates can also work against you. Additionally, you need to be wear of the type of content you’re posting. The fact is it’s hard to post that much information without some of it being irrelevant and out of place. You risk the chance of losing Facebook fans and followers if you’re posting information that is not of necessity or interest to them. Also, this could end up decreasing traffic to your insurance website. So how does an insurance agency keep their social media accounts on an even keel? Try these steps:
Have a quota on posts per day: As an agency, you ideally want to be posting around 3-5 times a day. Of course, Facebook and Twitter differ a bit on how much you should be posting. On Twitter you can allow yourself some leniency when it comes to Tweeting, especially in terms of retweeting and replying. On Facebook, you don’t want your fans, especially those not associated with an insurance agency or any other business, to see their news feed flooded with your posts. Naturally, these users are more concerned with their personal friends and not businesses. By keeping your posts to a relative minimum, you’re putting the right message forward.
Keep the content simple, yet informative: As a professional institution, objectivity cannot be stressed enough. Often, posting about controversial current events should usually be avoided. If the issue isn’t too sensitive, then it may be appropriate to post a link and ask your fans and followers how they feel about it. What you don’t want to do is post a link and let everyone know what you or your agency thinks about it. This shows a lack of professionalism and if someone disagrees with you, then you run the risk of losing fans and followers. Think of your agency as a bipartisan institution—the last thing you want to do is pick sides. Stay neutral!
Quotes: If you have get a quote of the day e-mailed to you or look it up on a news website like Yahoo! or AOL, we recommend not posting it because most of the time these quotes are well known and are over used to a point where they get annoying after a while. A good example is Wayne Gretzky’s quote, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” While this is an excellent quote by a great athlete, it’s already been done many times over. You want to give your followers more something they haven’t seen before. If you don’t have an original or recent quote, either post something else or don’t post at all! Famous quotes are beginning to come too cliché for their own good.
As the operator of a social media account, it’s important you think about what post and how often you’re posting. Remember: make sure your posts are relative and informative and always keep them at bay. While your Facebook and Twitter are important to your agency, they’re not the only components of your business.