Blogging is a great way to engage your clients, impress your prospects, and show off your expertise with powerful insurance content. It also helps keep your website fresh and non-static, which helps with SEO and makes it more likely that prospects will find your website with a Google search. It is an important part of your insurance agency marketing plan.

Unfortunately, many agencies fall short of their blogging goals. In order to have a successful blog, it is important to post frequently and to post top-quality articles. Here are a few best practices to help you maintain a stellar insurance agency blog.

1. Write insurance content for consumers, not agents.

For many insurance agents, the task of coming up with a list of blog topics and insurance content can seem daunting. What can you write about? So much of what we do in our industry might seem boring and dry, but we promise that your clients and prospects have informational needs that you can meet.

When you are creating your insurance marketing strategy, think about your audience. Depending on which type of insurance you sell, your client-base will vary. But it is probably made up of individuals, families, and businesses in your area. What are they interested in? What are their concerns? Is there a local news story that you can tie to an insurance issue?

Think about what your audience wants to know. We suggest a blended content strategy that includes a mixture of these three topic categories:

• Insurance topics: For blog posts in this category, insurance agencies can answer questions that clients have asked in the past, take an in-depth look at a topic in which you are an expert, explain insurance policy types that often confuse consumers or any other insurance advice you can offer.
• Useful or educational topics: Try writing about seasonal events, information that your client groups would like to know about, interesting facts or statistics that can be related to insurance, health tips (if you sell health insurance), or money-saving tips that are relevant to your audience.

• Local or agency-related topics: In this categories, Zywave partners often blog about local news stories; new city policies or laws that might affect insurance; interesting stories, hobbies, or facts about your agency team-members; client success stories; or charity events in which your agency is involved.

And if you’re still stuck, Zywave has a great list of potential blog topics in Broker Briefcase.

2. Use a blogging calendar

The purpose of a blogging (or editorial) calendar is to help you document and maintain your blogging strategy. You can easily make your own in Microsoft Excel, Numbers for Mac, or any other spreadsheet software. It can contain as much or as little information as you want, but it should contain the following elements:

• Which topics you will blog about.
• Who will write each post.
• When each post will be published.
• Which keywords and backlinks will be used.

Here is an example of a blogging calendar:

3. Have fun!

Don’t be afraid to give your blog a little personality and use humor. What are the people like in your agency? How do you interact with your clients? Are you easy-going and friendly? Then your blog and your insurance content should be too! Are you funny and quick-witted? Show some of that on your blog!

Unlike journal articles and whitepapers, an agency’s blog is an opportunity to write in a more casual, approachable tone. Readers often expect that type of informal writing in a blog, and they enjoy it. So show off your expertise AND your personality. It will keep your readers coming back!