Without a doubt, social media is changing the way the world communicates. If you're already using it to promote your business online, you’re probably using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, the leading platforms for businesses. While those are all solid foundations for your social media presence, isn’t it about time you start using other websites that can help take it to the next level?
When using social media to promote your business, it’s important to use non-linear thinking. If you’re a small business owner with a small budget, you must find creative ways to use multiple platforms to engage your customers and prospects. There are many tactics you can use to support your goal of generating leads and finding new customers. Below are some tactics you should be implementing.
- Receive feedback from customers
- Do market research
- Generate website traffic and improve search ranking
- Share informative content
- Create relationships with customers
- Improve brand awareness
- Support your community
Your time and focus should be on social media marketing platforms that make sense. Here are four sites insurance brokers should use and why. They all have unique features that use visual media, text, or a combination of both. Each also has its advantages as well as limitations.
Instagram is a social networking app that allows you to share photos and videos from a smartphone. Since there’s very little space for words on Instagram, good visual content is a must. But, the visual content is limited only by your creativity. For instance, you can post candid photos of your staff infographics, photos of events you attend or sponsor, relevant quotes, memes, or GIFs and short videos featuring insurance- or health-related topics.
Some features you may not know Instagram has that you can use to your benefit are:
- Story Posts: Post photo, video, or created content here too or repost others (or repost your own) content. Includes lots of sticker widgets like polls, links, and countdowns you can use to your benefit.
- Instagram Live: What better way to get your brand out there than to talk about it? Hop on IG Live for someone on one with your followers!
- Reels: Reels are short, entertaining videos on Instagram where you can express your creativity and bring your brand to life. With creative tools like AR effects, music, and text overlays, your business can create catchy and attention-grabbing videos that share your content across all boards. You can even remix reels, your own or others, to post with your videos to be viewed side by side.
Visual content is Instagram’s main purpose, so you want your images and videos to do most of the talking, but you can write captions for your photos. When writing captions, keep it short and sweet; you should use hashtags to build an interactive following. For instance, on Friday, you can stress the importance of dental insurance and sports safety by posting a picture of millennials playing football and include the hashtags: #footballweekend and #protectyourgrill.
Another important feature is that you can connect Instagram to your Facebook and Twitter profiles for easy cross-posting.
TikTok
TikTok is taking the world by storm and will keep you on the up and up. You can make quick videos promoting your business to popular and top-grossing audios, there are options ranging from 1-10 mins but 60 seconds and under is ideal. TikTok allows you to reach new audiences and drive brand awareness. Whether it be a 9-15 second advertisement or a 1-minute breakdown of your best assets to a trending tune, the results will speak for themselves.
In addition to this, TikTok has been the blueprint for a lot of new social media features of similar functioning; Instagram Reels, Facebook Watch, and even Snapchat Spotlight! It is so easy to transfer the TikToks you make to your other platforms since their compatibility will be the same.
Pinterest is a photo (and video) sharing website that allows users to upload, save, sort, manage and share images – called pins – through collections called pinboards. Pinboards are typically organized around themes.
Keep in mind that, as a health insurance broker, you are promoting healthy lifestyles. You can find an infinite number of beautiful images that can be associated with health, dental and vision insurance. Healthy eating, fitness, work-life balance, workplace wellness, childcare, and elderly care are just a few subjects. So, there is no limit to the number of pinboards you can create that link to your website, blogs, and Facebook and Twitter pages. It’s important to remember that Pinterest users value aesthetics. So, if the image draws them in, the greater the likelihood of them staying for the content.
Google+
As the name implies, Google+ is a social networking site that is owned by Google. It has the basic features of other social networking sites – the ability to create a profile and share information, images, and events with other users. Users can be organized into groups called Communities and Circles.
The site has the important advantage of being associated with Google, the internet’s most popular search engine. You can take advantage of this by combining your Google+ Local Page (maps listing) with your Google+ Business Page. This can help your business rise higher during location-based searches on Google.
Being social is promoting
The best strategy for engaging your target market on social media is to make posts regularly and strike a balance between posting informative content and promoting your business. Given the name “social media,” it’s not difficult to understand why too much advertising will turn people off.
Also remember that on social media, content is king—whether it’s an interesting picture or an informative blog. To be effective, the content doesn’t need to go viral or drive a herd of people to your website, although it’s wonderful when that happens.
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