Using Facebook for Insurance - Part 2: Getting Started

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Happy Valentines Day!

In honor of Valentine's Day, the Insurance Marketers' Blog is all about getting social this month. Today, we continue our 2-part series on Facebook. Scroll down to see Part 1 if you missed it last week.

Ready to build a Facebook page for your insurance business?

To get started, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/learn.php for an overview then click “Create Page.”  Follow the prompts to:

• Choose a classification.
• Choose a category.
• Upload a photo – ideally this should be the company logo.
• Complete information about your business, your website URL, a short description, products, etc.  Add your website URL and a brief bio in the ”About” section.
• Click the “like” button on your Page and become a fan. Your page needs at least one fan to be recognized by Facebook.  Once you become a fan, you will be listed among all the other fans on your Page and all the Pages of which you are a fan will show up on your profile, giving your business more visibility to your network.

Like and be liked

• Add a widget to your insurance website that will allow people to “like your business directly.
• Invite any existing email subscribers and customers to follow you on Facebook.
• Include a link to your insurance Facebook page in your email signature.
• Blog about your insuarnce Facebook page.
• Join networks of businesses/organizations related to your industry.
• Like other businesses’ Facebook Pages. When you like the Pages of business partners, Facebook will notify the administrators of those Pages. Some of them may also decide to like you back, which exposes your business to their fans.
• Tweet about your new Facebook page (see the blog: Using Twitter for Insurance).

What to post:

• Create an engaging business page that is interactive, fun and helpful. Give customers a reason to follow you on Facebook.
• Thought leadership – discuss relevant issues, share articles and ask questions to stimulate conversation
• Promote webinars, conferences, events
• Encourage Likers to submit content
• Encourage your fans to offer their feedback - This is one of the biggest benefits of social media versus traditional media.
• Offer coupons and other exclusive content that is only available after a person clicks the “Like” button. (Become a Liker now and get a free white paper)
• Create contests on Facebook. Contests are a fun and engaging way to encourage participation from fans and even generate new fans.
• Embed videos on your Facebook page.

Using Facebook for Insurance - Quick Tips:

Settings - Make your Page publicly searchable so it can get indexed by search engines and give you the opportunity to drive organic search traffic to your Page. Go to “Edit Page,” click “Manage Permissions” and make sure “Page Visibility” box is un-checked. This will make it publicly visible.

URL - Once you have at least 25 “Likes” on your Facebook page, you can register a unique username for your business page. (www.facebook.com/insurancecopywriting) And then post it everywhere (see twitter post) Warning: Be extremely careful in naming your page, as it is PERMANENT after you obtain 100 likes.

Facebook Insights - Use the free data Facebook provides in Insights (click View Insights tab). This will allow you to see how many people have become fans of your page among other useful data to make smarter and informed business choices.

Use Facebook Ads -Facebook Ads make it possible to advertise directly to Facebook users and your ads can be directed to your target audience. You can target people by age, country, state, city, education and interests. See http://www.facebook.com/advertising

Tweet – If you use Twitter, consider tweeting some of your message to your FB page. The way to do this is by using an app like Selective Twitter. Once you add the app to your Page and set up the configuration, just adding #fb to the end of a tweet.

Post your insurance blog articles - One of the best ways to drive traffic to your insurance blog, is by posting links to your blog articles on your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts. Ideally, you should be doing this twice a week.

Resources:

*Inc. - How to Create an Effective Company Facebook Page http://www.inc.com/guides/201103/how-to-create-an-effective-company-facebook-page.html

Want to have the inside scoop on the most useful posting techniques?  Engagement and Interaction: A Scientific Approach to Facebook Marketing, Momentus Media provides answers to the seven most frequently asked questions by Facebook page adminis