Managing Your Social Media

17 Nov Managing Your Social Media

Social media is an important part of any lead generation strategy, but it’s becoming even more important for insurance agents. According to a 2014 Accenture study, 48 percent of consumers said they “would consider comments on social media in making their insurance-buying decisions.”

Actively posting on multiple business social media accounts, however, can take a lot of time and energy away from an already busy schedule. For instance, posting once a day, 7 days a week on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts adds up to 21 posts a week, which is no small feat. While posting often on social media is key for increasing and maintaining followers, it can take time away from other initiatives if it’s not organized.

As an agent, it’s important to have strategies in place to manage your social media. By using different tools and tricks, you’ll be able to streamline your social media process and manage your posts efficiently, allowing you more time to spend on the community building aspects of social media – responding to comments, networking, participating in chats, etc.

Here are the tips, tricks, and tools to help you manage your social media and be on your way to becoming a social media maven.

Tips & Tricks:

• Create an editorial calendar: While it may sound like a lot of work, outlining your social media plan for a week or a month at a time will make the process of managing social media much easier. There may still be times when you post organically (such as about a recent news story or trending topic), but planning out the majority of your schedule in advance will help save you from having to come up with content daily.

• Let your analytics drive your posting: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (and many social media management tools) all offer their own analytics within the platform, making it easy to understand your audience. It may be easier for you to post a tweet while leaving work, but if your followers are too busy commuting home to see it, is it worth it? To get you started, here are the generally accepted best times to post:

• Facebook:
  • Noon to 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
  • 3 to 4 p.m. Wednesday
  • 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday and Friday

• Instagram:
  • Anytime except 3 to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday

• Twitter:
  • Noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday
  • 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday

• LinkedIn:
  • 7:30 to 8:30 a.m., Noon & 5 to 6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
  • 10 to 11 a.m. Tuesday

• Set up recipes for success: For routine social media tasks, such as sharing a link to a new blog once it goes live, use If This, Then That to create a “recipe” that automates the process. IFTTT has thousands of different recipes that make it easy to streamline and automate some social processes. Don’t go too crazy with this tool, though. While streamlining processes is helpful, automating too many of them (such as sending a direct message saying “Thanks for the follow” every time you get a new follow) removes the human element of social media and can come across as spam.

Tools to Use:

• Hootsuite: Hootsuite is one of the most popular management tools for a reason – it simplifies the processes for multiple accounts into one easy-to-navigate deck. You can schedule posts for multiple accounts at once for days – or even weeks – in advance. It also lets you monitor interactions, comments, replies, etc. all within the same window.

• Buffer: Like Hootsuite, Buffer combines posting to all of your accounts into one easy to use platform. Where it really stands out though is the flexibility it offers for scheduling. Unlike many other tools, Buffer lets you designate a very specific scheduling time, or you can tell it what content to go up throughout the week and it will stagger the posting times throughout the day.

• Sproutsocial: Another popular management tool, Sproutsocial also lets you schedule and manage posts for multiple accounts all with a single click of a button. In addition, you can also manage teams, tasks, and assignments within the platform. Sproutsocial offers rich analytics to help you better visual your metrics.

 
Now that you have the tools and tricks in place to take control of your social media management, it’s time to start posting and building your community. For more tips on how to use social media as an agent, download our white paper.