Insurance agents in local markets represent your brand and services to customers every day. They share emails, brochures, sales messages, mailings and other corporate-approved marketing materials on your behalf. Setting a strategy to share the same messages and promote your brand on their social media networks is a natural extension.

However, many marketers are reluctant to encourage social media use among local partners like insurance agents. There are significant challenges to address before opening the social media gates: compliance, consistency and approvals, just to name a few. That’s why a strong, thought-out social media strategy is key to success.

Give agents the right tools and they can easily and effectively amplify your message, connect with more consumers and gain new business.

Here are our tips for setting the right social media strategy for insurance agents, or any third-party sales channel.

Your goal for working with insurance agents should be similar to your corporate social strategy. Are you raising awareness or increasing website visits? Do you want to encourage interaction or position yourself as a thought leader and trusted resource?

These goals may need to be slightly tweaked for working with insurance agents. For example, if your corporate social strategy is to encourage website visits, your corporate posts from insurance agents may direct people to a special landing page within your agent’s website – helping balance your agent’s need to build relationships with your need to drive people on to your site.

Your strategy naturally follows your goal by answering the “how.” If you want to drive website traffic, your social strategy would be to share links to blogs or web pages to get people to click through to your site. If you want to position yourself as a thought-leader or resource, your strategy would be to create and share advice and tips relevant to your audience.

Insurance agents are tasked with sharing messages from many different insurance companies – sometimes even your competitors. The easier you can make it to share your message, services and products, the more likely agents will spend time promoting your brand.

Resources and tools for agents could include:

• A social media policy – Make expectations, rules, policies and guidelines clear
• Compliance considerations – Educate insurance agents on what compliance regulations they need to know about, and how to meet them
• Social media management system – One web-based portal with written, approved corporate messages ready for agents to easily share out
• Best practices – Share the latest tips and recommendations from trusted resources so agents stay on top of social media developments
• Evaluation – An easy-to-manage dashboard and measurement tools give agents and corporate clear insight into what posts and channels are driving engagement and what’s not working

Social media is constantly changing, and so should your strategy. Establish the right analytical tools, from Google Analytics, Facebook Insight and custom dashboards so you can quickly understand, spot trends and identify what is creating results.

These four tips are just the start of a developing a strong social media strategy and program to share with insurance agents. It only takes a little work and dedication to create a program that amplifies your message, empowers insurance agents and helps meet your company’s business goals – from raising awareness to capturing new leads.

What are some of your best tips for setting strategy that engages customers on social media? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter @vya_systems.

Did you enjoy this article? Read more insurance-related resources on solving common corporate marketing challenges.