State Auto Digital Agent

This is the third post in a series about creating your social media response plan. We've covered Step 1 - Who Will Respond? and Step 2 - When to Respond . Imagine you have completed steps 1 and 2 of your Social Media Response Plan.  You have two trusted members of your agency staff who are monitoring the web for mentions of your agency. They have some practice responding to positive comments and questions posted on your Facebook page. Now imagine a client posts a complaint about your service on your insurance agency's Facebook page. You know you need to respond quickly. What should you say?  It helps to know your goals for the interaction. Don’t fall victim to the mindset that you must prove your point.  You may never be able to satisfy the person making the complaint.  Think about the people who will read this interaction now or in the future. First, maintain your professionalism. Second, get the conversation offline as quickly as possible.   S...

This is the second post in a series about creating your social media response plan. In the first post, "How to Create a Social Media Response Plan," we covered Step 1 - Who Will Respond? Knowing when to respond is just as important as determining what you will say. If you see a negative post about your insurance agency, it can be tempting to jump to your own defense. Part of being prepared to respond is determining in advance which types of situations warrant a response. Step 2: When Will You Respond? Situations When You Should Respond Someone asks for your help. They may post this directly on your Facebook page, or this might be a call for help on a blog or website that isn't associated with you. Regardless of where they post it, if they mention your agency and ask for assistance, you will likely need to respond. Someone says something directly to you. When someone   directs a post to your agency, you must respond, and quickly. This might be a mention on Tw...

Your response plan is so important; we didn't want to squeeze the details into one blog post.  This is the first post in a series that will walk you through the steps of creating your social media response plan. Social media is a megaphone.  With little time and no cost, people can voice their opinions and share their thoughts about anything.  If someone feels they have been treated unfairly, they are more likely to want to tell other people about it.  This means that anything you do or say to a customer can be shared.  If you treat someone poorly, expect to hear about it in your monitoring.  Assuming you always do the right thing and treat everyone fairly, you still may end up receiving undue negativity.  That is human nature – you can’t make everyone happy all of the time.  The first step is listening.  If you don’t know someone is talking about you, you can’t possibly respond. Creating Your Social Media Response Plan ...

At a meeting of independent insurance agents, a group of about 100 agents was asked if their agency has a social media policy. Only two hands were raised. Given the concerns agents often voice about social media – from reputation to employee behavior – an internal policy is a great place to begin your planning for social media. A social media policy helps you take a responsible, thoughtful look at the areas you can address to prepare your agency team for work and life in today’s digital world. 4 Reasons to Create a Social Media Policy 1. Put the moose on the table. Address the elephant in the room. However you want to phrase it, your agency leaders need to openly discuss their fears about social media. Your concerns are valid. Social media does come with risks, but you can’t stop it from impacting your agency by ignoring it. Get it all out on the table in a meeting where concerns are listed and grouped into categories. 2. Decide up front how you’ll handle risks. Th...