State Auto Digital Agent

By David O'Bryan , Field Sales Representative at State Auto Do me a favor. Open up Google and search “insurance” and the name of your city/town. I’ll wait… Hopefully your agency showed up on the first page of both the local search (the box immediately below the yellow ad links) and the organic search. If not, well, that’s a whole other blog post. For now, let’s assume your agency does feature prominently on page 1. Now, take a look inside the local search box – does your agency have any Google reviews? Do any agencies in your area have Google reviews? Google reviews have gained importance for small businesses since the company rolled out the feature in late 2013. If you click on a result inside the local search box, a new box appears which provides more information on the business and allows users to write reviews directly on the business’s Google listing. With more than a trillion searches per year, Google is by far the search engine of choice for most people on Earth, espe...

If you're trying to reach people in the manufacturing industry, we can help.  You might be trying to strengthen your relationship with your clients. Or, you might be looking to reach more prospects in manufacturing. Either way, we've created some digital resources you can share with your clients.  Manufacturing Page on StateAuto.com Send your prospects directly to the Manufacturing Industry Insurance web page to show them who we are and how we'll partner with you to provide the risk management solutions they need.  Lockout-Tagout Infographic State Auto created the infographic shown above to highlight one of the major risk factors in the manufacturing industry - worker injuries due to lack of safeguard procedures with machinery. Here are some ways you can use this content: Share on your agency's website, blog and social media (see below for suggested tweets, or create your own). Email to manufacturing prospects along with their quote proposal.  G...

Does your agency have a blog? We want to help you promote it. If you're publishing blog posts or other content, we'll share it. We just need to know about it. (Tell us at  social@stateauto.com ) State Auto already follows over 100 blogs by our agency partners. We tweet about agency blog posts every day, from risk management tips to advice about what to do after a car accident.  If your agency is on Twitter, we'll also mention you. (If your'e not on Twitter, we'll still mention you, just not with your Twitter handle.) Here’s a recent tweet to a post by Penny Insurance :  Make sure to follow @StateAuto and @StateAutoAgents on Twitter to see all of the agency content we’re sharing. Keep in mind that if the agency we're tweeting about is not a direct competitor of yours, you might want to share their content, too. Many agents retweet posts about other agents' content. To your clients, you'll still be the one who made sure they saw the informati...

Recent surveys of B2B and B2C marketers show content marketing is at the top of the list of the most effective tactics. And, social advertising – like Facebook ads and sponsored posts – may be more effective than you might think.  You can get a great overview of takeaways in this blog post from Social Media Examiner .  Here’s what we think is the most important for State Auto agents to know: For B2C marketers – 61% of those using things like Facebook ads or promoted tweets found them to be effective.    Marketers are finding social ads to be more effective than ever – 20-30% more respondents find them to be effective than a year ago.  Facebook is found to be the most effective, followed by YouTube and Twitter.  Fewer B2B marketers found social ads to be effective – but it was still in the 43-48% range. Not insignificant.  LinkedIn ads were most effective for B2B, followed by Twitter ads.  Marketers also rank content marketing as the mo...

You post something on your agency’s Facebook page. Does it show up in your followers’ news feed? It’s hard to say, thanks to Facebook’s complicated and ever-changing method for determining who sees what and when.  For an insurance agency running a Facebook page, this means you need to be very clear about what your followers (people who liked your page) want to see, and provide that content in the right ways. Marketing Land published a review of Facebook’s news feed changes over the past few years, and we’ve summed it up for you. Tips for Facebook News Feed Visibility  Make it meaningful. The more someone is interested in your content and interacts with it with a click, like, share or comment, the more they will see your future content. Things you’ve posted in the past could impact how visible your content is in the future.  Don’t post overly promotional content. If you’re directly selling something, your post will be less likely to show up. Facebook wants you to ...

State Auto provides materials to help our agent partners provide thought leadership to current and prospective clients in the light metal manufacturing industry. Our Metal Industry Practice Group provides a specialized insurance solution, giving State Auto and you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. With U.S. steel shipments valued at $75 billion and more than 672,000 U.S jobs created by the production, processing and use of aluminum, there is abundant opportunity to grow your book of business in this booming industry. Metal Industry Blog Posts Six blog posts are available to publish as a series on your blog. We recommend you make some edits and customize the posts to your agency. Post one each day for six days or one each week for six weeks.  Post #1: Major Risks in the Metal Industry Post #2: Protecting Your Metal Business Post #3: The Dangers of Dust in the Metal Industry Post #4: Equipment Breakdown and Your Metal Business Post #5: The Risk of Importing Fo...

Re-posted with permission from State Auto's PaceSetter blog. The PaceSetter producer development program is available to State Auto agents.  Your Personal Brand Designing your personal brand is one of the most important things you can do as an insurance agent. People buy from people that they know, like and trust. The only way for people to know you, I mean  really  know you, is by getting your message out to others regularly and consistently. The easiest way to do this is by using social media. Think of some people we feel as though we “know” personally because of the strength of their personal brand. How about Donald Trump? Kim Kardashian? Oprah Winfrey? Athletes, politicians, musicians and prominent business people all use social media channels to influence what we think and, most importantly, what we buy. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and blogging are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You have to demonstrate your value to people th...