I recently commented in the “Social Media Study Group” of the InsuranceCampus.org social site when someone asked what were some best practices that people had found for using social media in the insurance industry. There were some great comments on his question and I felt like I could add some value and so I posted my comment below.

I wanted to add to the discussion a little. Social Media is a medium where, if you get involved, your company becomes very transparent. Let me explain.

If you use it merely as an extension to your marketing then those you connect with will see that you are only interest in pushing marketing messages to them and not socializing with them. That is what marketing is, a message pushed out to an audience in hopes of influencing their behavior. People are instantly turned off by this and it can be very harmful to your business.

If you use social media to just connect and chat with people, it might help you to build those relationships with your clients and prospects but it will be a huge time suck. You will get caught up in conversations that will last for days and there will not be any business value added whatsoever.

What I have found to be the best use of social media so far is to do a hybrid of the two approaches. Provide relevant content to those you connect with and show them the social, or human side or your company. Relevant content includes new rates to help them save money, industry news that might affect their policies or added products and services that will enhance their security. Showing your connections the human side of your agency involves talking to them by asking questions or listening to what they have to say and providing insights and answers to their questions and conversations.

I am by no means an expert, just some of the things I have seen that work and don’t work.

What have you have you found that works in social media?

Something I’ve learned and relearned, and lately it has been drilled into my head, is that, as business partner to IT, when I am giving my vision for a project, I need to only be concerned with what I want to happen, not how it will get done. This is hard for me because I like the IT part of our company as well and I love to know how things work. But truly we need to leave the work of figuring out how things get done to those who have degrees and advanced understanding of how the technology should be implemented.

But this isn’t all. Once you have the the vision and you give a brain dump, and everyone can see what you are thinking, you have to write it down. If it’s not written down it didn’t happen. You have your vision, you collaborate with your team and then you write down, from your perspective, what you want to happen.

This document is not meant to be the end all but it should be in a place where everyone can reference it at any time and where everyone will be able to contribute and make the document better. This is when true collaboration happens. Give it a try, I know I am going to be better at it.