Astonish Results team members Kelly Ahern, Alicia Collins, and Ellayna Ungureanu held a ‘Blogging 101’ webinar yesterday. The team discussed many innovative blogging tactics and strategies on how blogging can be utilized to improve your insurance agency. A blog can help an agency build a greater sense of community, share product information, further establish your brand to the modern consumer, and enhance the agency’s SEO results.
Blog and Content Manager, Kelly Ahern, discussed the importance of your agency generating quality blog posts. Your blog posts should engage your readers, highlight and build a buzz within the community, allow your agency’s professionals to showcase their insurance expertise, and further educate and provide the reader with valuable information. Blogging can demonstrate your agency’s authenticity and how it is unique from others.
Next, she introduced various blogging fundamentals which can be utilized to further improve your blogging strategy:
- Keep blog posts concise to capture your reader’s attention! Readers will leave your page quickly if content does not appeal to them.
- Use a catchy title
- Optimize your keywords. Use keywords within content to optimize your website and generate attention to your products and service.
- Link to outside, credible sources.
- Use proper formatting. By breaking up your content with bulleted lists, bold and italic subheadings, the appearance of your blog is easier on the eyes.
- Use interesting visuals.
It is crucial to properly integrate keywords in all of your agency’s blog posts so you can increase traffic to all of your product pages and build your SEO. Kelly discussed the importance of keyword integration, and suggested ways this can be done effectively in your blog:
- Be authentic, genuine in everything you write.
- Aim for a keyword in 3 places, Title, Opening Paragraph, Last Sentence.
- Write content first, than naturally incorporate keywords later.
- Don’t link keywords more than once; otherwise your blog will look spammy.
- Focus on a niche so readers and search engines do not become confused.
Kelly explained to the viewers the distinction between onsite and offsite blogging. Offsite blogs are more community-based because they are used to inform readers about events or happenings within their community. Whereas, an onsite blogs are more professional looking and product driven. Onsite blogs focus on one major keyword which can be used to link to a range of product pages throughout your agency’s website.
Public Relations and Social Media Manager, Alicia Collins stated that, “blogging is a more practical way to connect with consumers in your local market. In the past, it was easier to get business from people who would just walk into your agency or call to inquire about an insurance product. This does not occur nearly as often anymore. Blogging is a great way to drive attention and interest to your agency in what is now a much more competitive market.”
To conclude the webinar, Alicia answered many questions that were on the mind of the viewers. You can find them below:
How long should a blog post be?
A blog post is basically an article that you publish. Anywhere from 200-500 words, three to five paragraphs is a good length to shoot for. You want the post to be long enough to give your readers information, but not so long that they will become disinterested.
How important is the title of your blog post?
The title of the blog post is important in two aspects. You want the title to be catchy so the reader wants to continue engaging with the post and read it in entirety. But you also want to be able to naturally fit your chosen keyword in the title so the search engines can pick up on it.
What exactly is linking?
When we say linking, we are referring to creating a hyperlink. You want hyperlink your keyword along with other resources you are referring to in you post. To create a hyperlink, you must highlight the term you want to become a link to a new site, right click, go to “hyperlink”, then type in the URL of the webpage you want your browser to open to.
What if we cannot add an onsite blog?
To create an onsite blog contact your webmaster or the company who built your website. Most sites have the capability to incorporate an onsite blog, it might cost extra. Astonish uses a platform that incorporates onsite blogs onto the client sites. If you have another type of hosting or website you should be able to load an onsite blog to your site. If you absolutely cannot than stick to WordPress.com or Blogspot.com. Both blog sites are still great to build community, help with SEO, and drive more traffic to your website.
Do visuals have to be your own or can you use online images?
You can use images you find in Google searches as long as you credit the image. This could be by naming the source, or by linking the photo back to the site in which you got it. Using your own images is great as well, but if you choose to borrow an image you MUST credit the source.
Is it more important to focus on one topic for a period of time or just to blog & get your name out there?
Focus on finding your niche. Focus on your product for a period of time. Focus on building keywords for 2-3 months. It takes time to increase your search ranking. Choose product to focus on for 3 months. See if your SEO improves. If it does, move onto focusing on other products.
Who in the agency should blog if you don’t have a marketing staff member? (how should the task be divided up?)
If you do not have a marketing professional within your agency you can divide the work up a few ways. One way is to require your CSRs/Producers to each produce one blog post a month. Another is to find the employee who is the best writer at your agency, and add blogging to their job description. You can also see if your office administrator has time to include blogging in his or her duties.
In regards to offsite blogging, when posting community news, does it have to relate to insurance or does it have to relate to what is happening in community?
When posting on an offsite blog you should determine a niche. So if the blog is going to be community focused it should be about local happenings and events in the area, branding your agency as a leader and knowledge source in the community. With that said, you still are an insurance agency, so providing tips and advice that might have to do with insurance because they relate to things happening in the area (weather, laws, etc.) then posting insurance information would be fine.
How often should you update your blog?
You should update as much as possible. The more you update the better it makes your blog look, the more the search engines can pick up on your fresh content, and the more your readers have to comment on and share!
What are your thoughts or experience with how blogging can impact and increase agency errors & omissions exposure and how are the carriers and underwriters feeling with agencies that blog??
Anytime you market yourself whether that is through direct mail or article writing you are opening yourself up to an E & O liability. But if you are careful with words and approach blogging in a genuine way, you will only see the benefits. Some carriers are more particular than others. Check with some of the larger carriers to see if they have social media and blogging policies and make sure to follow their guidelines.
VP of Raving Fan Managers, Kelly Donahue, and Head of Business Software Engineering, Jon Wellington, will lead Astonish’ next upcoming webinar on September 1st, 2011. They will have an in-depth discussion on E-mail marketing! Stay tuned for more information!