Facebook Tips for Insurance Agents to Expand Your Organic Reach

At the beginning of 2018, Facebook made a significant update to its News Feed. The update meant their algorithm would shift focus to showing content from friends and family over content from business pages. I previously discussed the details of the News Feed update and ways insurance agents can work around it to get content in front of their target audience. This time around, I’ll be listing Facebook tips for insurance agents in 2018, and how to expand your organic reach.

First, you need to understand how Facebook’s News Feed now prioritizes content. According to a private webinar hosted by Facebook in January 2018, the top attributes for content are as follows:

• If people share a link to content over Facebook Messenger
• Commenting on and/or liking content or status updates
• Multiple replies/comments on content or status updates

All of these actions fall under one theme – organic engagement. Compare it to Google’s value of backlinking (which you can learn more about here), and you’ll find it’s the same end game. The goal is to increase visibility for content that your audience deems worthy of sharing and engaging with. Here are some Facebook tips for insurance agents that will help achieve that outcome.

1. Quality Posts Over Quantity

Many businesses are guilty of sharing a barrage of curated content on a daily or weekly basis. Facebook’s News Feed update requires a more tactical approach. Posting frequently no longer matters if people aren’t interacting with your content. Now, the goal is to get the most engagement possible out of each post. In order to effectively leverage all of the Facebook tips for insurance agents listed, take the time to create or source content that will drive the most interactions from your target audience.

The key to this is understanding what type of content drives the most engagement on Facebook. Take a look at the list below for some of the most viral posts on Facebook in 2017 (this list excludes music videos, movie trailers, and other forms of entertainment-related content).

Source: The Most Shared Facebook Content 2017

You may look at this list and wonder how it can be useful to your agency’s Facebook marketing efforts. It’s a matter of changing your perspective.

Look at your Facebook marketing strategy from the See Think Do content marketing framework, and you’ll find opportunities for the See stage of buyer intent. As I previously outlined, your audience at the See stage is your largest relevant audience a.k.a. small business owners in the US. Remember, at the See stage your main objective is to establish brand awareness.

Consider a video like “People Are Awesome!” and how much organic reach it has garnered. Why not put that content in front of your audience? Tie the theme of the video into your brand as an inspirational post. Facebook is a great way to use content to establish brand personality.

Don’t just post curated content, after all the goal is to promote your brand on Facebook. Create original content that ties into the themes of some of the viral content listed above. For example, from the list above you can see that life hack videos perform well. Create life hack videos specific to your niche, like clever hacks for HR admins to save time and boost productivity.

Facebook is different from a social media network like LinkedIn, instead of trying to sell your services on Facebook, sell your brand’s personality through engaging, relatable, and helpful content. Understanding this dynamic will help you get the most out of these Facebook tips for insurance agents.

2. Share Local Industry News Articles

Out of all the Facebook tips for insurance agents listed this is the most commonly overlooked. Facebook has noted that part of their update includes prioritizing local news. When selecting benefits industry related news articles to share as curated content, focus on the geographical areas of your target audience.

The same goes for original content, for example, write a blog that lists the details of new laws that are specific to a state or region, create case studies that are focused on clients from specific locations, etc. Going local will help get your content in front of your audience, and create the opportunity to increase engagement.

3. Post Engaging Videos

Another pattern you can draw from the list of top viral posts in 2017 is that video is the most shared content format. However, it’s important to optimize for how your audience watches video on Facebook.

Research shows that 85% of Facebook videos are viewed on mute. Which means if you want to get a viewer’s attention, you need to include text/captions. Combine captions with animations and engaging visuals, and you have a recipe that can help drive engagement.

For many insurance agents, YouTube is the go-to channel to upload and share videos. However, when it comes to Facebook, you may want to rethink that approach. According to research from quintly, native Facebook videos outperform YouTube videos in engagement by a whopping 186%. On top of that, they’re shared 1000% more.

4. Facebook Live

I’ve discussed Facebook live before, and for good reason. Out of all the Facebook tips for insurance agents listed this method of sharing content has shown the most rapid growth in recent years. According to a 2018 study:

• Users watch live broadcasts 3x longer than pre-recorded videos.
• Users comment on Facebook Live videos at 10x the rate of regular videos
• Daily watch time for Facebook Live broadcasts has grown by more than 4x

And the list can go on. Facebook Live is growing, fast. Experiment with ways you can use live video to engage with your audience on Facebook. Looking at the list of viral content you can see animal-related videos do well. Why not live stream a bring your pet day at the office and theme it around pet insurance as a voluntary benefit? It’s a fun way to drive engagement on Facebook, have some fun with your team in the process, and educate your audience.

Promote upcoming live broadcasts on different platforms to increase viewership. It’s also recommended to stream for at least seven minutes to get your content to show up in the News Feed.

Facebook Live is a great way to establish your agency’s brand personality, as well as your company culture.

5. Don’t Use Engagement Bait 

As outlined by Facebook’s News Feed Guidelines, engagement bait is a tactic to create Facebook posts that goad people into interacting, through likes, shares, comments, and other actions, in order to artificially boost engagement and get greater reach on News Feed.

Facebook’s updated algorithm will actually demote your post if any text in your caption resembles engagement bait. Currently, there are 3 types of engagement bait that Facebook will penalize:

• React baiting – Avoid asking people to react to your post (Like, Love, Wow, Haha, etc.)
• Vote baiting – Asking people to vote using Facebook reactions (Like, Love, Wow, Haha, etc.)
• Share baiting – Asking people to share your post

In other words, user interactions for your organic posts must be authentic. You should aim to ensure your content is informative, helpful, and relatable to achieve the desired outcome. No matter how amazing your content may be, using captions that fall into any form of engagement bait will render all of the other Facebook tips for insurance agents I’ve listed ineffective.

Final Thoughts About Facebook Tips for Insurance Agents

You can look at all of the Facebook tips for insurance agents I listed and see it revolves around a core theme – creating quality content for your audience. It all comes down to having a deep understanding of your audience. No matter where you look – Facebook, Google, the sales funnel/the buyer’s journey, content marketing – all of the branches connect to the idea of providing the best experience possible for the customer.

This list of tips, alongside all your other marketing efforts, will help increase organic reach on Facebook. The rest is up to you. Gather information about your audience, and discover ways to utilize these tips to provide quality content that will get your audience to engage with your brand on Facebook, and all other channels.