Insurance Agent Blog Strategy to Take Your Posts to the Next Level

Content is king, and one of the most popular methods of content marketing is blogging – like really popular. Check out this live counter that tallies how many blogs are written in a day. Last I checked the count was around 2,400,000 blogs posted today and growing. In the digital era, new content is constantly published online, which means mediocre content will not help you stand out from the competition. This week, I’ll share a modern insurance agent blog strategy that will help take your posts to the next level.

Quality Matters in Your Insurance Agent Blog Strategy

The average blog is about 500-1,000 words and, according to a 2017 survey, bloggers spend an average of 3 hours and 20 minutes writing blogs of that length. But, I suspect you want your blog to show up on the first page of Google search results. That being the case, a study from Backlinko that focused on word count for top-ranking content on Google found that the average word count of a Google first page result is 1,890 words.

Source: Backlinko study on 1 million search engine ranking results.

Factoring in that it takes over 3 hours to write a 500-1,000 word blog, think of the amount of time you would need to commit to writing a blog post that will get these types of results. It would take up a large portion of your workday! I’m pretty sure writing a blog isn’t the only item on your to-do list. You may be starting to question if it’s really worth implementing a modern insurance agent blog strategy. But, before you put your blog dreams out to pasture understand that blogging is a cost-effective method for generating leads. If you have any doubts about the potential impact of blogging, consider these statistics:

• Featuring a blog as a key part of your website will give you a 434% better chance of being ranked highly on search engines.
• B2B marketers who use blogs as part of their content marketing mix get 67% more leads than those that don’t.
• Companies that published 16 or more blog posts per month got 4.5X the leads than companies that published 4 or fewer monthly posts.
• Blogs that post daily get 5X more traffic compared to those that don’t.

Those are some significant numbers for lead generation. While posting that many blogs at that length is a tall order, remember this:

The key takeaway is that consumers are looking for regularly updated content that provides a one-stop shop for information they’re searching for

Whether it’s 500 words or 2,000 words the important part is sharing regular content that covers key areas of a given topic in one post. Most bloggers spread out subtopics of a theme over a span of weeks. Instead, combine all of those subtopics into one blog post. For example, instead of writing four different blog posts about open enrollment, condense those four posts into one and cover all employer relevant aspects of open enrollment in one post.

It may seem like a lot, but you can optimize your insurance agent blog strategy with a structured approach.

Schedule Your Blog Topics

In order to make your insurance agent blog strategy effective we suggest you take a methodical approach. I recommend scheduling your blog topics for each month ahead of time. If you truly want to succeed at blogging this is an important step, as your goal is to hit specific benchmarks each month. As I showed in the statistics above, the recommended goal is 16 or more blog posts a month.

Without a structured approach to your insurance agent blog strategy, it can be assumed you’re not publishing 16 or more blog posts a month. If the goal of your blog is to generate more traffic, leads, and sales, that’s the quota you should be aiming for. Remember, millions of blog posts are published daily, and that’s just one form of content saturating the internet. While this may seem like a lot, it’s the standard that companies are progressing towards getting their blog in front of prospects. Data across the board supports this approach.

If you run out of blog topics, Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator is a helpful tool to get your creative gears going.

It’s as simple as entering your target keywords into the fields pictured above, and voila! You get a list of blog topic ideas to draw inspiration from.

Don’t worry about the first topic, you know the best broker marketing blog to follow is the Broker Tool Belt. Once you’ve got enough insurance blog topic ideas you can schedule your posts.

You can use your Outlook Calendar to stay organized and schedule your blog posts for the month. When organizing your blog schedule keep these goals in mind:

• Plan your calendar
• Schedule posts – remember to factor in the steps to writing a blog
  • Check out my previous blog on Broker Blogging Etiquette to learn how often you should post
  • Outline SEO keywords
  • Create a blog post outline
  • Write copy and make edits
  • Source media – stock photos, videos, etc.
• Integrate blog marketing into your schedule
  • Email, social media, company website
• Troubleshooting for when things don’t go to plan

Write Useful Content

As I mentioned earlier, consumers are looking for a one-stop shop for solutions to their needs. When implementing your insurance agent blog strategy, this concept is the foundation for every blog you write going forward. Provide actionable advice that helps employers achieve their desired outcomes. Your blog is meant to assist in positioning your agency as a helpful resource to help employers with managing benefits and HR.

Every blog post should revolve around that concept and should communicate solutions simply, clearly, and in-depth. If you commit to that concept your prospects will not only value your blog, but they’ll share it with their colleagues –  94% of people who share posts do so because they think it might be helpful to others.

Employers want to work with brokers who can guide them and make their experience with benefits administration as seamless as possible. Sharing useful information will showcase your expertise, and will in turn get your blog in front of quality prospects through social sharing. Complement your blog posts with SEO best practices and you’ll get your subscriber count growing.

Blogging and SEO: What You Need to Know

A blog is pointless if your audience can’t find it. Considering that inbound leads have a 14.6% close rate while outbound leads only have a 1.7% close rate, you want prospects to find you on their own.

On-page SEO is about deciding what keywords to base your web pages on and communicating to search engines that your web pages revolve around those same keywords. The main idea is that a page will show up in search engine results because the website has a page that mentions the searched for terms. It’s also important not to overdo it, search engines actually have a penalty that targets websites that have too many keywords on one page. So we suggest keeping it simple- 4-5 keywords or phrases for each page. Not sure which keywords to use? Try using free tools like Google Trends.

Check out my previous blog on Success with Insurance Agency SEO to learn how to optimize your blog posts for search engines.

Final Thoughts About Insurance Agent Blog Strategy

Implementing this modern insurance agent blog strategy will help improve your traffic and lead generation, but it won’t happen overnight. You need to commit some extra time and effort to build up your blog. Organize and schedule your posts. Write long-form content more often as all studies indicate that this is a crucial component to a successful blog. Optimize for SEO, and write useful content that speaks to your audience’s pain points.

Following these steps will lay the foundation for a successful blog. Subscribe to the Broker Tool Belt for more of the latest strategies to grow your business.