Any good producer will tell you that networking is at the core of driving new leads. In the past this meant centering activities around being involved in the community, being a member in social and business groups, and being active in local charities. The idea of networking has added a new feature in regards to being online with your activities. While there are many platforms in which you can network online, LinkedIn by far is the most direct and produces the most results of any of them today for insurance lead generation for commercial lines.
Creating a basic Linkedin profile to generate leads is fairly simple. There are two general components:
- Setting up your profile accurately so another user can easily see the information and get some depth on your experience and character.
- Creating a basic ongoing strategy to post updates to prevent the profiles from looking static or stagnant.
There are a few components to setting up your LinkedIn profile. In order to set up an individual profile, care should be taken to make sure that each of the following are set up correctly:
- Picture: It is vital the individual profile has a good professional photo. No one will connect with someone without a photo. And while they don’t have to be formal headshots, a good professional look will help show that care was taken when choosing the photo.
- Cover Photo: This is the background image that displays at the top of your profile. It is highly recommended that this photo ties you to your agency by using a branded design element or at least the agency logo.
- Headline: This short blurb may seem meaningless at first, but it’s the first statement that another member will see when viewing your profile. It should be quick and to the point, reflecting what you can do to help the reader.
- Summary: This is a longer (potentially unlimited) answer section where you can write anything that you see being beneficial to a prospect or client. This is a good section to brag about your experience and associate it to the benefits of the reader working with you.
- Experience & Education: This is basically your resume. You do not have to be as formal as if you were looking for a job in 1995 but you do want it to be clean, accurate, and articulate. Make sure it accurately reflects where you were working and when. And be sure to link it to the corresponding companies so that the reader does not have to do additional searches to find the company. This is especially true of your current agency as you want them to be able to jump quickly over to see the agency’s profile so that they don’t get lost in a maze of searches and can easily hit the back button to find you again.
- Interests: While somewhat of a lower priority, this section can help anyone viewing your profile get a glimpse into who you are as a person versus the more professional feel of the rest of the profile.
Now, if you have been paying attention and following along with your own profile, you will have noticed that we skipped over three of the sections. These sections come into play with our ongoing efforts to prevent our profile from being static or stagnant (read: Boring!).
- Articles & Activities: The best way to make your profile vibrant is by interacting with other LinkedIn members and posting your own or on other’s content. When you comment, like, or share others’ content, it will show up in this section. You are also able to write your own articles and share pictures and videos. A good source of material is any content that your agency is producing. This doubles the effect by showing that not only are you engaged but your agency is also actively creating content.
- Featured Skills & Endorsements: This section is intended to be a natural place for people to easily endorse skills that LinkedIn has identified as potential strong points for you. The easiest way to encourage people to endorse you is by endorsing them. While this isn’t a direct strategy, if you’ve linked in with enough members that have a similar goal, you will gain many endorsements by endorsing others.
- Reviews: Here is where you can be a lot more proactive in having others help you with your profile. By asking others to review your work and providing strong testimonials on your strengths the reader will get first hand accounts of what you can do for them. A great strategy to get reviews is by providing reviews to clients that have provided you with good service and asking them to return the favor.
While the second section is more ongoing, you should be sure to keep the basics of your profile as outlined in the first section updated as needed. Be sure to have a proactive strategy to continue increasing your connections with viable prospects as well as anyone that may be a good referral source or partner.
This is simply the start of a good LinkedIn strategy and is a great first step. Creating an individual LinkedIn profile, company profile, and every other aspect of brand implementation and strategy are all parts of our APPX Marketing system.
Contact us today to learn more about the strategies you can implement in your agency for insurance lead generation!
