Technology

World of mouth

Agents use blogs to enhance their brand, attract prospects, and stay connected with customers

By Nancy Doucette

Erik Qualman. Seth Godin. Chris Brogan. Brian Halligan. Are these names familiar to you? If you've been exploring social media, online marketing, and search engine optimization, chances are they are. These individuals are the heat that the heat-seekers seek.

Qualman's book, Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business, hit Amazon's #1 Best Selling List within three weeks of publication in 2009 perhaps due in no small part to the "viral" distribution of the YouTube video which was updated earlier this year and still promotes the book.

If you haven't seen the video, it's a fast-paced, four-and-a-half minutes of techno music and quick facts that leave you convinced that social media is the only way to reach your audience. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng )

One of the snippets from Qualman's video is that there are 200 million blogs in existence. That, he suggests, makes "word of mouth" passé. It's become "world of mouth."

So while blogs are certainly one way for current customers to comment on your agency—your brand—they are also a way to attract new customers. Additionally, blogs are a medium for maintaining an ongoing conversation with existing customers.

Blogs (verbal shorthand for Web log) are typically generated by an individual who "posts" regular entries of commentary online and links to other blogs, Web pages or other media related to the blog's topic.

Increasing numbers of agents are gravitating to the blogosphere—their blogs are among the 200 million. Two of those blogs are authored by representatives of agencies that have appeared on the cover of Rough Notes: Litchfield Insurance Group of Torrington, Connecticut, and The Rollins Agency of Rye Brook, New York. With the population explosion in the blogosphere, these agencies are using creative tools to make sure their blogs get found.

At Litchfield, Dan Phelan, CRIS, CLCS, account executive; his father, agency CEO Robert Phelan, ARM, CRIS; and Debra Kuhne, CRIS, AAI, director of client services, share the blogging activity on the Construction Risk Advisors (CRA) Web site. CRA—as the name suggests—caters exclusively to the construction industry, a strong niche market for Litchfield.

At Rollins, CEO Markham Rollins III offers insurance and risk management advice to nonprofit organizations by way of his NonProfitGuard blog.

Just do it

At the risk of stereotyping, Dan Phelan is a GenY—a digital native. So while his business card says he's an account executive, his duties in the agency aren't limited to new business acquisition and retention. "As far as my taking on the bulk of the social media piece for CRA," he says, "it's something I enjoy doing in my spare time. As I got more involved in social media from a business perspective, I learned it was becoming an important component of business marketing. So I wanted to find out as much as I could to make it start working for us."

Dan recalls that he began blogging about insurance for contractors in January 2009, which coincided with when Litchfield launched their CRA brand and Web site.

Bob Phelan created fresh content for the site, based loosely on his book Broke: The broken contractors insurance system and how to fix it. The CRA site is informational without being overly technical or overloaded with insurance industry jargon, according to Dan.

"When you're dealing with the complexities of a contracting risk, a more consultative approach is required," Dan explains. "Contractors shouldn't be buying their coverage based on the lowest price. But changing that mindset has proven to be challenging. Contractors win their jobs based on a bidding process, and the majority of them still believe that their insurance should be handled and awarded the same way."

Finding the right tools

For his part, Dan researched the tools that would attract prospects to the CRA site. That led him to HubSpot™. In addition to hosting the new CRA site, HubSpot provides blogging software for business users. Its self-editing capabilities let users control the addition of new posts to their site, and when fresh content is added, HubSpot takes care of distributing it across the Internet.

The software also includes search engine optimization features to be sure that an organization's keyword selection is hitting the mark. "We tweak our list to be sure that anyone searching for construction risk management advice finds CRA first," Dan says.

Additionally, HubSpot provides analytics which evaluate an organization's Web site traffic, gathers data to help businesses understand their changing market presence, and identifies the most popular blog posts so future efforts can address areas of interest for visitors to the site.

Dan says HubSpot can determine how long individuals have spent at the CRA site, what pages they visited and how much time they spent on those pages. As a result, he says, he can tailor his sales call based on the type of content the prospect viewed.

Beyond the tools which HubSpot charges for, it offers a host of free resources. Dan notes that "free" isn't entirely accurate. He says that first-time users of the free tools must enter their contact information and shortly thereafter a HubSpot representative will be in touch.

Dan says it's a small price to pay in order to gain access to the graders, Webinars, podcasts, videos, and white papers that are available at the HubSpot site.

CRA uses the "keyword grader" to identify and rank the words that people use when researching topics related to construction. Dan, Bob, and Debra use those words as well as terms that describe CRA's strengths in their blogs and other content at the site. "You have to take off your insurance hat and think about the terms that a new insurance buyer would use," he advises.

This approach led a local contractor who was having experience mod problems to contact Construction Risk Advisors. "If we hadn't had several blog posts about managing experience mods and work comp claims, they never would have looked to us as experts," Dan comments.

"When your referral source is your own Web site, it's a warm lead," he continues. "They're coming to you to solve a problem. You're not cold calling them to try to find problems. So you go into that initial meeting with them knowing what their problems or concerns are. You can focus your presentation around delivering solutions to their problems."

Keyword Grader also enables CRA to track the rankings on search terms over time and track which keywords are driving traffic to the site, as well as the exact search time visitors entered into Google or Bing that led them to the site. Additionally, it can identify words that people use to find the site which aren't on CRA's keyword list so they can be added. "It shows what the consumer is thinking when they're looking for your product," Dan explains.

Brian Halligan, founder and CEO of HubSpot, is featured in one of the videos at the HubSpot site making a solid case for "inbound marketing"—where an organization helps itself get found by people interested in what that business has to offer. "You need to set up your Web site like a 'hub,'" [for your niche] he recommends, "that attracts visitors naturally through search engines, through the blogosphere, and through social media sites."

Halligan also notes that people are spending more time on Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn searching for what they want. "That's where they shop and learn," he says.

Adjusting to the new normal

"When a buyer engages with a new service provider, the first thing they do is google that person or company to see what they can find out about them, get client testimonials, and such," Dan points out. "That's the norm now—whether you're engaging a prospect, a provider, a boyfriend or a girlfriend," he adds with a laugh. "People are going to the Internet before they go anywhere else."

But blogging to a specific niche and Web site optimization won't yield immediate results, Dan cautions. "It's a marathon, not a sprint," he says. So once an organization starts blogging, it has to be consistent. "The search engines reward regularly updated sites by giving them higher rankings," he adds. "And the content needs to be something you're proud to have your name on. If the post isn't worthwhile to the reader, a first-time visitor won't come back."

Dan says he, Bob and Debra base their blogs on issues and concerns they hear about from clients and prospects. "Unless people have a problem, they won't go online to research an alternative. We want CRA to provide solutions to their problems or indicate that a call to CRA can be the first step in solving that problem," Dan says.

"You have to put your personality into the blogs," he continues. "Vanilla articles about property insurance endorsements aren't going to garner a repeat audience or generate any sort of conversation. Some of the more 'pointed' blog posts we've written were purposely designed to stir up the conversation. Our goal is to change the way clients and prospects view our business, as well as to revolutionize how they buy insurance."

Easing into it

"Blogging isn't a 40-hour-a-week job," Dan states. He recommends starting with 30 minutes a day. "Spend 10 minutes reading what other thought leaders in your industry or the niches you insure are writing. Then spend another 10 minutes writing your own content. Finally, take 10 minutes to comment and/or link to what others are saying."

Among the thought leaders that Dan follows are Seth Godin and Chris Brogan. "They're on the cutting edge of what's going on with Internet marketing," he says. He also follows the HubSpot blog.

"Don't assume that you can do everything online," Dan says. "You still have to be face to face with people and shake some hands." In other words, you can't abandon the traditional marketing playbook entirely. You still have to go to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, belong to Rotary, and be involved with the trade groups that support your niche.

Dan recently did a social media presentation for the local chamber of commerce. "It had nothing to do with Litchfield Insurance Group or Construction Risk Advisors," he says. "There are a lot of people in our business community who don't know how to make social media work for them. I've also run social media seminars focusing on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for our clients so they can use these tools to help them grow their businesses.

"The younger generations do business differently," he observes. "Businesses need to prepare for that."

Vlogging

Video blogging (vlogging) is the combination of embedded video, supporting text, images and links. Mark Rollins has it down to a science at his NonProfitGuard blog site.

"Nonprofits are my passion," Mark notes. "Over the 30 years that I've been in the insurance business, I have been on the boards of a dozen nonprofits. I understand their needs and the financial pressures they face. It has nothing to do with whether they're a good nonprofit or not…funding channels change."

So in early 2010, Mark bought a Flip video camera and started video blogging to nonprofits. "Part of our value proposition is to provide useful content that people can use in their business every day," he says. The effort has energized him, he adds. "I definitely have a different job than I've had in the past," he says. "I love it."

Mark's goal is similar to the Phelans': to draw new clients into the agency as well as achieve higher Google rankings. "When people key in 'nonprofit directors and officers insurance,' I want Rollins Insurance to come up first," Mark admits. "One way to make sure that happens is to keep adding content to our site so that Google finds us." Additionally, the blog shows the agency's expertise in its niches. "Blogs can't be outsourced," he states. "You can't outsource the creation of your personality online."

Secret sauce

Actually, there is no secret sauce, Mark says with a smile. "We use tools that are available online: WordPress to create the blogs, FeedBurner to disseminate them, and Google Analytics to gauge their success. Our business development coordinator, Alex Scott, reviews the analytics to check on who's viewing the blogs, for how long, and how often. He also oversees the search engine optimization. This can't be a one-person show. You need to have a person to keep an eye on the analytics. I couldn't do this without Alex."

The analytics also help Mark determine which topics people go to the most. Each week he and his business partner, John Moccia, who blogs to the agency's technology niche, meet with Alex to review the social media campaign, how it's doing, and discuss upcoming blog topics.

Mark says he spreads out the blog creation over a couple of days. The text portion of the post runs between 100 and 300 words. Often it's based on something he's read. One such post was "Disaster recovery for nonprofits." Other times, he uses material provided by one of his carriers (with proper attribution, of course.) Lists are great, he says. For instance, "10 recent claims for nonprofit directors and officers."

Depending on his topic and whether he's creating new material or borrowing from elsewhere, this step takes from 10 minutes to an hour.

The next phase is the video portion which takes less than 20 minutes, he says. "I set up the camera and I talk for a short time about the post…my view of what I wrote. This tells viewers why it's important. My goal is to end up with a concise one- to two-minute clip. Any longer than that and busy people will not look at it."

Next he ports the video camera to the computer, uploads the video, embeds it into the post and he's finished.

"I can get it all done in a couple of hours," he says.

For the past 15 years, The Rollins Agency used an outside marketing firm for different projects, including a four-page newsletter. "Now we're doing a lot of it ourselves," Mark points out. "We have a pretty good sense for what we need to do to market our firm. Video blogging is a new way of doing it. The dollar investment is minimal. But we are investing more time in these marketing activities. So there's been a shift in how we spend our marketing budget."

The newsletter is a thing of the past as well, Mark says. "We're providing solutions in a different way…for those people who are looking for them."