I have come to realize that twitter is highly addictive.  I came home from work last Wednesday evening and decided to catch up on some tweets.  When looked up I found that I had just spent two hours reading blogs and catching up on all the cool stuff going on with my peers.  I could not believe that I had just “wasted” that time.  Was it really wasted though?  Really?  No.  I formulated three article ideas from this time and fashioned a new marketing idea for AgencyIQ.  The time was a valuable stimulating experience that was sheer brain food when my body was craving my couch and my mind was sheer mush.  That rejouvination could never be described as a waste of time.

As an insurance agent, I ask myself, can an agent bring value to their client base by Tweeting?  We can tweet about things like updating our blog, newsletters, speaking engagements, and just generally retweeting valuable information that can enrich our client’s lives.  That is always a good idea.  For example, it is spring and just last week I picked up a magazine that caught my eye with an article about “Cleaning Your Windows Like A Professional”.   Isn’t that what we can offer to our clients?  Twitter allows us to do this in 140 characters or we can at least blog these wonderful pearls of wisdom then tweet them out to our community and increase our exposure and value to our community.  What if an insurance agent can embead themselves into a client’s evening by adding value to their lives and thus become a communtiy influence?  Twitter is a medium to make sure that we offer these tools in an easy, unobtrusive manner for our clients and I think that the agencies that embrace the technology will reep the benefits in the long run. 

Let’s see what happens when I post this question to my Facebook (I have lots of agent friends) and just open the discussion to the public.  What do you think?  What experiences (positive and negative) have you had as an insurance agent with Twitter? Can’t wait to hear!

The idea that Twitter is a valuable resource for your insurance agency is a debate that I see going on via facebook, blogs, and even in conferences that I attend.  Let’s start from the basic’s and explore the pro’s and con’s of the newest social media explosion on the Internet.

What is Twitter:  I like to describe Twitter as a blast text message. People sign up to receive your “tweets” and your message of no more than 140 characters is sent to the recipient.  Twitter is also defined in many places as “micro-blogging”.  To see a short video about twitter that is also wonderfully short..check out this video http://commoncraft.com/Twitter.

Sign up then proceed on stealth mode:  Don’t start this project thinking that Twitter is the saving grace for your business within the first two weeks.  We are all looking for that magic bullet, but everything takes work.  
-Take a few days to a week and watch what other people are doing on the software. 
-Learn the lingo, and acquire some connections that you would like to follow. 
-Find people whose tweets inspire you, people who have something valuable to say. 
-Locate some people in your networks or industry that have a following and see how they are working this marvel of social networking.

How to add followers:  Define your audience you want to follow you.  Is it local business owners, homeowners, auto owners, what zip codes, what clubs or organizations?  This will be your beginning list of who to search out.  Ask each person on their follow lists to follow you.
-Add your twitter address to any social media that you participate in, your emails, website, and look up your clients on twitter. 
-Look up your local politicians, local businesses, your chamber of commerce and ask follow all their followers.  Most people will follow you.
-Look up your clients and send out your twitter in your newsletter announcements
-Look up any local clubs, charity’s or networks for your target audience.

Add value to your tweets: No one wants spam in their email, twitter, or facebook, so we ask you not to contribute to it. 
-Find interesting articles and post them on your twitter as resources.  Shorten the URL by using http://bit.ly/?url=
-Find interesting blog’s and post them to your twitter.
-ReTweet information but acknowledge the source by putting RT:@sourcename before the tweet.  For example, to retweet from AgencyIQ’s tweet..simply post “RT: @agencyiq” then your content.
-Make sure to tweet about updates to your blog postings or events going on in your office.
-reference your website in your posts occasionally.
-Thank people for following you and post a thank you for the ReTweets you are honored to have passed on.
-Remember your audience and tweet about things that they would want to check out.

Most importantly…this is a process.  It isn’t something that you can make work for you in a month.  You have to establish your audience, your credibility, and your voice.  Have fun with it, post funny things but keep it clean, remember you are here to attract customers.  Let your personality shine through, it will help to cut through the mundane on the internet and your business will succeed!