As an insurance agency that specializes in selling Medicare Advantage plans to seniors, we aren’t the type of business that usually generates lots of buzz on social media. But we figured out a way to engage our core audience using social media—and now have over 100,000 Facebook followers.

 

A few years ago, we started to think seriously about how we could stand out from the crowded field of insurance agencies targeting seniors. We knew Medicare was a complex topic that confused many people, so we decided that a smart way to engage customers and prospects would be to create content that educates seniors about how Medicare works, what it covers and how much it costs. We had launched our blog in 2011, but we didn’t really dive into social media until 2016.

 

I did some research and found out that plenty of seniors use Facebook, so we started our social media endeavor on this channel. We’d share our blog posts on our Facebook page and place ads to draw more eyes—and “likes”—to that content.

 

But our first forays into Facebook were hit or miss. It took a while to get our messaging right, and we focused too much on pumping out as much new content as possible.

 

Then, one day I read a compelling article by a social media expert who advised spending 20% of your effort creating great content and 80% marketing it. The key, he wrote, is to repurpose popular content as much as possible. This was pretty much the opposite of what we’d been doing, and it changed our perspective and approach to how we use content and social media.

 

For example, if we wrote a blog post, we could use that same copy to create a video—or vice versa. Likewise, the main points of a Facebook post could be turned into an infographic and pinned on Pinterest, or a short excerpt could be uploaded to Instagram with a photo. We found that cross-posting content saved us enormous amounts of time while dramatically increasing the amount of traffic we get to our content.

 

We also started paying closer attention to our blog and social media analytics. By tracking clicks and likes, we could identify the most popular pieces of content and then pay to promote those posts specifically. We tied our email marketing to our social media by encouraging followers to send us their email address in order to receive valuable content, such as our Medicare Checklist.

 

We noticed that videos got a lot of engagement, so we also launched a YouTube channel with free webinars and videos on topics such as, “How to Appeal Your Part B Premium” and “Medicare Parts Explained 2018 (FAST!).” Just recently, we began doing Facebook Live feeds every Friday afternoon, inviting our followers to send in questions that we now answer on air.

 

All of this content creation and sharing greatly improved our engagement with seniors interested in learning about Medicare, and the followers just began pouring in.

 

Beyond sharing content on social media, we take every opportunity to use it to engage on a more individualized level. For example, we ask questions at the end of every blog post, encouraging readers to give their opinion on the subject or ask follow-up questions. Followers can direct-message us through our social media pages, and they will always get a response from me or someone else on our staff.

 

We ask our followers to send us their contact information so we can stay in touch. These people often become leads.

 

That said, we’re very careful not to overstep our boundaries on social media and promote our products too much through it. We know that earning our audience’s trust is incredibly important, and that means providing them with valuable information and being authentic.

 

At the end of the day, our focus on educating and building an online community of seniors has helped us stand out as a reliable company in an industry in which there’s a lot of mistrust and confusion. It’s made a huge impact on our business.

 

 

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