Using Social Media for marketing is not a new idea. Most insurance agents have a Facebook, are blogging, and have a Yelp or Google Plus account. But for some reason insurance agents have stayed away from Twitter. Don’t believe me check it out. Search #insurance or #insuranceagent in your Twitter account and not a lot comes up. What does this mean for you? Well if you are an insurance agent it means there are millions of people on Twitter and not a lot of noise or competition for you voice to be heard on the topic of insurance.

Benefits for using Twitter

It’s free and it is another way to communicate with the leaders in your industry, competition, customers, and prospects about what you do every day, sell insurance. Using Twitter to share your original content on your blog and website is also a plus. Connecting to the big dogs of your industry, learn from them and R and D (rob and duplicate). No sense in rebuilding the wheel.

Pitfalls of using Twitter

It can be confusing or even overwhelming to start using Twitter. It can be hard to understand how to tweet or even what you really want to tweet about or who you want to connect with on the social service.

Twitters short message lifespan is also a drawback. Your message will stay at the top of someone’s feed for only a few min. Where posts can stay hours or even days at the top of a message board on Facebook. This means you have to tweet more often than you would post on Facebook or Google Plus.

Best Way to Use Twitter

Connect with Niches

The best way to use Twitter is to make connections with people you want to sell to. Pick a niche and connect with the movers and shakers in that niche. An example is car collectors. “Follow” every car collector you can find on twitter than look who they are following and follow them too. Then when you tweet remember you are tweeting to that specific group and make the tweet something that they share with each other and retweet.

Learn From the Masters

Also follow people you admire. Learn from them and communicate and connect with them via Twitter. One of the cool things about Twitter is you get the chance to communicate with people you normally would not be able to chat with. For me I follow a lot of marketing wizards on Twitter. I can comment on an article they posted or tweet them with a question and they can tweet or send me a personal message back. I am getting professional free advice from the masters; where else can you do that.

Scope Out the Competition

This one is easy to do. Look up your competition. If they are local chances are they are not on twitter so you are already #winning. If they are a big company it never hurts to follow them and see what they are doing. It never hurts to know your competition.