Building Your Social Media Insurance Brand

You can build a solid brand for your insurance business by effectively executing a comprehensive social-media marketing strategy that includes utilizing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging. Opening up a two-way communication channel with customers is vital for building a brand for your business in Web 2.0. Recommendations from bloggers and influencers in your industry are also critical to securing your "brand equity" online.

The best way to begin building your brand is to communicate and engage with followers, rather than by trying to market to them. Build "social engagement" into your company's social-media strategy, as opposed to promotional tweets and Facebook posts, which can hurt your brand equity in the long run.

Here are my top tips for building brand equity in social-media sites for every business owner:

 Set up Google alerts for your insurance company.

 Create a Facebook fan page, Twitter page and LinkedIn profile page for your company.

 Secure a minimum of five recommendations on your LinkedIn profile.

 Build geographically targeted lists on Twitter that other community members will want to follow.

 Optimize all blog content for search-engine optimization visibility.

 Guest blog for brand diversification.

 Join relevant industry-related groups in key social-media platforms.