3 Easy Steps: Generate Immediate Leads with Social Media Outreach

Lead generation for life insurance is a tough business, and it's even tougher to establish yourself as the go-to resource for life insurance agents who want to focus on other aspects of their business. Search engine results are crowded with companies that have tried, with varying degrees of success, to make themselves stand out. Traditional search engine optimization methods, like link building and content generation, are effective for lots of niches, but life insurance suffers in this area due to its one, major downside.

Life insurance is boring. Even if you create the most compelling content in the industry, it's unlikely that your posts are going viral. You can still use some social media strategies, like social media outreach, to your advantage, however. As long as your site is designed with conversions in mind, generating traffic will also generate leads.

Social media outreach doesn't mean making everyday Facebook or Twitter posts. It means something far more specific than that.

Start with Specifics

Social media outreach starts, like many other lead generation strategies these days, with a piece of content. Not just any piece will do, however. You want something that's incredibly niche, incredibly specific. You also need to present your content in a way that attracts attention.

“Using Facebook to generate life insurance leads” is a specific topic, but it's not specific enough. There's too much information to cover, and it doesn't strike a chord with readers. Tackle the topic from a problem angle instead: “Using Facebook to Generate Millennial Life Insurance Leads.”

Specific, problem-oriented titles garner interested from readers. Generating ideas for these kinds of topics is challenging, and one of the best methods for coming up with your own is by taking a good look at the needs of your clients and the communications of other industry professionals:

• What kinds of questions are they asking? These questions, especially if they're specific, may make excellent content ideas.
• What are they writing about? Even run-of-the-mill content may have hidden niche ideas buried in it. Keep an eye on what others are doing. If you can add your own twist, you may be able to generate an excellent article.

Reach Out to Others

Once you have your content, and it's been posted in a prominent place on your website, it's time to contact the people who might be interested. Don't make the same mistake that other online marketers make: posting your content isn't enough to get people to read it. They have to know it's there, and they have to know it's going to be worth their time.

How do you do that? By convincing key industry people that it's worth their time and using them to reach their audiences. You can do this by following a few easy steps.

1. Create a list of social media accounts that are relevant to the niche you chose to write about. You can often do this by searching Facebook and Twitter for keywords that match your content. Additionally, check the top search results on Google for your topic. Those companies or bloggers may have their social media profiles listed on their About Us page. The best profiles to add to your list will have large audiences, preferably more than 500 likes or followers.
2. Create a message to distribute to the people on your list. This message should be short and to the point, and it should focus on how your content will be useful to the profile's followers.
3. Send your message. You can copy and paste it for every profile on your list. Through Facebook, you can do this through the messaging feature. On Twitter, you send a message “@” their username.

Don't expect everyone on your list to share your content. Those that do, however, will create a link between their followers and your business. Once that link has been created, your content will do the rest of the work: drawing them in and explaining why they should use your lead generation services.

The best part about this social media outreach strategy is that many of the views you'll generate are going to be from qualified and interested life insurance agents. Even if only one of the profiles on your list shares your content, you'll end up with immediate leads.

Social Outreach and Search Engine Rankings

Social media outreach isn't a straightforward way to develop your website's search engine optimization, but it works. The more people who share your content, the higher your content will rank in search results.

Unlike more traditional SEO methods, which use techniques like link building and keyword selection to get content in front of the right people, social outreach does it backward: It puts content in front of the right people, the people who are likely to make use of your services, and high rankings come as a result.

This strategy might not appeal to everyone. Contacting industry experts can be intimidating, but the payoffs are well worth putting yourself, and your business, out there. Establish yourself as a life insurance lead generation expert, and the business will come to you.

Here's a recap:

1. Develop a website that can generate conversions.
2. Create a piece of content, on a very narrow, very niche topic. Make it sound exciting, engaging and newsworthy.
3. Contact other social media profiles that exist in that niche with a clear, concise message that explains why your content is valuable to their followers.

Follow these steps again for best results.