Creating Your Content in Three Easy Steps

James the insurance agent told me that it was impossible to create any exciting or personal social media marketing content for his agency. He said, “Let’s face it, insurance is boring.  People need it, but they don’t want to be entertained by it.  I need to buy leads and not waste time on it.” I asked him if he could think of ANY ideas. “Well, there’s home, life, auto, a little commercial here and there…but it’s just not interesting.”

True, on its own, it’s not interesting. There are plenty of examples online of big brands trying to make it interesting on social media with quick facts and figures that nobody reads. But you’ll notice that almost all the insurance commercials now are pretty funny. James scoffed at that notion. “I got into this business to help people protect the things and life they worked so hard for.  Not to be a comedian!  If that’s what everybody expects, then I’ll just quit!  You’d think that people would buy insurance from other local, hard-working folks like me, but they just want to be entertained.  If they knew what my parents went through when we lost our home to a fire when I was 6 years old, then they would understand that this is about replacing what is important and not about some green lizard with a British accent!”

Bingo:)

James inadvertently created his first piece of content. There is something personal and emotional when it comes to insurance. Next, I asked James some of the most common questions he gets several times a week. James thought for a second. “People don’t understand the difference between their dwelling and their contents.  I must explain to them that if you turned the house upside down and shook it, whatever falls out is contents, and whatever stays attached is dwelling.” 

Boom, there’s the second piece of content. Then they just started rolling left and right.

Should they get car rental insurance?

Why are auto rates going up?

What do cyber liability policies cover?

Why do they need an umbrella policy, and does it cover umbrellas?

And on and on.

He named about 24 different questions in less than 5 minutes. 24! I gave him homework at that point. Answer each question in a video and do his best to tell a story with it based on his experience. The video can be rough but do it anyway.  It can always be edited. Once the video is complete, you can also get the audio alone from it, so now you have the video and the audio. Once the video is complete, use an online tool to transcribe it. Then turn that transcription into a short blog. Once the blog is full, grab 3 takeaways from it and make 3 social media posts. Use real photos (not stock images) for social media posts, preferably with your smiling face in the photo.  Yes, we all cringe at the notion, but that’s the one thing competitors can’t copy, and it builds trust. 

See what we just did there?

24 videos

24 audio clips

24 blog posts

72 social media posts

We took 24 frequently asked questions and turned them into 144 pieces of content.  That’s about 3 new pieces of content each week for a year. And it’s your content too.  

I get the hesitancy. It’s not a quick fix. You have the anxiety of putting your ideas out there. What’s that snarky cousin you see once a year at Thanksgiving going to say about your video discussing life insurance? It’s uncomfortable and awkward at first. You will not have immediate success and you’ve seen others start down this road and give up. However, you’re not in business for just a few weeks; hopefully, this is a few decades, so a long process is what we want. Quick fixes rarely work in life, much less in marketing.  If that were the case, we would all still be taking the wonder weight loss drug Fen-Phen and buying lottery tickets. And don’t outsource it just to somebody else and make a generic. Your competition is already doing that. The only thing they can’t copy is you. You need to be the one that answers those questions.

Here is exactly what you should do in 3 easy steps:

Write down the top 24 questions you get from people about your business.

Then answer those questions.

Use the same instructions that I gave James and turn that content into:

• Video
• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Lead magnets
• Images/Photos
• Case Studies
• Audio
• Print material

Disclaimers

• Creating your content will not make you an influencer.
• It will not make leads magically roll in on the first day you make a post.
• There will be days that you put out something you are proud of and nobody notices.
• You will want to quit more than you want to continue.
• Once you get the hang of it, you will wonder how you ever did without it.

As for James, he started creating his content. He had some hiccups here and there, but he stayed on track and now is proud of what he produces.

Charles Alexander | July 2023

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