Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company (Jackson, Miss.) has engaged Hearsay Social (San Francisco) to create and deploy a program designed to enable the carrier’s multi-line agents to meaningfully and compliantly engage with clients and prospects on social media. The Hearsay Social platform will allow Southern Farm Bureau Life agents to select pre-approved content such as news, company announcements, and other resources, and easily share it with their social networks across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, according to a vendor statement.
“Our intent is to win in our own backyard, and our agents do this by being thought leaders in their local communities and emphasizing a relationship-first approach with their clients,” comments David Hurt, senior VP of marketing, Southern Farm Bureau Life. “With more and more people turning to the Web, social media is a natural extension for agents to deepen relationships, attract prospects, and build business. We needed a technology partner that delivers both industry best practices and has a robust compliance component, and Hearsay Social was the clear choice.”
Strong Local Presence
The Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance network extends across 11 states with an office in nearly every county within each state, Hearsay reports. The vendor says that its platform will support the company’s focus on having a strong, local presence, enabling agents to leverage the power of social media to strengthen those connections online and grow their digital presence.
Among the Hearsay platform’s capabilities is the multi-channel Social Signals feature that alerts agents when a connection experiences an important life event, such as a marriage or new baby, as soon as it happens so they can appropriately engage and serve clients when interest in insurance may be at its highest, according to the vendor.
Building a Personal Brand
Adam Watson, a Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance agent, from his Facebook page.
“Having an active presence on social media is a necessary way to build my personal brand within my community and ultimately grow my client base,” comments Adam Watson, a Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance agent. “I’m very excited that Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company is working with Hearsay Social to support my efforts and make it easier for me to accomplish this.”
“Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company is paving the road for hundreds of agents to stay relevant and top of mind with their clients, prospective clients, and their local communities in this digital age,” comments Stephen D’Angelo, Vice President of Sales at Hearsay Social. “We’re thrilled to have them on board and look forward to establishing a best-in-class social business program.”
Happy to see Hearsay Social continue its success in empowering insurance agents in their Social Media efforts. That they (and their competitors) have tied up pretty much all of the large insurance carriers/competitors and are now successfully bringing in smaller regional carriers as well is a testament to the industry’s recognition of the table stakes-importance of Social Media — and solidly gives the lie to the still widespread misapprehension that insurance “lags behind” its many Financial Services counterparts and competitors in this endeavor. Though hardly any reason to become complacent — hardly! — I think we’re well past the time when we in the industry routinely, and mostly inaccurately, bemoan our “lack of innovation” and failure to stay “up to date” with every new competitive development. Let’s take at look at where the industry really stands and stop the invidious and, again, so other inaccurate comparisons within Financial Services.
Anthony, how about an article or two on how the insurance industry stands vis-a-vis FinServ on matter Digital?