In a recent post, we reviewed how to leverage your LinkedIn profile as a producer. Let's discuss how Facebook can help you achieve similar goals, but for your agency.

You often hear that Facebook is not a good tool to conduct business. This is not totally accurate. While many use cases show it's not necessarily the right platform to hard sell your products and services, it is a platform to create awareness about your agency, build your agency brand, and allow your local community to learn more about you as an agency and as an employee of the agency.

Let's set the right expectation. You are not trying to compete with a competitor's Facebook page, but instead you are trying to establish your presence online with your local community. You will actually have more impact on Facebook with your local community by highlighting your strength. Capitalize on it! And remember, no one wants to talk to a brand!

Per Forrester, Social media has been proven to be good at two things: Creating awareness and staying in touch with your current customers.

Most of your customers did business with you, and want to keep learning from you. Why not make them happy? Not only is it good for retention, and optimizing their current portfolio of coverage, but it's also a great way to generate referrals without being pushy, simply by creating "awareness" among their own connections, as known as "prospect and potential target audience for you".

Around 75% of the insurance business is a relationship based business. Let social media play its' role and then play your role of "independent agent". A prospect will most likely have an online or offline conversation with your mutual connection to learn more about you first, and then they will either email you or give you a phone call. If these consumers wanted to buy directly online, they will most likely use a direct carrier and not an independent agent.

Now that you understand how you should think about Facebook, create your own agency page, connect with your local community, starting with your current customers, and show them who you are as an agency and CSR or producer within the agency. Social media will do the rest!

This is just another tool to add to your arsenal of marketing and communication tools. Integrate it with existing initiatives and tailor it to your brand.