Listen to RSS Ray’s exclusive interview on how to create eye-catching social media marketing reports with Blake Lawrence of Hurrdat Social Media.

RSS Ray and Blake Lawrence discuss:

• Social media reporting for small and mid-size businesses
• Social media goals for small and mid-size businesses
• Measuring social media success
• How to create visual social media marketing reports
• Social media reporting with competitors

To listen to the interview, click the link  below.

Blake Lawrence RSS RAY

At Hurrdat we find ourselves continuously introduced to different industries and the key to our success in the social media realm is our research.  We are constantly educated about the markets we are involved in, as well as keeping up on all of the trends occurring in social media.  In the past few weeks we have been focusing on the insurance industry and we have gained significant insight on this industry and identified broader social media trends for business marketing.

Insurance agencies have started to target their marketing to a younger generation with funny commercials and branded campaigns like Allstate’s “Mayhem” and Geiko’s “Could 15 minutes really save you 15% or more on car insurance…” series.  More importantly, they are also interacting with their customers via Facebook and Twitter.  It is more and more common for companies to end commercials with the tag line, “Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.” This is not merely a way to get you to look at their logo one final time rather it is a way to satisfy customer needs.

Hurrdat has found that almost all (75%) of the insurance agencies, big and small, were focused on using social media to address specific issues and customer needs.  For example, Traveler’s Insurance tweets several times a week addressing specific user questions or problems.  Not only is this happening on a national brand scale, but regional and small insurance carriers are actively engaged in social media as well.  These social media outlets provide an easy way for insurance agencies to propose situations that require insurance which educates their following, and target market, so they know there is a solution to the problem.

Why would this information matter to an industry other than insurance you ask?  Every industry can use social media as a way of informing customers about company news, jobs, promotions, and relevant issues.  We, the customer, feel a strong connection with a big brand when they respond to our question with a mention or retweet.  Smaller companies are able to expose potential clients to their name brand and company news through social media.  It’s a beneficial process for companies and customers to interact through social media and so I ask:  Have you interacted with at least one customer today?

[AUSTIN]