Is starting an insurance blog one of those daunting tasks you keep pushing off?

Keep reading to learn how a blog can help you increase traffic, grow sales and even—believe it or not—save time.

The benefits of having a blog

Improves search engine optimization (SEO)

You may be the best agency in the world, but prospects won’t find you on Google if you’re listed on the fourth page of search results. A blog can help you improve your SEO. When writing, you will use the keywords people use when they search for insurance, bringing more visitors to your website.

Positions you as an expert

Clients and prospects are looking for an insurance advisor, but a license alone won’t set you apart from the competition. So how do you stand out in a saturated insurance market? By adding value through sound advice and expertise. You can say those words all day, but by having a blog you’ll immediately show people you take your position as an insurance advisor seriously.

Saves you time

How could writing a blog possibly save you time? Well, how many times per week do you answer the same prospect and client questions? If you had a selection of blogs addressing most frequently asked questions, you could respond to emails in seconds with a link to a relevant post instead of spending 15 minutes on each email or call. Your time savings will add up quickly.

Provides content for multiple platforms

It’s tough to come up with new posts for social media every week. If you have a blog, you have natural content ready to promote on your social channels. Just write a sentence or two to summarize your blog and voila—posting on social media just got that much easier! You can also email relevant blog posts to your clients as a proactive way to keep in touch with them throughout the year.

How to get started

Get your website ready

Whether you build and manage your own website or use a third-party provider, you’ll want to make sure your current setup can support a blog. Talk to your web/IT team or reach out to the company that manages the website for you and work with them to get a blog set up. Determine how frequently you’ll update your blog and what the publishing process will look like. We recommend starting with one post per week.

Start with your frequently asked questions

Take inventory of the questions you get asked often and see if there’s a theme. Then, check your “Sent” folder to see how you typically respond and write a blog post from there. For example, you may have seen an uptick in questions about why homeowners’ insurance rates are increasing and can write a blog post to help clients understand the reasons behind these rate hikes.

Outline, outline, outline

Once you’ve picked a topic, think about your main points. From there, write a few sentences to support your points or provide additional context. End with a clear call to action so prospects and clients know how to get in touch.

Think of a good headline and remember the right keywords

Keep it interesting, fun and on topic. Make sure you use the right keywords. If your blog is about commercial policies, be sure to use words like “business” and “company” as well as policy keywords like “BOP” and “professional liability.” Don’t forget to mention your town or state—calling out your location frequently is great for SEO if you want to focus on a specific market.

If you’d like to do some additional keyword research, there are several free tools available online. Backlink to additional resources within your article, including links to your own blogs on similar topics. This is a quick way to improve SEO, but don’t overdo it. Make sure anything you backlink to is relevant and try to limit links to one or two per paragraph.

Keep it short

You may think that blog posts need to be a certain length or that writing one will be a huge undertaking. But people rarely read long blogs or articles. Stick with your main points and don’t get into the weeds about things. Focus on the information that will apply to a broader audience in your market and save the details for individual conversations.

Remember the metadata

Metadata gives search engines valuable details about the content of a blog post. You can specify that information inside your blog tool, and you need to do it for each post. Here’s more on that. A properly tagged blog could look something like this:

Don’t buy blog content

Many insurance website and marketing companies sell blog content as a feature. Usually, the content they provide is the same for all of their clients. That means that every blog post you get from them will also be given to and used by other insurance agents, word for word. This practice will have a negative impact on your SEO. Generic blogs also aren’t relevant to consumers in your geographical area or to your agency. The goal of your blog is not just to have some random insurance-related content, but to have great content your prospects and clients want to read.

Instead, consider hiring a writer to write custom content just for you, write the blogs yourself or ask a member of your staff to take on this responsibility.

Not a writer? You have tools that can help

Writing may not come naturally to you, and that’s okay! Artificial intelligence (AI) language models can help you get started with blog content. Read more here on how to use AI wisely when writing content for your agency.

Happy blogging!