Methodology – a blog on insurance agent websites, web design, and marketing

Blogs have become the rage among insurance agents with websites. With the rise of blog popularity among insurance agents, most likely you heard many reasons why you should start one. You may have heard that blogs help with SEO, they get your site indexed more quickly, and they give you a place to generate new content with diverse messaging.

For all of the reasons to start a blog, insurance agents should still think twice before adding one to their insurance website. Why? Here are eight reasons:

1. They are a LOT of work. True, blogs are easy to launch. But to keep a blog fresh, you must continue to add content. This means adding new posts on a regular basis. Otherwise, your blog will quickly go stale and look abandoned.
2. Blogs take your attention away from selling. Every minute you spend on your blog is a minute you aren’t spending with a prospect. If you have leads to contact or quotes to follow up on, they should always come first.
3. Nobody’s going to read it anyway. Let’s be honest. Your customers don’t want to keep up to date on the latest musings of an insurance agent, and they really don’t want to know the minute details and inner workings of the industry.
4. You’re an insurance agent, not a writer. Writing is hard, and reading bad writing is even harder. Unless you are a pent up writer, masquerading as an insurance agent, chances are good you are stretching yourself in the wrong direction with your blog.
5. A blog isn’t going to make or break you. Lots of other things will. A blog might be a cherry on a sundae, but until you’ve got the complete sundae, you can do without. Do you have good inbound links? A high-quality insurance website? A watertight process for follow-ups? These, and many other things, should come first.
6. Your point of view isn’t original and compelling. With all of the professional writers and bloggers online, there’s a good chance someone else already wrote the blog post you’re thinking about, and they probably did a better job.
7. Blogging isn’t a quick fix. Even if you have a great blog, you aren’t going to see results for months. Even then, it will begin with a trickle and grow very slowly. If you’re looking for leads today, look elsewhere.
8. Typos and bad grammar make you look unprofessional. If peoplle dont think your professional, they are’nt going to buy from you. Unless you writing is flawles, theirs a good chance it will hurt you more then help you. (See what I mean?)

So before you jump on the blogging bandwagon, take a minute to consider the downside. It’s not often talked about, but it’s definitely there. Is your insurance agency really ready to jump on the blogging bandwagon?

At AgentMethods, we’re constantly making small and incremental enhancements to our software. We test our designs against new browsers, optimize our code to run faster, and add small but important new features. We’re constantly working to make your site better.  It’s just one of the advantages of being our customer. Often, these changes are not immediately noticeable, but they give your site better performance, more security, or set it up for future capabilities.

A few weeks ago, Apple released its new operating system Snow Leopard. Customers that bought the upgrade didn’t see much difference in the way the operating system worked beyond a few very minor tweaks. And yet, there was a very big – if subtle – difference. The new OS takes up less space on the hard drive than its predecessor, and most importantly, the computer runs faster.

Rather than focus on new features, Apple decided to focus on refactoring existing ones. Refactoring is the development process of rewriting code to make it run better, be more flexible, and take up less space. It’s essentially an optimization process that removes bad code and sets the software up for future growth and benefits. Apple now is set up to add complex features and enhancements much more easily because they don’t have to worry about the foundation they’re building on.

When you hire someone to build a custom website, refactoring is a subtle but critical benefit that you miss out on. Unless you’re willing to pay to have existing features redone, there is little chance your developer is going to go through and improve on what already works.

Unfortunately, the consequences of not having someone keeping track of these things ‘behind the curtain’ can be very bad. For example: if you’re running Wordpress and aren’t monitoring your install, you’re exposing yourself to security risks. Just this week, WordPress announced that there’s a security threat affecting certain versions of its software. If you’re running these versions, either you pay to have them upgraded (it can get tangly if you’ve got any customizations) or risk having your sitehacked.

If’ you’ve got an AgentMethods site, you’ve got nothing to worry about. We’re already on it. If you don’t, you’re on your own!