It's a new world we live in. A world where professional athletes, musicians, and celebrities announce important public statements, hot news, share daily thoughts, and post daily blogs on social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and more. So if it works for them, why can't it work for you as an independent insurance agent? I'm here to tell you that it can, and it DOES! The best news? IT'S FREE!

Common misconceptions about these new social networking tools are that they are "for kids only" or "adults don't use them." You're correct that the youth of America are using these tools. In fact, 2/3 of the North American youth are spending time visiting these sites daily. The statistic that may surprise you the most is that 1/3 of adults in North America - that's 176,240,196 people - also use these social networking sites.

Now that we know that people are on these sites, how do you get involved and make sure you have a branded presence there too? The most important piece of the puzzle is to have a plan. Don't just throw together a Twitter and Facebook page and call it a day. Have a clear set of goals for what you would like to achieve from these new marketing mediums, and do it ahead of your competition. What are your main objectives? How will you achieve them? Is there someone that might be better at this than you that you can assign to the task?

Social Network Marketing 101:

1. Develop a plan and your objectives for each of the most popular, most successful social networking sites.
2. Assign someone in your office to update your agency's site daily. They require a lot of attention.
3. Encourage member interaction to get people involved.
4. Be fun! Don't be stuffy: be different. This will help with the viral aspect of your campaign.
5. Leverage online media tools such as videos, podcasts, streaming audio, video blogs, etc.
6. Integrate other marketing/advertising mediums to promote your social networks (corporate website, email newsletter, blogs, etc).
7. Include a link to your networking sites on everyone's email signatures.

The task of social network marketing is not an easy one, and a lot of people like to leave it up to the experts. Astonish Results is creating and implementing entire social network campaigns for each of their agencies so that they can spend more time doing what they do best: selling insurance. Astonish helps their agencies by educating them on the best tools in the world to give them the best and most optimal branding on the web. For your own CUSTOM Social Networking Business Plan, request a virtual presentation at www.astonishresults.com. Every day you wait, your competition is conquering the cyberspace world, while you are...?