Smart's Insurance Marketing Tips Blog

First things first: A pitch isn’t the same as a press release. A press release is a self-contained news story that you provide to a number of news outlets, which, if you’re lucky, reporters will rewrite so that your release fits their style and space — and you can run the release as-is on your Read full article

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I referred to as an SEO insurance agency news release, which I described as a news release that doesn’t go out to the traditional newswire services, such as BusinessWire or PR Newswire. Rather, it’s a news release that’s placed instead on one of the “free” or nearly Read full article

In my last post, I started to explain some of the basics of how to write a news release. To illustrate, I used a draft of a news release announcing SmartsPro’s new website service for insurance agents, which I will refer to here. In terms of style, I already mentioned the importance of using the Read full article

I’ve written several posts about news releases, but not about writing the news release itself and what goes into a proper news release. Although the SEO news release does not always maintain the objective, reportorial tone taken by a traditional news release, where opinion and superlatives about the subject of the news release are confined Read full article

In my last post, I tried to clarify the differences between the traditional news release and what you might refer to as the SEO insurance agency news release.  If you take the SEO route, you are foregoing the traditional Tier-1 distribution that reaches journalists. Journalists are not going to be surfing the web for your Read full article

One of the most underutilized but important insurance agency marketing tools is the insurance agency news release. Although the SEO news release is now the latest craze, it doesn’t replace the traditional news release.  In fact, it effectively bypasses the intent of the traditional news release, as I’ll explain. The SEO news release includes keywords Read full article

I’ve been thinking of writing about public relations for insurance agencies, so I started reviewing a little booklet that I wrote on the subject a few years ago.  I was surprised to recall that in the 1990s, insurance agents rated “image” fifth in the top 15 factors critical to agency value. What does “image” even Read full article