When you make yourself easily available to clients and prospects you build brand value, market your agency, and sell more policies.

Let's learn through a story:

Your client is talking to a friend over a cup of coffee in the office break room. The friend, in the course of conversation, mentions that she is finally moving out of her apartment and buying a house. You are a good agent and your client is very satisfied with the service you've provided her over the years so like any good client, she tells her friend it would be silly to do business with anyone but you and writes down your phone number.

The friend, after working together many years, places a large amount of value in your client's recommendation. So she goes back to her desk after their break and immediately picks up the phone to dial your number, only to find the line is busy.

In 2011, phone numbers are very rarely busy. But after several attempts throughout the afternoon the friend begins to get anxious. Buying a house is stressful business and she wants to get the insurance part of the deal out of the way early.

So the friend calls one of your competitors that she passes everyday on the ride to work. She has every intention of giving you a shot at her insurance program. But your competitor picks up the phone and his quote is “good enough.” So the friend purchases the other guy's policy.

In this story, you lost the friend's business because you were not available when you were needed. To a certain extent, this example is farfetched. Busy signals are a thing of the past. But they weren't 10 years ago. Ten years ago this was a very plausible scenario understood as part of doing business.

This is what is happening if you do not have a presence on social media. Prospects are actively shopping for insurance representation and if you are not making yourself available they are going to choose to do business with someone else.

I'm not saying you need to give up traditional forms of insurance sales, hire a vice president of social media, buy a server and start posting three blog articles a day. But you do need a presence online, because people are shopping in online communities and it's not just Gen Y.

Start small
If your specialty is personal lines create a Facebook page. If you work predominately in the commercial lines market create an account on LinkedIn. Start with one social media platform and get comfortable with it. Take a few minutes every day to update your status, start a discussion, respond to questions, post an event, post a picture of a client or invite someone to coffee.

Build your presence online just like you built your book of business, slowly and with care. You should be proud of your online presence, because for some of your clients that is going to be their first impression of you.

Here are three things I want you to do today, right now, to get yourself started in the social media world (if you don't have on account on any of these platform create one, it takes 2 minutes):

1. Log into Facebook Search for your favorite client business or personal. Write a two sentence comment about why you like doing business with them. EASY!
2. Go to search.twitter.com. Type in city and state where you do business and follow 10 people and/or businesses who are active your community. EASY!
3. Sign into LinkedIn. Create a company page for your business. Write one really awesome sentence on why people should buy insurance from you. Then invite five current customers to follow your company. EASY!

It should take you approximately 35 minutes to do all three of these things. If you can't spare 35 minutes in your day to be more available to your clients you are fooling yourself, not me.