Not every industry deals with topics that are universally understood, and the insurance industry is certainly no exception. But if you’re planning on starting an insurance blog or risk management blog, you might wonder: what’s the best way to tackle these complex subjects?
More times than not, you’ll be writing blog posts tailored to your ideal client – not to other professionals in the insurance industry. Therefore, your target audience may not fully understand every insurance concept or term that you may want to blog about. Still, that doesn’t mean you should toss all your ideas into the wastebasket.
The two components that make content effective are audience relevance and engaging and compelling storytelling. It’s important to devise a blog strategy that strikes a balance between confusing and technical insurance concepts and simplicity, transforming difficult-to-understand ideas into easily readable snippets. Keep reading to learn how to break down complex subjects into bite-size bits of information.
1. Consider This: The Best Blog Topics Always Answer a Single Question
Think of a normal interaction with a client. As an insurance carrier or insurance agent, you probably receive a range of questions about insurance products daily – what are the exclusions on a general liability policy? What is the employers’ liability on a workers’ compensation policy? Does my business need employment practices liability?
Now what if you could take some of your most-asked questions and turn them into SEO-friendly blog posts designed to attract more prospects?
All blogs serve to inform, and your insurance blog is no different. But if you clog up each blog post with too many ideas or attempt to answer too many questions in a short amount of space, you’re only going to confuse your readers. And since 47% of B2B buyers read three to five pieces of content before even engaging with a salesperson, you can’t afford to publish overly complex posts.
If you find a broad topic, like auto insurance, narrow it down to a single concept, such as bodily injury coverage or medical payments coverage. By boiling down the scope of your topics, you’ll find it easier to simplify the question you plan to answer.
As you write each blog post, ask yourself: what information is essential to helping the reader understand this idea? While blogs that are too simple may come across as frivolous or generic, blog posts that aren’t simple enough will make it difficult for the everyday person to follow your advice.
2. Create Down-to-Earth Blog Content
Accessible content doesn’t contain jargon. If your readers have to pull out a glossary of insurance terms while reading your blog post, you’ve missed the mark.
To make people care, you should use simple language in your blog posts. While patronizing your audience will turn readers off, writing how you speak when you’re not on the clock can help eliminate unnecessary jargon.
As you create a content strategy for your insurance blog, think about language. Industry-specific jargon, like “aggregate limit” and “earned premium”, will only bog down your content. Also, if you’re trying to use a word, like “indemnity”, “recision” or “subrogation”, that requires readers to rifle through a dictionary, stop and ask yourself if it’s essential to your piece. If not, go ahead and scrap it.
However, it’s important to note that there’s a gray area when it comes to jargon. For example, while acronyms should never be used alone, if you introduce what the acronym stands for on the first instance, you should be okay. Let’s say you want to talk about ALAE. Instead of inserting the acronym and moving on, you should introduce it like this: allocated loss adjustment expenses (ALAE).
Also, you may find that you need to use technical terminology. Just make sure to clearly explain it and use examples to ensure your audience understands what you’re trying to say. For instance, if you’re discussing life insurance and need to talk about its face amount, you should clarify that face amount refers to the sum of money provided upon the policy’s maturity date or death of the insured.
3. Write Content That Uses Analogies to Break Down Complex Ideas
Coming up with an effective blog strategy is a lot like planting a tree. First, you must sow the seed and then water the earth it’s buried beneath on a regular basis. And with patience, grit and constant care, you’ll eventually see your little seed sprout.
This is an example of an analogy. When you’re trying to break down complex insurance ideas, analogies provide a common ground between you and your client.
Analogies are where two worlds collide. In this space, you can compare two concepts in a way that your audience will be able to understand. For example, life insurance companies often explain the differences between term-life and whole-life insurance by using the time-honored rent vs. own analogy.
4. Write and Rewrite Content for Simplicity
Every word of a blog post should have a purpose. This rings even truer for insurance company blogs, because it’s next to impossible to explain complex ideas with complex sentences. When writing blog posts, you need to double down on your writing and self-editing process to create short, concise sentences – or risk losing your audience’s interest. In order to cut the dead weight from your writing, consider the following tips.
After the first draft of your blog post, go back and slowly read it out loud. Do you notice words such as “just” or “very?” Are there any run-on sentences? Can you find any instances where breaking up a wordy sentence will better convey your ideas? Asking yourself these questions will help you simplify your writing further.
As you revise, put yourself in the shoes of your audience. What ideas could require additional details? Are there too many in-depth explanations? At the end of the day, you need to find the sweet spot between oversimplification and complexity.
Writing clear, simple, jargon-free blog posts for your insurance blog takes a lot of time and resources. And if you don’t have any empty slots in your weekly calendar to dedicate to blogging, you may start to fall behind – or worse – publish posts that haven’t been thoroughly revised for readability. Fortunately, the monthly blogging subscription packages from Virtucom Group are designed to take the responsibility of blogging off your plate, so you can publish blog posts that engage your prospects on a regular basis.
