I have to admit less than two years ago, other than having a Facebook page and a LinkedIn account; I didn’t know anything about social media. I certainly didn’t know how to use it. I went to a meeting about building an online brand and I was hearing words for the first time like RSS feed, Oktopost, Hootsuite and blog. Which by the way, I thought was a horror movie from the 1950’s about a blog that ate a town. This was a whole new world for me.  But, I knew it was a world that I needed to learn to expand my insurance brokerage.

I was fortunate enough to meet a new friend, Mitch Comstock, here in the Nashville area. Mitch is a computer guru that has learned to master social media for business. His specialty is LinkedIn, which I needed desperately. He knows all of the little tricks of the trade about LinkedIn and I am on board. He has a lunch and learns session once a week and I found myself there every week. Within just six weeks, I was writing helpful blogs, I learned it wasn’t a horror movie. I was joining groups, sending out monthly newsletters, collecting email addresses and most importantly finding connections to the people I wanted to meet and do business with and who we knew in common. It was an amazing transformation. I feel compelled to write this blog because of all of the help Mitch has given me in my business.

Just since applying what I learned, my life insurance agency has grown into 17 states and I am well on track to my goal of building a national team to market some very unique insurance products  designed to help the average American worker to start saving for retirement again for only $20 per week. I have increased traffic to my website by over 1,000%. Our appointments and closed deals are up over 500% as well.  I now actually train my agents on the skills I learned from Mitch. I now see the common mistakes that most business people make on LinkedIn and it reminds me of my mistakes, before I really learned what I was doing. I have to laugh when I hear business people say” Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are all a waste of time. That it doesn’t work.” I know they have not invested the time and money necessary to learn the skills.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Mitch. If you are in the Nashville, TN area and want to grow your business, this is a must. Just visit http://www.mitchcomstock.com/classes-training/ to learn how to use his systems that work. If you are not near Nashville, do yourself and business a favor and find similar classes in your area and learn as much as you can about social media. Your business will reward you with lots of profit.

“A creative idea plus a fresh network is the best way to go from zero to millions.” – @peretti

Image courtesy of ddpavumba at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

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Tim Wilhoit is owner/principal of Your Friend 4 Life Insurance Agency in Nashville, TN. He is a family man, father of 3, entrepreneur, insurance agent, life insurance broker, salesman, sales trainer, recruiter, public speaker, blogger and team leader with over 25 years of experience in sales and marketing in the insurance and beverage industries.