Snowpocalypse: When weathermen predict large amounts of snowfall in a short period of time – Urban Dictionary
Snowmageddon: President Barack Obama’s term for the February snowstorm that shut down Washington, D.C.; or End of (school) Days due to an excessive snowfall event.*
What does any of this have to do with insurance? Surely, if your insurance agency is located in an area experiencing a snowpocalypse, you have an insurance story to tell. Maybe it’s how your staff were able to work from home to help clients with claims issues, or a heroic trip into the office to be there for your agency customers at a time they might be more likely to need your services. Making the connection between a weather event and what is going on with your agency, your staff, and your customers is an easy blog or Face Book riff. You don’t need to write a new chapter for War and Peace every time you post to Social Media. And who knows what kind of interest your short post might engender, particularly if you can add a photo or video?
*Note: Snowmageddon was the number 1 trend on Twitter at one point during the February, 2010 snowstorm
A new blog can be set up in a snap. You can add a Facebook page for your insurance agency in just a few minutes. Your insurance agency can prove it is in the know by setting up a Twitter profile. Starting a social media account is easy. Keeping up your shiny new blog or Facebook profile takes time, so much time, that most blogs quickly fall silent; in 2008 Technorati – the blog devoted to blogs – found that of the over 130 million blogs they tracked, only 5% had been updated in the last five months.
Deriving real business benefit from social media takes even more effort, and likely some cost, despite all the pundits who extol the virtues of this fee medium. There is no doubt that blogging and Tweeting can add first stage SEO benefits for your insurance agency if you put the time and effort into these communication tools. But what about the benefit of attracting a legion of loyal friends and fans to your social media space? This may be most difficult of all for an insurance agency.
This week, Marketing Sherpa published a chart showing why consumers become fans of businesses. While all of the reasons people friend businesses can be leveraged by insurance agencies, the top two, “Learn about new products and features” and “Learn about specials and sales” can probably be ruled out.
Why Consumers Become Fans of Businesses
( Note: Max Connectors are defined as people with over 500 ‘connections’)
Insurance regulation prohibits discounts and sales, so unless you can be really creative, you are going to be hard pressed to post any content in this category that will attract a consumer following. There is plenty of product innovation taking place in the insurance industry, as those of us working in the business know, but new product features and services tend to hold interest only to industry insiders. That new coverage provision just can’t mesmerize the populace the way the newest iPhone, Windows operating system, or hybrid sports car can.
The remaining two content categories – “Company Culture” and “Entertainment” are probably rich enough to provide a thematic basis for your insurance agency social media content, but regularly posting this type of compelling content isn’t something most of us have been prepared to do.
I’m not suggesting that leveraging social media for the business benefit of your agency isn’t a strategy you should consider. But I am saying that Facebook and blogging are not money-for-nothing, get-rich-quick schemes. Social media takes as much time, effort, and expense as other business development options, so weigh your expectations and commitment accordingly.
Marketing Sherpa posted survey results about how businesses in general think social media (SM) fits into the marketing tool box. Basically, most businesses see SM as a complementary, but not a replacement tactic. However, most businesses view SM as important enough to warrant its own budget line item and staff. What does your insurance agency think about social media like Facebook? Take a poll and me know.
I read an enewsletter this morning, and the article started a chain of events that lead me to post here. The chain of events goes like this: I click on a link in the newsletter that leads me to an excellent blog post about the evolution of businesses using social media for marketing. That blog post compels me to look at a funny YouTube Video and check out Xerox’s corporate website. Finally, here I’ve come full circle, doing exactly the same thing the enewsletter did: summarizing and commenting on the blog post and Xerox’s social media campaign.
The blog post I read was from Jason Falls’ Social Media Explorer blog and it is worth reading in its entirety. Here is the readers digest version of the post, points that should be considered by any insurance agent on the precipice of jumping into Facebook or some other social media venture.
Social media is about relationships and social media works for businesses when people have something they can be passionate about. In the case at hand, passion takes the form of amusement over a video (more on that in a minute). It’s hard to get anyone to be passionate about insurance as a product, but let me reproduce a quote from Jason’s blog post here that is instructive:
I polled folks on Twitter Saturday, asking what compels them to talk about brands. Almost to a person, the answer was something along the lines of, “When I have an exceptionally good or exceptionally bad experience.”
So customer experiences, as well as humor are candidates for Facebook content. But for heaven’s sake, leave the insurance products out.
Social media campaigns are generally about branding, and the bottom line results are going to be hard to measure, just as with any other brand building initiative. What that means is that you better have some patience with your campaign, and you will need to find some other way to measure success besides new insurance policies written.
Everyone has jumped on the social media bandwagon by now, so standing out is going to take more time and effort than the early days when only a few businesses were using YouTube or keeping a Facebook group or page. Success, however you measure it, might require more of your money or time. To get a feel for the level of competition, take a look at the craft that went into Xerox’s Information Overload Syndrom video.
I’m not suggesting you throw in the towel, just that as a a small local insurance agency, you have to be realistic about social media competition , how you need to use social media, and the kind of results you can expect.
As a final note, let me point out that social media campaigns do work. If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be reading this post. Because you have, the brand awareness meter for Xerox, and for that matter Jason Falls, have been nudged a couple of notches.
Boy are we hearing all about it: Gotta have a blog! Gotta get your insurance agency on Facebook! Start Tweeting! But what do you blog? What goes on Facebook, and don’t even get me started on Twitter…I’m going to make some suggestions here, and then provide a concrete example of what an insurance agent could put on Facebook, a blog, or even Tweet about.
1. If it fits on your agency website, then put it there, not on a blog or Facebook. Insurance agency websites are about hardcore insurance information, and service and sales access. Don’t put company claim information on your agency Facebook page unless you just can’t get your webmaster to add that info to your agency website. If you simply must talk about claims or other service information on your social networking site, keep the details to a minimum and link back to your agency website for more.
2. If it doesn’t fit on your agency website , then put it on your blog, etc. Human interest stories, humorous or interesting (?) insurance factoids and anecdotes, employee features and the like might fit the theme of your agency website, but maybe not. If you have any doubt, put this kind of content on your Facebook page first; you can always move it to the agency website later. Remember, your blog gives you an opportunity to lure readers because you can be a little more colorful, interesting and less topic-constrained than you would be on your insurance agency website.
3. Use Facebook and Twitter to update followers about changes to your agency, agency website, or just enlighten fans with the most interesting situation you dealt with this week (names changed to protect the innocent). Make connections between your agency business resources and your social networking sites.
4. Start small. Somebody has to keep up your blog, Facebook page, or Tweet. If posts are few and far between, you will lose followers. Instead of jumping right into a blog, add a page to your website for freestyle content. If the page grows, make it a website section, if it grows some more, then make it a blog or move the content to Facebook and continue updates there.
The example, suitable for an insurance agency blog or Facebook page and suitable for Tweeting:
Numerous surveys, including several conducting by the NAIC, make it clear that most people don’t know what their insurance policy covers and what it doesn’t cover. But the surveys are just percentages of survey respondents, what about you (by that, I mean an individual prospect)? Try one of these quizzes, then call me to review your coverage needs and how well your current insurance program protects you – or go to the agency website to learn more…
Your employees might just be inadvertently representing your agency while bouncing around on any of several social networks (LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.). Does your insurance agency need a policy regarding blogging, ‘Facebooking’ or Tweeting on Twitter? The New York Times seems to think they need one, and here it is:
* Don’t specify your political views. This includes joining online groups that would make your political views known.
* Don’t write anything you wouldn’t write in The Times on your profiles, a blog, or as commentary on content you share.
* Be careful who you ‘friend’. Since this is a tricky subject, The Times suggests that its reports “imagine whether public disclosure of a ‘friend’ could somehow turn out to be an embarrassment that casts doubt on our impartiality.”
* Using email addresses found on social networks to contact individuals is fine but the standard rules apply: treat the person fairly and openly and don’t “inquire pointlessly into someone’s personal life.”
* The Standards Editor must be consulted before contact is made with a minor.
A complete article about the NY Times and their social networking policy can be found at Econsultancy (head up courtesy of WOMMA).
An easy way to make sure you update your insurance agency blog is to use RSS feeds to have potential blog content and ideas pushed to you. You can riff on information provided for you, but be sure to put some kind of unique spin on it. What does the information mean to businesses and consumers in your market area? Could you expand on some key points?
If you don’t know what an RSS feed is*, you owe it to yourself to check it out. RSS feeds can be quickly and easily set up to ‘push’ content from most news, blog (and other websites) to a RSS reader of your choice (Google Reader, My Yahoo!, etc.).
One feed you should definitely set up is to the Insurance Information Institute’s blog. They post regularly, and often include statistics and study related information that can be effective in your agency blog.
By the way, you can set up an RSS feed to this blog, and if you take the plunge and set up an agency blog, you should definitely encourage others to set up feeds to your insurance agency…
Blogging remains a foreign concept to many insurance agents and many larger businesses as well: only 12% of Fortune 500 Companies are using blogs in their communication mix. But smaller companies have caught on to the business benefits of blogs. A recent estimate put the number of business related blogs at over 850,000. Unless your insurance agency has an active blog (or two), you are missing on an effective and virtually free way to get more customers, quality control information you provide to consumers,and increase website content and generate more site traffic (i.e., even more new customers).
One tool, one tactic, and a multiplicity of benefits. What are you waiting for? The trick is to find a way to take a concept unfamiliar to many insurance agents (blogging) and embed that concept in your agency practices in a way that quickly breeds familiarity.
Here is how a blog might fit into an agency ecosystem:
Blog set up with all producers and CSRs with ‘author’ permission (that is, everyone can post to the blog).
Your insurance agency web administrator monitors your blog weekly
Scenario:
Customer calls or emails CSR or producer with a question.
CSR or producer determines if question is account or customer specific, or applicable to a broad cross section of customers or prospects.
If the question is account specific, the CSR or producer can answer the question via email or on the phone.
If the question and answer have broader applicability, the CSR or producer post the Q and A to the agency blog, then email the blog post linkto the customer.
Agency website admin reviews blog posts weekly; content is edited for accuracy, etc. Some content, with small modifications, can be moved to the agency website as an FAQ or article.
In the above scenario, the blog posts substitute for email content, and they present little extra effort. Responsibility for blog content is distributed across all staff vs. becoming a burden for one person; and by extension, responsibility for website content refresh is also shared. The blog would be a resource first for individual customers and insurance agency staff, and later, a resource for a wider audience, either as blog posts or edited posts migrated to agency website content.
Someone in the agency will have to review content for quality periodically; this is probably not being done now (with emails and phone conversations), and would constitute an additional task. But quality reviews are a good practice for a number of reasons. Using a blog as outlined above makes quality control possible in a way that would be far more difficult to manage with emails and phone conversations alone.
I can see some objections to inserting a blog into daily communications, but all objections will basically boil down to this consideration: Blogs and other Web 2.0 tools are routinely used by other businesses, and growing number of consumers – especially Generation Y. Is your agency willing to adapt to new communication tools to improve agency service and acquire new customers, or are you satisfied with the status quo? If capturing new customers and improving the quantity and quality your agency can deliver for basically no cost are objectives for your agency, then there is really no valid objection to blogging.
