A recent survey from Forrester Research suggests independent insurance agents need to have a little more fun. Consider: ‘When it comes to “enjoyable,” consumers rated independent agents “poor,” but gave them “good” ratings for “meets needs” and “easy to work with.”’ Well, two out of three ain’t bad, but what if your agency could cancel out that insurance dread and score 3 out of 3? This low ‘fun’ score is precisely why insurance agents find it so challenging to come up with social media content – social media is all about fun, and…well, socializing.
Who was #1 on the enjoyable list? USAA. USAA is a unique animal, to be sure, but there is something to be learned from their Facebook page. I just scanned their currently displayed wall, top to bottom. Nowhere did I see a we-can-save-you-money sales pitch or read a dreadful claims scenario wherein someone found out they didn’t have the right insurance. USAA understands that Facebook isn’t a medium for the hard sell…it’s for fun.
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
What is it that makes Apple’s iPhone, iMac, iTunes, and other products so wildly successful and easy to use. One suggestion, quoted in a recent NY Times article, is that they are ‘disease’ free; that is, none of these devices is afflicted with ‘featuritis’.
“A defining quality of Apple has been design restraint,” says Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consultant in Silicon Valley…They are edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that came into an engineer’s head, an affliction known as “featuritis” that burdens so many technology products.
We see insurance agents struggling under the weight of management system features; independent agents have the freedom to represent any insurance company that will sign a contract; to launch a facebook page or twitter feed; agents can build and manage their own websites without worrying about restrictions imposed by one mother-ship product supplier. But does all this freedom of choice lead to featuritis? What is the minimum feature set delivering maximum benefit for independent insurance agents? What do they need from the companies they represent, the marketing programs they choose, website solution and social media options…what is that minimum set of features that is super simple to use and provides the most important set of benefits in such a way that it would make Apple wish they had come up with the answer?
Poor old email. Celebrities don’t use it to communicate their fans, and infotainment talking heads encourage viewers to check their Twitter tweets. So is email dead? Should we send out the funeral service notices? The chart below tells the tale.
Poll: How do you share information you receive in email?
Despite the hype surrounding blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and social networking in general, email is still the way most people share information with friends, family, and associates. Social media is a very, very distant second. That doesn’t mean that your insurance agency shouldn’t be developing a social media strategy, but the chart should give you a visual clue as to the amount of time you should be spending on that social media vs. gathering, managing and using email addresses.
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 can’t quite leave the theme raised in the last post: is it technology or is it communication? I also can’t quite move on from using the lazy approach to posting: video. Watch as I opine: I don’t see the reticence many insurance agents have toward using email as being a new phenomenon; and watch as I wax nostalgic on managers from my distant past not setting a good example using tools they encourage others to use. Insurance agents are under utilizing email, a tool that is certainly in decline as social networking gets bigger. It’s time to maximize email benefits before it’s too late.
