Other ‘good enough to get on with it’ products and services cited in the article include gmail and Zoho Writer, a Microsoft Word substitute with fewer bells and whistles (but most of the features you are actually likely to use). Oh yeah, and what about the advantages of a (relatively) unsophisticated, unmanned Predator aircraft vs. a $45 million F-16 (options, including pilot, may cost extra)?

Wired isn’t alone in noticing that cheap and simple solutions are often the best ones. In the upcoming sequel to Freakonomics – called Super Freakonomics – Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner have included a chapter chapter entitled The Fix Is In – And It’s Cheap and Simple.

I think this movement toward ‘good enough is more than effective’ is good news for agency manager perfectionists. Instead of wrestling with decisions about which expensive and complex software or web service to work with, just go with what works, and can be had for little or no money. Here’s a few favorites that insurance agency managers should be thinking about:

For video calls, and free long distance, try Skype. Depending on features you may wish to add (a traditional phone number, the ability to call out to land line or cell phones, e.g.), you may pay a few dollars a month.

And speaking of YouTube, there is no simpler way to get your video converted for streaming and to add it to your website.  We have been using YouTube for a variety of purposes at Confluency Solutions, and set up our own channel a little over a year ago.  Use YouTube videos to explain insurance coverage, the claim process, or to highlight safety issues.  Oh, and the cost – free.

Video email can be free, or you could pay as much as (gasp!) $99 a year.  Eyejot is our service of choice.  At Confluency, we use it for proposal deliveries, conference/trade show follow ups, and to set up renewal reviews.

Email management, CAN SPAM compliance, and newsletter sign ups can be facilitated by several services.  MailChimp is free, as long as your ‘subscription’ list is $500 or less.  After 500, the monthly fees are low.  (Your insurance agency might have 2,000 customers, but how many email addresses do you have?)

For web conferencing, including document and screen sharing, try DimDim.  The service is reliable, easy to use, and free for up to 20 attendees in a session.

The list could go on and on, but in my experience, these are good places for most insurance agencies to start.

Commandments 1. Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy)

Elective. Blogging takes time.  Having said that, it wouldn’t hurt to start a blog, even a personal one that you share with only a few people.  At least you will become familiar with the medium.

Commandments 2. Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere)

Mandatory. This isn’t hard or time consuming and has the defensive benefit of securing your business user name on the different social networks (this is different than claiming your insurance agency domain name).

Commandments 3. Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them)

Mandatory. There are lots of places where you can do this:  Facebook comes to mind immediately, and don’t overlook photo sharing services like Picasa and Flickr.

Commandments 4. Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find)

Mandatory. And leave the commercials out (remember those things you FF past using TIVO).  Nobody wants to see them.  Be educational, tell a story, feature your staff in the community.  There is no excuse for not taking advantage, this is maybe the lowest hanging fruit in social media because video upload is free (see YouTube, Viddler, and a bunch of others), and the video can be embeded all over the place once it has been created and uploaded.

Commandments 5. Thou Shalt Podcast (often)

Elective. You should really be doing video anyway.

Commandments 6. Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately)

Mandatory. Facebook and other social network services will send text messages to you, and other services provide similar options.  You should be using Google Alerts, or another service to keep tabs on where your business name pops up.  You need to monitor what people are saying about you for obvious reasons.

Commandments 7. Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs)

Elective.  Or Mandatory. I can’t decide.  Monitoring blogs can take up more time than you might be willing to commit, but commenting on the right blogs and social media can raise you profile and establish you and your insurance agency as an expert – there can be real brand value in this, and your time expenditure can be managed.

Commandments 8. Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone)

Mandatory. If you want to build a social network, this is how you get started.  That is, once you have established your profile.

Commandments 9. Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)

The most Mandatory of all. At least that’s what I think.  Thirty minutes a week isn’t too onerous a time commitment to explore and become familiar with a phenomena that has the potential to shape how business is done.

Commandments 10. Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)

Mandatory. I’m going to cheat on this one by including the rest of the Fast Company blog post on this commandment.  I’m reading between the lines:  don’t do product commercials.

And the most important commandment is creativity. That’s all. It’s just creativity and having fun. But you know what, that’s what your customers want. They want to see transparency. They want to see authenticity. They want to see you having fun. They want to be able to relate and communicate.

There are 3 levels of the Eyejot service, the first is free, the top level Pro Plus is $100 a year. Try it out at the free level, to get comfortable, but the uses and benefits at the $100 level will pay for itself over and over again.

There’s a lot that can be done with video, and having video production capabilities in the family (the kid with the Mac)gives you options. Clearly there is a place for professionally done video production, as well as a place for (reasonably professional), low/no cost, self-made videos (the 50-something with the digital camera).

In fact, there was a recent news item featuring CNN’s opening of ‘bureaus’ in seven cities where they previously did not have one. Expense is a determining factor in opening and maintaining a network news bureau – equipment, technical personnel, etc. The new CNN bureaus will provide broadcasts via web casts, ‘directed, filmed, and produced’ by the reporter. The vastly reduced cost of that kind of production makes it possible for CNN to provide direct coverage in more areas – an example of how fast and inexpensively produced video can coexist with higher production value programming. In fact, CNN has taken this a step further with their iReport service, where virtually anyone can report news and publish video ‘story’.

You have to wonder if there is a ‘best’ balance between videos that are slick and professional, and videos that are not edited with layered soundtracks. I’m sure there is no one right answer, but I’m going to throw this out there: providing only slick, commercial grade videos may suppress total views. Allstate Insurance has had a YouTube video channel for over two years, and the total views have been somewhat underwhelming at 7,114 (and 4 videos account for nearly 75% of all views). There are 37 videos on the Allstate channel, most have been viewed fewer than 200 times. I’m not suggesting that Allstate has not achieved acceptable ROI from its YouTube channel; remember, production and publishing costs would be low. I am suggesting that commercial grade videos may not always be the best way to go on the web, particularly when videos are published to a social site like YouTube.

What does this mean for your insurance agency? Don’t be afraid to have employees, customers, and others in the community produce videos for you. Worry less about matching TV quality production values, but focus on quick publication and community relevance. Your video views, and site traffic, should go up.

Videos produced and published by others can be a great source or video content for your insurance agency websites. But before you start embedding code, here are some considerations…

1. Copyright Infringements – Be careful what you use, policing is somewhat loose, and video uploaded by others may be be infringing on copyrights. The TV news networks generally take a dim view of others uploading news segments or snippets of television shows. Check to see who posted the video. If it is obviously the owner of the content (e.g., a TV station news broadcast posted to the TV station YouTube site – aka Channel). When in doubt, check directly with the source of the video to make sure the YouTube placement is OK.

2. Don’t create a pathway to your competitors. Other insurance providers post video, so before you flag a video as a favorite for display on your Channel, make sure it does not direct viewers to a competitor.

3. Many videos display a link back to another website, just be sure that the website meets your (and your site visitors’) standards of decorum.

4. Don’t push your luck with attention span. It’s best to assume your viewers have limited patience. Try to keep video times under 5 minutes, and make sure the video will engage a viewer within the first 10 to 30 seconds.

Coming in Part III…how to use your website videos