7 Ways Insurance Companies Should Use Social Media

I work for an insurance company. I’m fairly new to this social media world, but have fallen madly in love with it. Pairing these two pieces of my life has been an inevitability really, and I finally have compiled some illustrative examples of why an insurance company would adopt social media marketing activities.

I’m not big on over-hyped lead-ins either, so I’ll cut right to it.


1. Use Twitter.

Twitter can help a company create an easily accessible forum for gauging customer satisfaction and brand advocacy (or lack of). It can help a company establish a voice beyond traditional commercials and corporate & local sponsorships. It can also provide a beautiful distribution tool for promoting other web-wide activities your company is pushing. And wouldn’t it be great to see tweets like “@biginsurance found a way to give me better coverage for less money! Sweet!” start popping up in your replies tab?



Lots of companies with more tangible products can easily guage product satisfaction through online customer reviews at BestBuy.com or Amazon.com, but there is hardly anywhere for customers to give feedback for insurance and financial products. As Twitter becomes more popular and mainstream to web users, its mass appeal will start to take shape. It will be necessary though, for a company pumping insurance related messages to remain inventive and interesting in order to maintain its fickle followers.


2. Start Blogging

Insurance companies have multitudes of information they could be delivering. Not just press releases, but worthwhile stories like "Watch our Rates to Drop in 6 States Overnight", "Uh-oh, I Just Got Rear-Ended, Now What?", "We’re Cracking Down on Fraud, Read What Stupid People Got Caught Doing", and all of the other information companies know but don’t share openly.


I think a customer receiving a new bill, that’s more expensive then the last deserves to know why. Why not add a link to a post that explains the whys. Customers have a tendency to act rationally when they understand.


Most companies are calling for increased amounts of transparency to potential and current customers. Why not create a easy to access touch point that your company is able to internally moderate. Don't be afraid to call out some of the bad with the good, it's what can make your company feel more personal. It's also a great place to showcase pictures that accompany your stories, which can also give your brand personality.


3. Dive Head First Into Facebook and MySpace

This doesn’t necessarily mean create a profile for your company and starting friending everyone (and their mother). It does mean that you should allow customers to show pride with "bumper stickers" and other applications, which could elicit conversation from potential customers. "I didn't know you had that insurance, I've been looking around but always heard they're really expensive, what do you think?". A company could also tie in a option for people getting a quote on-line to share their experience in their public news feed. The share could include their rate, what they thought of their agent, whether or not they will buy, etc.


As the web continues to evolve the development of a single user profile that interacts with most any site, a users profile will likely contain more information about the products and services individuals use. These profiles will allow open communication lines for discussions around satisfaction and experiences, and intricate new tools are being developed to measure brand advocacy throughout the entire medium. This exposure and openness means that making and keeping customers happy is even more crucial to a companies success.


4. Use Social Media Internally

These tools, used internally, can help foster innovation, creativity, and aide problem solving. Most of the dollars associated with the consideration for implanting social media will be concerning the outward focus at the larger consumer base. I think the low hanging fruit of the social media tree is internal implementation.


In a company with more than 10,000 employees, I know there are many more resources available that are hidden in layers of unknown departments. Give me a place where I can ask "What other areas of the company have partnerships with XYZ Company", or "Are there any good internally approved applications for Client Management and Marketing Expense tracking?", “Anyone know how competitive we are in Southern Colorado?” and see much more productive I can be.



5. Establish Expertise

When you become an expert managing these tools, you can utilize this skill set as a valuable benefit to attract B2B relationships, or strengthen current relationships. As you attract new relationships, find a way to offer other enterprise products. Financial institutions have always found ways to work together for mutual benefit, and expertise in this area for financial product lines could be a deal breaker.

Every company seems to be offering more and more specialties in important business areas. Its not likely that you could take two, seemingly identical companies and not find some piece of each that could benefit the other. Making relationships like this work, through all of the legal challenges, can bring enumerable opportunities for your to connect your business with others.


6. Allow, and Encourage, User Created Content


Develop a Facebook and MySpace extensions that allow for custom user created content, which can excercise a focus on whatever your corporate strategy may be; savings, citizenship, being financial unprepared, etc. Let users create jingles, ads, commercials... everything. And let them share it. Offer competitions and challenges to stimulate participation, or offer incentives to policyholders who create the content.


As the content is created, hype it. Have the content fit with web searches for your company, push it heavily with your own media accounts (Twitter, Blog, etc.), and make it easy for viral spread across the web. To do all of this, you might have to loosen your slacks a little around your branding guidelines and legal guidelines, but it can be well worth it.



7. Give Your Brand a Face


Allow service and claims reps to utilize these tools. Let them setup accounts that show them professionally. As insurance and other service industries continue to push direct relationships with their customers, they face the risk of losing the "buddy-buddy" factor. Just because newer demographics have more digital communication preferences, doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to have a face to put with our problem.


Social media is perfect tool to strengthen relationships with a customer who's channel preferences have become increasingly digital. Personally, I've had a claim outstanding for nearly 8 months now, and would love to be able to check it's status or receive updates, see pictures, and read notes through one of my online profiles. And let me choose to share some of the content, so that I don't have to post/Tweet to let everyone know that "My car is finally fixed" and then have to answer multiple times what happened in the first place. Link the history content straight to the back story and let your company show it's colors to people closest friends and family. Now that’s motivation to get the job done right, and right now.


Wrapping It Up

It’s not hard to make a mark in the social media world, and it shouldn’t be any different for an insurance company. I just found out that our company just hired a new social media genius, and I’m extremely excited to see what he brings to the table. I’m sure it will be a lot more, and a lot better than my ideas, but like I said, I'm a “n00b” at this stuff. But I’m learning.

Why People Hate Advertisers

I'd never seen these in Des Moines before, and now I can officially say that I have, and I hate them.

I shame any company that actually utilizes them. Sorry B-Bops.

WWE Universe

On June 9th, I posted my thoughts on a stunt that WWE chairman Vince McMahon pulled on Monday Night Raw.  On the show, Vince was giving out his own money to fans who entered the contest on-line, were able to answer their phone when called, and were able to give Vince the secret password.  The first secret password was "WWE Universe". 

I hadn't ever heard of WWE Universe before, and as a self admitted WWE super-fan, I was perplexed.  After contemplating the situation, could only assume that WWE Universe was something new, exciting, hype-able.  After I blogged my thoughts, I sat and waited... and waited... and nothing came. No news, no press release the next day, week...

And finally, at long last a post came, requesting fans to vote on a new WWE Universe logo.  Word was, this new, catchier brand would be taking the place of the WWE Fan Nation.  Awesome right?! Yah, I wasn't so sure either.

My problem with the situation, is that the WWE waited too long to release the logo and new brand.  After that night, I would think that the WWE fans were primed and ready for the new annoucement.  It seems a bit arrogant that the WWE marketing team would think that the mere repetitive mention of "WWE Universe", over a two hour span, would bury the concept deep enough with fans long-term memory to release the concept 2 months later.

Am I wrong?  Do you think this will actually work as they had hoped, or do you think something was possibly botched going through legal, IP, or somewhere else?

My Little Girl

It's 117 degrees but don't tell Lily!
She's a happy girl.

Interesting Take-aways From Last Week

Just a few interesting notes from the convention I worked last week.  I more than likely missed a few observations serving free popcorn to the thousands upon thousands of Shriners that overtook St. Louis, but here are my most noted items.

The Color Purple
My colleague and I handed out hundreds of keychains and stress balls.  Both came in a various assortment of colors, but no item color was commented on as much as the purple items.  For some reason, the people who chose purple always said something like "Ohh, I have to have the purple one" or "Purple is my grand-daughters favorite color".  None of the other colors generated this kind of response from the attendees.

That said, I think I need to research the color Purple, and see if I missed something in art class.

The Trick Pen - http://tinyurl.com/5nshfa
Just like every other booth, we were taking entries for a raffle.  The raffle for the pair of Men's and Women's Skagen watches got a lot of interest from the crowd, but the pen that was available for completing the forms got just as much.  Honest to God, half (if not more) of the people that used the pen tried to twist the ink-tip out of the bottom, instead of realizing that the pen actually had a cap that you needed to pull off.  After showing one guy how to work the pen, his only response was "Well son of a bitch."

I'm sure the maker put a lot of thought into the design of the pen, but I wonder if they really wanted it to confuse people the way it does?  I guess keep this in mind when designing anything, if the goal is to mimic, do it without confusion.

Surprise, It's Free
As I mentioned above, we gave away popped corn... FREE popped corn.  It was fairly devastating to hear person after person ask how much the popcorn was, and to see the look of suspicion on their face when we told them it was free.  We weren't selling anything, just doing PR work for our program, and people were suspicious of us.

It's kind of a sad piece of the story, realizing that people have been trained to be suspect of something offered out of kindness.

Un-booth-leavable
The one thing that I was fearful of, was realized early on at the convention.  Although our booth was full of flash, and coorporate flair, our message was buried within layers of banners, pegboards, brochures and raffle slips.  The one question one should never get asked, we were asked over and over and over again... "So what are you selling?"  Having to explain this to each person that entered our booth only left me a bit more saddened each time someone walked by without entering out booth to find out. Such waste.

My point here, treat a convention booth like a billboard for the people that "drive-by" without stopping.  If they can "get it" in a matter of seconds, you better consider not even trying to calculate a ROI.

Final Thoughts
Since this was my first convention, I am excited to make it back to more.  It's interesting to see the dynamics of each person as they work their way through booth after booth, and how couples and groups influence each other without intending to.  I think it would be fun to work a booth with The Paco.

How I Knew It Was Time

So you might have seen some of my status messages on various sites this weekend, proclaiming my recent purchase of a Playstation 3 system, and wondered, but why Seth?

I decided as a tribute to my final decision, I would post my decision reasons. And as I pondered my reasons for making the purchase, I started to realize that while I wasn't an early adopter on this one, I think that I am still one of the first of the late majority. That being the case, I have a good reason to think that the PS3 is 6 months or so from becoming a mainstay gaming system in lots more peoples homes.

But without further delay, here are my top 3 reasons for getting a PS3:

3. I've always been a Playstation and Nintendo person. I didn't go Dreamcast, and never turned Xbox. To be frank, I have always had a hard time getting used to the controller structure of Xbox, and know the Xbox system components have never been as capable as the Playstation systems.

2. The high-def format war ended up going the way of the Blu-Ray disc. And because I plan on getting a high-def TV in the near future, I needed something to play amazing quality movies with. On top of that, the multi-media functions and Playstation Store options make the PS3 as much of a Media Center PC as anything out there.

1. Sony just re-released the 80 PS3 model as a bundle with the final edition of the best game series of all time, Metal Gear Solid. The 80 Gb model is backwards compatible and will play all of the old Playstation games I hold dear, and has enough extra hard-drive room to store all the 1080p movie trailers I can get my grubby hands on. At a retail price of $499.99, and Wal-Marts $100 back gift card, the purhcase total nets a more respectable $399.99. Not a drop in the bucket I know, but I have spent a lot of time saving, and thinking through the purchase. I was ready.

So if anyone out there is thinking about taking the plunge into a new, high-end gaming system, I hope my ration proves useful in your decision. And if you're not quire ready to drop that much green, there's always the world's best selling system, the Nintendo Wii.

Targeting... When Go-to Came Too Late [Marketing]

Ryan from "The Office" defined target markets as "a way of looking at subsets of a larger population in closely related demographic groups". And while I agree with the theory around target marketing, I feel like it's old news. It seems like a company selling a certain product 10-20 years ago could "target" the appropriate audience, and it was their best option.

Nowadays, it seems like a company can target itself right into the ground. By setting your sights too closely around a specified group, you have the tendency to lose track of profitable business outside of your scope. I think a better method today to reach the right customer, is with the right message to a much further expanded audience.

The right message should be targeted to speak to the type of customer your business serves. Not to be confused with "White, 40+, Farmers, Within the 55511 Zip-code". You can't target a message to that. The key, is to find the persona of the customer you want to market to. A persona should look like this, "Hard working, Internet challenged, Truck driving, Boot wearing, Thermos toting, Deer hunting, Bass fishing, Product loyal, Cash paying son-of-a-bitch."

That's the type of information a business can use to define strategy, concentrate distribution, develop creative, and purchase media. That's the type of information that let's you engage conversation with to your target, regardless of age, occupation or geography. And that, is how you grow business without over targeting.

If you want to learn more about doing this effectively, read this book.

How much would you spend?

As I watch Vince McMahon give away $1,000,000 of his own money tonight to WWE Raw viewers, I find myself wondering why.

After the announcement that the password to claim the prize was "WWE Universe", I started to think that this was really an elaborate marketing scheme to build awareness for a new WWE brand. Rather than spend the time, effort and money to spread the word of WWE Universe in the print, digital and video world of WWE, why not ingrain that slogan/tagline into viewers minds instantly over two hours. Not only will viewers hear "WWE Universe" dozens of times during the show, they also must store it in cognitive memory, just in case Vince McMahon were to call them and ask for it.

The cost of mass marketing to drill "WWE Universe" into fans minds over time would far exceed the $1,000,000 Vince has put up this evening. So to large companies out there, looking to launch a new brand, or division, or product... I ask you, "What would you spend to have all of your customers be able to recall your new product by name just hours after, or even before it's release?"

Not a bad spend if you ask me.

At this point, I don't know what WWE Universe is, or what it will be. I don't even know if it will even exist after tonight, as this is all just my theory.

I Wish I Had a Picture of That

The other day I got to thinking about some times in high school that I wish I had pictures of. As I tried to recall more, I realized that some of these were classic moments not only fun for me to remember, but the whole school.

Since no one had camera phones all the way back in 2001, most of these events went undocumented. In tribute of these forgotten times, I've compiled my:

Top Ten High School Moments I wish I Had a Picture Of:

10. Levi Tarbell putting Sarah Knapp out with the sleeper hold in Home Economics.

9. TJ Dargin's giant turd causing mass hysteria and somehow managing to spread word throughout the school without even a break between classes.

8. The Student Council booth, where students signed the petition to pass the charter that made it so that once you got elected into student council, you would stay there.

7. Mr. Miller freaking out on Josh Clark after he rear-ended my car (like every other morning) in the elite parking line. I believe the conversation went like this, Mr. Miller - "What are you doing?!?" ... Josh Clark, "What are youuuu doing?".

6. When Clint Woodward's slip of tongue got him in trouble for telling someone she would have to "Shit on the floor". (Back then a swear during class actually got you in trouble.)

5. I'm pretty sure Keith Grosvenor farted on a Brain Bowl judge once... and if not that, Jesse Bronson doing the super slide at every Brain Bowl event in 2000.

4. Shawn McDanel falling on his face while running onto the football field for the homecoming game. Poor guy.

3. I'd like to have a chart that depicts where I actually spent my time Senior year. I would guess this would be the approx. breakdown: In Class - 55%, Student Council Activities - 15%, Travel - 15%, Computer Tech Room - 10%, Sick - 5%.

(UPDATE) I actually put this together after I finished writing. See it and descriptions HERE.

2. The dance when I hyper-extended my knee the night before the ACTs.

1. The time I hit my one and only high school home-run at a JV Game in Corydon.

Failure (Marketing)

I got this marketing piece in the mail the other day, and had to share how poorly it was done. I think the individual(s) responsible for this portion of the piece should seriously consider a career change.

I was originally intrigued by the articles Cinderella story, but ended up laughing at the production quality of the content. If you haven't made your way up to the piece to find the faux pas yet, go ahead and take a peek.

If you can't seem to find the hilarity of the piece, I'll go ahead and point it out for you now. Check out the white text at the bottom called out with the dark background, "Looking for ways to boost attendance at your events...". Then check out the picture. Empty seats everywhere.

Whoever put this together, did not take into account the juxtaposition of the called out text to the rest of the page. Whoever approved this piece, did not spend much time looking for the right things.

For everyone out there working designs that will eventually touch someone outside of your team, department and company, please spend some time making sure what you have put together has all of the elements of what you are trying to sell. If you are selling pink lemonade, show pink lemonade. If you detail cars, you better show me something spotless. And if your job is to increase attendance, you better show me a packed house in every picture.

Today consumers love to make fun of marketing as much as they do ignore it. Don't get caught with your pants down.

Ten Ton Sword (Technology)

Businesses and people, both LOVE technology. The smell of a freshly opened box, the hum after the first power-up, the crisp speed of the initial load... It's all very exciting, no matter what the new technology be; HDTVs, DVRs, computers, iPods, iPhones, or software. But everything technological comes at a price, beyond that of the sticker price.

It seems more and more often I amaze myself, when it comes time to get into bed. I find myself asking "Where did the night go"? Running through the list each night, I have started to notice how much time I spend not only enjoying my wonderful technology, but configuring it.

For example:

DIGITAL PHOTOS: Pictures are a great place to start. Pictures are perfectly suited for a digital medium, because pictures are taken to be shared. We can share pictures via e-mail, on websites like flickr, shutterly, and facebook, or we can order prints of these pictures from a multitude of sites and have this shipped to us or pick them up at most local stores.

THE PROBLEM: Managing pictures has become one of the most difficult things for me to manage. For example, the decision must be made on how you are going to categorize your photos. Will it be by date, event (birthday party), subject (the baby), quality (good), action (to print), or some combination of factors? And once the decision is made, you have to commit to that decision, and not resort back to "dumping" in your My Pictures folder. All of that work, just to know what pictures are where.

And while pictures aren't the only digital media we have to manage, it makes my point. The time I spend taking, importing, categorizing, touching up, tagging, emailing, and uploading pictures can take up a whole evening. Throw in a music library (adding, deleting, editing, moving), movies (ripping, converting, uploading), tv shows (ripping, converting, naming), and so many other things, it really becomes a gruesome task.

I guess what I really want to know, is what other technology snags people run into, and what you do to cope?