“Engagement” is the buzzword of the day in social media. Brands have shifted their focus from recruiting fans and followers to creating dialogues
Dialogue relies upon an appreciative audience
with them. The hypothesis is that engaged fans will see the organization as more than a vendor of financial services products. Indeed, in a survey of members, Thrivent found that 42 percent of people who are age 45 and younger are more likely to consult the company about financial matters because of its presence on Facebook.
Engagement, however, is not that simple, because most insurers struggle to work out with whom they want to have a dialogue. Simply being a customer is not a compelling reason to have a conversation – account questions, maybe, but surely they are handled better via a telephone call.
On Facebook, the average number of interactions (a like, share or comment) by fans to an insurers post is a little more than three per 100 fans. This number, as with all averages, hides a very complex picture since engagement can come in many forms.
A common bond that exists with natural communities is an obvious advantage to a “let’s chat” conversation, and fraternal- and membership-based organizations such as Thrivent Financial, Modern Woodmen of America and USAA enjoy higher engagement levels (5.3 interactions per 100 fans, or 5.3 percent). Even higher engagement (12 percent) comes from pages that focus on lifestyle or occupation; good examples are found on the Facebook pages of Allstate Motorcycle, Acuities InGear for truckers and Horace Mann for teachers. Fans visiting these pages see beyond the insurance policy and into the community.
Social media engagement does not need to be a conversation or community, however; it can be the virtual equivalent of the high five. This is prevalent among the industry mass marketers that often accrue huge fan bases, thus rendering conversation a largely implausible goal. Flo, with more than 4 million fans on Facebook, can do little more than post content interesting enough to draw a smile or attract a like. Engagement rates are generally low (a little more than 1 percent), with Mayhem from Allstate as the current undisputed leader. The objective is less to do with engaging in a conversation but brand awareness, persuading consumers to spread your message through their networks.
Another form of engagement is “pass the parcel” – creating content compelling enough that the recipient immediately passes it on to his or her network. This can expand the reach dramatically, but also provides content for each person in the chain. This works effectively in the insurance industry because so much already builds on the distributed model. Agents are fast recognizing the value of social media to keep in touch with the connected consumer, but often struggle to develop a steady flow of interesting content. Insurers that address this agent need are enjoying strong engagement rates, especially from shares. Auto-Owners Insurance not only have an engagement rate of 35 percent, but 60 percent of that is the result of content shares. AGLA and Primerica also boast high engagement rates, and like Auto-Owners, the vast majority is with content-starved agents. In a recent survey of 293 independent agencies by B.H. Burke & Co., 60 percent have a Facebook page and 37 percent a Twitter feed. The problem is that 68 percent of those with social media activity have no plan.
Therefore, before embarking on social media and engagement measurements, it is critical to understand which community you most want to engage. Success, or lack of it, is very often the result of attempting to speak to multiple audiences and, as a result, speaking to none.
A sample selection of Facebook engagements statistics for insurers can be found at http://customerrespect.com/blog/collections/facebook-fan-table/
Tools can be really helpful when they are well designed and easy to find. It is not enough however to build a tool and put it online—it needs to be integrated properly with other content so that it is available to the right consumers when they need it. At the very least, adding a tool cannot cause confusion.
While recently reviewing ‘How Much Do I Need’ calculators on twenty leading US Life Insurance sites, we came across a situation where a confusing link to a useful tool could well lead to task abandoment or at least annoyance.
The graphic below was on the main life insurance page of a leading insurer. Although it appears to link a calculator, it instead leads to a life insurance quote engine.
There is a calculator on the destination page but you have to complete step one of the quote process before you can use it. Unless you have time and patience, the chances are you wouldn’t do that. Most people would just get slowed down in mid-task, and many would get annoyed.
This is a pity, because the calculator itself is well designed and ranked highly against competitors, and people that would find it while in the ‘get a quote’ task mindset would probably love it. So the issue is that the expectation formed by the link is not met by the destination.
The linking confusion is compounded by the fact that this company actually does have another (standalone) calculator linked from the end of the main life insurance page.
On most sites tasks aren’t managed: content is. Each department has its own content and puts it up on the website. On the other hand, consumers don’t think in terms of departments; they think in terms of their own tasks. This is why it is important that companies get staff to manage tasks rather than functional departments.
If there had been someone properly managing the ‘How Much Do I Need?’ task on the site from which the example above was taken, they’d almost certainly have ensured that this confusion did not arise.
Customer-centric, task-focused design should always be at the top of the agenda when adding new content is being considered.
Guest Blog Post by Gerry McGovern, CEO of Customer Carewords
Most customers need another page of your content like they need another piece of spam in their in inbox.
“The content people are killing the website,” a web manager told me sadly. Twelve months previously the company had reviewed its website. There were lots of good things happening but there was too much clutter, too much stuff. It was getting harder and harder for the customer to find what really mattered.
The website had links and promotions and content for events that had finished years ago, but was still left up there. “Our website never poops,” one web manager lamented. “We just publish, publish, publish, but nothing ever gets removed.”
Everyone agreed that they needed to make the website simpler. And then Monday arrived and the writers sent their stuff in as usual expecting it to be published. And when it wasn’t they stamped their feet and got their way and everything went back to the bad old normal.
Would you pay a sales rep based on how much he talked? We’ll that’s how most organizations pay content professionals. By the word. Churn it out. It’s so Pre-Web, so print thinking, so counterproductive and negative. It damages everything, and most of all it damages the reputation of content professionals.
We have to measure the outcome on the Web, not the input. What did your content help your customers do? If you can’t answer that question you should seek another career. Because long term there is very little future for the put-it-upper, churn-it-outer, content producer.
Another web manger sent me an email yesterday complaining that a content company was telling her that she must have fresh content because that’s one of the best ‘strategies’ for keeping customers coming back to her website. For starters, keeping customers coming back to your website is not a strategy. At best it’s a tactic and in most situations it’s a terrible one.
For a huge number of organizations keeping customers coming back to your website makes absolutely no sense at all. What’s in it for the customer? It’s all part of the Cult of Volume mentality. We should be focused on satisfied customers not repeat visitors. We should be focused on task completion, not page views or time spent on the page.
I have often been asked why I include my entire newsletter in the email I send out. ‘Because many of my readers want to read it that way’ is my reply. But aren’t you losing page views, I’m asked? I have absolutely no interest in page views. I’m seeking influence and one way to get that is making it as convenient as possible for people to read.
Whether because of journalism or literature most content professionals are very poorly prepared for a career in the Web. They want to write, write, write when what they should be doing is remove, remove, remove. The Cult of Volume will not last forever. Its members will ultimately be exposed as time wasters. Wasting your customers time is the biggest sin you can commit on the Web.
About Gerry McGovern
When Cisco, Microsoft or IBM need help in managing their websites, they turn to Gerry McGovern. Gerry is the founder and CEO of Customer
Gerry McGovern
Carewords. He is widely regarded as the number one worldwide authority on helping large organizations create more customer-focused websites. This is achieved through a unique management model that Gerry has developed called Top Task Management.
Information about Gerry McGovern can be found at http://www.gerrymcgovern.com and about Carewords at http://www.customercarewords.com
Augie Ray, Head of Social Media at USAA, says “Social media is not a strategy, it is a channel. If your company does not have a
How Long is a Piece of String?
This is great advice and insurers would do well to refer to it regularly. Often I am asked “Which insurer is doing best with social media?” This brings to mind an equally hard question: “How long is a piece of string?” There is no simple answer to either question but in the case of the former, it depends entirely on the business objective. The only true thing is that putting up a Facebook page because everyone else has one is wrong.
As an example, how can you compare recent initiatives from Progressive and Foremost Insurance?
Susan Rouser, social media manager at Progressive Insurance, says about the “Best Day” campaign: “We understand that not everybody is in the market for insurance right now, so when it comes time for people to shop, we want to be top of mind as the last brand that made them smile.”
Jeff Bair, Executive Director Strategic Management at Foremost, in describing their social media strategy says, “Supporting our distribution base, independent agents and producers is a key element of our value proposition. In strategic marketing, our informal mission statement is, ‘We think up cool stuff to help producers add and retain more customers.’”
Both are excellent campaigns, but with such different objectives, they cannot be compared. Equally flawed is any comparison of common metrics such as fan count and engagement rate. Don’t get me wrong, these metrics can be vital and interesting – and we spend a lot of time collecting them – but they are only important in the context of the business objective. Progressive’s Flo has a Facebook page that has 3.9 million fans and even though it attracts interaction, full-scale one-on-one dialogue is impractical. On the other hand, Modern Woodmen of America is highly engaged with its 1,300 fans. Just as valid are Allstate Motorcycle, with 60,000 Facebook fans that engage extensively with each other, and the Facebook fans of Joel McKinnon, a Farmers Insurance agent, that provide him a constant flow of news about their life events.
This is the exciting and possibly most challenging aspect of social media – it is about the most versatile channel we have experienced. While the phone and email are primarily one-to-one and a website is one-to-many, social media can be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many and many-to-one. So expect an ever-increasing array of uses and initiatives but don’t focus on social media, focus on how the channel is used to advance the business strategy.
In most social media boot camps, the advice is to listen—or at least read—before jumping in to post content. This is to understand the topics being discussed as well as the type and tone of conversations. Very few people want to go to their Facebook page, expecting holiday pictures and family notes, to find instead a rash of posts about buying life insurance. While listening is sound advice for carriers, for local agents, it might be the only advice you need.
Listening could be the most effective social media strategy
People use Facebook to connect with friends and family about things going on in their lives. Of course there are ‘over-sharers’ that generously let us know when they are eating dinner, but for the most part, it is all about life events. The term ‘life events’ should ring bells because this is what invariably triggers the need to make changes, be it to buy new items, or update or acquire insurance.
Typical postings on Facebook include birth announcements, engagements, new car purchases, a newly qualified teen driver in the house, or possibly a house move or new job. This is the true value of social media, allowing us to keep all of our friends up to date with changes in our lives.
The sharp-eyed agent sees these life changes as timely prompts to re-connect and to pass along helpful materials. Clearly, the agent must not come across as an “ambulance chaser,” but more as a friend who anticipates a need. This has limited opportunity for carriers themselves, at least in the short term; carriers do not have that ‘personal friend’ relationship nor do they have the bandwidth. This would require looking at the newsfeeds from thousands of fans, but for an agent with a hundred friends, most they know personally, this is a perfect way of keeping updated.
Now, I am not advocating agents become stalkers; besides you cannot view postings unless you are already connected. Customers must agree to connect to/like an agent page, for which they must perceive some value. There is no easy way to get customers to ‘like’ an agent’s Facebook page but the most successful and most obvious way is to ask—in person or by telephone. Most consumers say yes—as long as you do not overwhelm them with insurance postings.
Agents should post Facebook content on a regular, but not too frequent, basis to remind their customers they are there as well as offer a blend of helpful advice. More importantly, however, is that the content should include a mix of local news and events. The agent is a person; the goal is to acknowledge and deepen the personal relationship.
Social media is new, but at the same time, is “as old as the hills.” While telecommunications companies, retailers and even government departments are talking about creating dialogue and humanizing the brand, this is how insurance works. Consumers when asked, “Who is your insurance company?” are just as likely to name their agent as the carrier.
So insurers, understand the real value of social media to re-energize the local sales agent and take advantage of a technology trend that for once puts the insurance industry in the lead.
