“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.

Agents acting in the role of a trusted expert write the majority of insurance today. For the consumer, this requires an enormous delegation of trust, possible because the agent is not an

It's Not How You Want to Sell that Counts

anonymous face of an insurance company but someone they know. Agents are people in the community and may have sold to, and trusted by, family members, friends and neighbors. This business model is now under threat, with consumers less connected to their communities and many not living in the same town as their families. The biggest threat, however, is the Internet, which has fundamentally changed the way people prefer to buy, and this applies to most products but the trend is now reaching insurance.

There are examples aplenty of companies that failed to adapt. Blockbuster failed to recognize that busy people forgetting to return videos was not a high-profit-margin piece of business but an opportunity for Netflix. Borders relied on consumers wanting to browse books and leaf through dust jackets in a comfortable environment. It did not catch on fast enough that some customers simply wanted to buy a book, a function ably supplied by Amazon.

These disruptive changes are happening all the time. Point-and-shoot cameras supplanted by cell phones, laptops by tablets, banks judged by ATM proximity. Classified ads, the lifeblood of newspapers, have moved to Craigslist.

In the insurance industry, Geico and Progressive have created the impression that auto insurance is a commodity purchased on price in a simple online transaction.

The challenge is to understand how consumers want to buy, not how you want to sell. This is not a simple problem, because not all consumers think the same way, and it will be disruptive to the industry with real winners and losers. For many consumers, making an appointment with an insurance agent in his or her office is simply not convenient or comfortable. Insurers selling exclusively through local agents may go the same way as Borders, along with the comfortable chairs. Amazon showed us that some consumers know what they want and are willing to buy in a way that is convenient to them.

All of this upheaval about buying and selling models leads us to social media. Do we really need to humanize our brand and to engage with consumers who have nothing better to do? There is something quite odd about consumers chatting to any corporate brand. Did you know that Waste Management, a company whose business is exactly what the name suggests, has over 16,000 fans on Facebook? Does that strike you as just a little bizarre?

What, then, is the role that social media really plays? Quite simply, it is all about decisions, about making choices. Instead of sitting in the leather chair in an agent’s office trusting the advice of an expert, some of us prefer to surf the Web, self-educating to become skin-deep experts. We do this for TVs, computers, hotels and coats, so why not insurance?

Once a list of criteria and options has been carefully created, we as consumers need, through a process of elimination, to make a decision, but despite all of our research, we are mostly ill-equipped to proceed. So, instead of asking for advice from the expert, we look to pretty much anyone else. To buy a TV, we do not ask the blue-shirted person in Best Buy whether we really need 1080p on a 32-inch set. Instead we read the opinion of Jane in Iowa and Billy in Arkansas. We then reach out to friends, to our family, to our colleagues, and the easiest way to do that is through social media. We are already connected, so it is easy and convenient.

We could ask them in person, or call them, but that seems too intrusive. Posting a question on Facebook and allowing our network to choose whether to participate seems preferable.

In order to sell to these people, you have to recognize and understand this buying process; do not attempt to shake them to their senses, but instead work out how to align yourself advantageously.

This could be as simple as an insurance agent becoming part of the social influence network. Provide your two cents’ worth when it seems appropriate, but not every day. Another approach is to look at the process as if it’s more like lobbying than selling. Firms that sell to government agencies put a lot of effort into lobbying lawmakers to hone the need and the selection criteria. Insurers that post product information in social media are trying to sell; insurers that provide helpful information about disaster preparedness become part of the conversation about homeowner risk. Consumers will ask advice of their social network; we know that, so the key is to have someone in that network that really does like you and will step up and recommend. This process can be long and requires that insurers rethink all customer interactions. Consumers will not recommend you if you do not provide a good overall experience and this includes sales, claims, customer service, billing, community programs and even your ads. You also need to provide advocates with information that they are happy to pass on, that they believe will be helpful to their friends; they will not pass on your product brochure before you ask them to. This, for most insurers, requires a new content marketing strategy focused on addressing consumer concerns and not on product features.

So, social media is not in itself the critical turning point, but it is a critical component of a transition that has been gaining stream for ten years. It is no longer about how you want to sell, it is now all about how the consumer wants to buy that counts.

Facebook is Everywhere and Knows Everything - An Opportunity or a Risk

One reason for insurers to build a Facebook page is to be where the consumer is – this is the same argument used to build web sites ten year ago, invest in search engine optimization and not too dissimilar to the rationale for having a local agent in every main street in America.

But just having a Facebook page feels a little like having that first web site, it was there but did not do very much; we were just planting our flag in the ground. Now we have placed our Facebook flag what is the next.

Many companies are building what is essentially a parallel web presence inside Facebook arguing that consumers on Facebook want to stay there and not dispatched to an external website. Facebook is building its own proprietary web, much in the same way AOL tried to do.

Retailers, such as Amazon, have integrated Facebook with their website allowing consumers to buy recommended purchases for friends based on Facebook preferences. Delta lets you book an air ticket and Starbucks will let you buy a coffee card all on Facebook. With the growth of mobile use, this so-called ‘f-commerce’ is bound to grow.

As per usual, the insurance industry is dragging its feet but starting to follow suit. Geico and 21^st Century both offer auto insurance quotes inside of Facebook and Accuquote allow you to calculate life insurance needs as well as providing a range of comparison quotes. Is this a simple and logical extension to reach consumers or is there a bigger strategic issue.

Within Facebook, you must live by their rules, which as we know, are constantly changing. Facebook already knows a lot more about our customer than we do, indeed in the recent “Gartner Predicts 2012″ report, Gartner points out that Facebook users share many personal tidbits — from getting married to announcing births and job retirements — that could be used to sell insurance.

Gartner’s conclusion is that “Offering insurance products to their communities would be a natural extension of (their) strategies and would allow them to capitalize on their extensive set of information they constantly collect about their users.”

While few in the industry think this to be a realistic scenario, information is a vital insurance ingredient and Facebook will have it. The more likely outcome would be for Facebook to enable retail partners to offer some of the more commoditized insurance products. Therefore, should insurers expand their presence on Facebook to reach consumers, is this playing with fire or can we trust Facebook to play nice?

At the beginning of each year, commentators insist upon predicting the outcome for the upcoming year so why not me.

Do we need a social media group?

Two trends stand out – first, agents will undoubtedly use social media more to reach consumers and second, industry executives will demand more measurement, metrics and proof of success. The biggest trend however might be a move to end social media as a discipline. Social media is a communication tool not unlike e-mail or even the mobile phone – the rationale for using any tool is to bring value to the core business of the organization.

Marketing departments in carriers now see social media is a key channel to reach consumers. Facebook is big – they get it! Is it now wise to leave this channel in the hands of a small, unconnected team to run separate programs and campaigns blissfully unaware of company strategy? All those internal presentation about social media worked, thank you and goodbye.

What intrigues marketers is social media is not a traditional channel; it adds a new dimension to campaigns – interactivity. Campaigns can reach out and engage with consumers, even being able to extend the campaign to people never targeted in the original plan – the viral effect. Even the rap for social media – how do you measure it – actually is a strength. Social media with engagement gathers valuable information about how much consumers like, are prepared to share, or even hate messages and products. Sure, you still cannot measure ROI but marketing folks are much better at deflecting that question unlike their social media counterparts.

Looking at recent examples, Esurance is running ads highlighting trust and as proof, they feature the company’s Facebook page and customer comments. MassMutual created a series of videos promoting life insurance but selected Facebook and YouTube to host, thereby leveraging brand ambassadors to spread the message.

So is the role of the social media strategist and community manager under fire? Are these the shortest careers ever created?

Not entirely, the range and potential for social media is too broad to restrict to marketing. Customers are starting to communicate with insurers through social media, journalists and bloggers now use social media to follow news, HR is able to find and research job candidates. Agents see social dialogue as a valuable sales process and even underwriters and claims see value with juicy additional personal information.

Social media has a role to play in every department; companies need social strategists to ensure it is not limited to a single role and free to reach across traditional internal boundaries.

In a recent interview, Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent recently told the Harvard Business Review that social media marketing now accounts for about 20 percent of the company’s overall budget. Five years ago, social media accounted for just 3 percent, but the appeal of improving prospect and customer engagement was too great for the organization to ignore. He went on to say social media marketing would be an integral element of the company’s strategy in the next decade.

Twenty Percent of Coke's marketing budget of $2.9 billion is spent on social media

Alarm bells will have rung in every advertising, PR and digital agency in the land as they desperately sought out and added social media experts to their teams. Expect every presentation from this point forward to include hockey stick graphs about social media impact and prophecies of doom for those not on the bandwagon.

Make no mistake, I am a big advocate of social media; I firmly believe it has a role to play. We must be careful however not to expect too much too soon from this fledgling paradigm.

Social media is rocket-powered word-of-mouth and anything that can help explain, promote and sell insurance must be good. Consumers, in general, do not like to think about, buy or use insurance products. Now, in the age of the self-serve internet, consumers are desperately seeking out advice, recommendations and referrals and social media is often the vehicle they use.

Before agencies convince you to dig deep into your marketing budgets and splash out to become the most liked insurer, step back and think about the strategic direction that you need to take. If social media allows you to engage with consumers, what consumers and why-oh-why would they want to talk to you? I hate to break it to you but insurance is not the most exhilarating business; I would guess that most of your employees do not like you on Facebook. Do you want to engage with prospects, current customers, agents, or employees? The conversation for each type might be different; engagement goals are different. A single customer category might be too broad, should you target specific age groups, or interests, or professions. The Hartford’s blog is written by the delightfully named “Advance 50 Team”, the company’s in-house team of gerontologists. Acuity, as part of their strategy provide “Timely Transportation News and Information” specifically for truckers. Horace Mann’s Facebook page primarily recruits and engages with public school teachers.

Acuity engages with customers with common interests

So before, you are inundated, or worse, your CEO is inundated, with highly pictorial, flashy, glitzy campaign pitches about the glory that comes from social media – take control. Think about how social media works for you, what you want to achieve, who do you want to engage with, how does this fit with you distribution model – start small, grow expertise, understand the value.

Possibly the last thing we all need is another social network to manage; So, the first question is – can we ignore Google Plus, at least for now? Well, in the very

Is Google Plus all about search results?

short time Google Plus has allowed brand pages, 46 insurers and thousands of agencies have already opened accounts and attracting audiences. Allstate, Flo (Progressive), Aflac and AGLA have all come out swinging. Does that mean they see something exciting about the new social network?

In general, no, the reason is in the name. Google Plus is “an extension of Google itself”. Google even changed to iconic Google navigation bar to highlight the platform.

While their search algorithms have been best for a long time, the addition of social helps them better “understand” what visitors are really looking for. Google is seeking to unite recommendations and search. For an industry that lives on recommendations, this is important.
The Google +1 button will soon be everywhere and already on more than a million websites. It is the fastest growing social recommendation widget and receives 5 billion impressions a day. The +1 allows Google to track who is recommending and interacting with your brand.
It is widely believed that content receiving +1′s will appear higher in organic searches. Additionally, if a user is logged-in to Google Plus, Google will consider the +1′s of both the user and their connections to decide on search results. Google is assigning weight to social recommendations as a metric of content quality and relevance, making search results more personalized. When offered two equal options where one is recommended by a trusted friend, who’s going to choose the other?
The integration with search is critical to insurers. For many, social media is a sideshow but when it starts to effect search results, now that’s important.
Clearly, there are nice features in Google Plus. Circles allows insurers to separate audiences into customers, agents, employees etc. and post much more relevant content. Hangouts look cool and may even play a role connecting with an agent or customer service but these are “nice to haves”.
Consumers that choose to research insurance options online, and we now know that is the majority, could feel the effect of Google Plus even if they never join. In which case, insurers need to pay attention.

Click here to see an initial list of carrier Google Plus pages

Update – Mashable Video on this very topic posted after this blog post