Less Poking, More Broking! What the industry wants from social media

The insurance world is overcoming its fear of Social Media and realising the growing need for having a presence on channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter. However, knowing why and where to be on social media is not enough. The key to success is in knowing the types of content to deliver and how to deliver that content to the right audience. Social media is about engagement and encouraging your audience to, believe it or not, socialise with your brand. Although the clue is in the name, it is all too easy to forget that communicating via these networks should be focused on what your audiences want to gain from following you.

The buzz surrounding the #BIBA2014 and #BIBAFever hashtags last week demonstrated that brokers are catching up with the idea of online socialising and increasingly turn to these channels seeking relevant and timely information.

So what do brokers want?

According to Insurance Age’s latest Spring Sentiment Survey, the majority of brokers (86%) want product information, implying that insurers’ content on social channels should be a visually appealing, informative showcase of their products.

However, content should never be 100% selling, and needs variety to spark attention and engagement.

Respondents could select more than one option, and over 45% said they follow insurers hoping for opinion or thought-leadership pieces via social media. 44% think the likes of Twitter and LinkedIn should be used for business updates during surge claims events, while only 11% are impressed by amusing posts.

What types of content do you engage with most??

[photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa]

LinkedIn showcase pages - are you ready for April 14th?

In my current digital communications training session there is a slide which talks about how fast the digital world changes and how businesses, if they want to remain successful across social channels, have no option but to adapt quickly. A prime example of the relative speed businesses are now required to move at is illustrated through LinkedIn’s recent announcement of the switching off of the Products and Services pages on April 14th. The Products and Services tab on a company's LinkedIn page has for some time been a key point of focus for marketers, providing an effective platform to profile what the business offers, who the most relevant contacts are for that offering, alongside recommendations left by clients for those products and services. With the often complex nature of financial service websites this was a nice, simple and clean overview that aided cross selling, lead generation, and in some cases, SEO benefits.

What is a showcase page?

LinkedIn introduced showcase pages at the end of last year as part of their move to become more of a publishing platform, encouraging more in the way of rich, regular content. Products and Services were often fairly static and gave a user no reason to return multiple times. A showcase page is structured in almost exactly the same way as the main company page and can be accessed via its own URL or on the right hand column of your company page.

What are the key elements of a showcase page?

Initially, they allow you to add a large attention grabbing banner across the top of the page, a short introduction and a URL to lead visitors to the most relevant section of your website.

From there it is all about content, content, content as you are provided with the ability to add an endless scrolling feed of posts.

What has been lost from the Products and Services pages?

Firstly, there is no way of profiling key contacts or running promotions like you could before. There is also no way of migrating the recommendations that you have earned on the current Products and Services pages. This has caused a fair amount of discontent and uproar among the LinkedIn community who feel largely that this is change for change sake and that they are losing valuable digital real estate - not to mention the time and money they have invested in getting those pages set up.

Ten days left

As of the 14th April, unless you embrace the change and start to implement showcase pages, your LinkedIn company page will lose any reference to your current products and services.

What I would say initially though, is that this should not be rushed. Showcase pages should only be set up for areas where you have enough commitment to producing enough engaging content to post on a regular basis. They are not a direct replacement for your Products and Services pages. They require a different approach and some strategic thinking to get it right.

I have seen Products and Services overview pages with 30 or more individual items within them. Setting up and maintaining 30+ showcase pages isn’t practical, and I don’t believe it would add any value. You need to focus on the dynamic areas of your business where the teams produce a lot of content, attend a lot of events and where you can find a lot of relevant material across news sites that you can aggregate and introduce as useful reading.

Why are they doing this?

In my opinion LinkedIn does not want your company profile page to be a static summary of your website, they want it to be a go-to source of information in its own right, a place where people converse, share and post collaboratively. Whether this is because they want to sell more advertising, or because they want brands to provide better content to the existing audience, that’s up for debate. Ultimately they want you to stay on the website for as long as they can keep you there.

What I am sure of however, is that this is not a change you can afford to ignore. If you want to talk about how we can help you, or if you just want to connect, feel free to add me on LinkedIn.

brandformula/Lamb bolsters team with new hires

In line with the continued growth of this specialist insurance and financial services marketing agency, the brandformula & Lamb team has seen a number of key new recruits join the company. Julie Jarvis has joined as events director, where she will support the large industry-wide gatherings such as the BIBA & Airmic Conferences that are a key part of their service as well as the client specific work they undertake. On the creative front Mark Leman has joined along with Dalia Merecinskaite as senior designer and designer respectively.

Completing the current round of joiners, Bradford Jordan has joined on a fixed term contract to widen the available resource within their digital communications services. He will be primarily assisting the in-house team with the delivery of their social media services.

Speaking of the creative additions, Nick Patchitt, the group's creative director commented: "I am excited at the outlook for Creative, Mark brings a wealth of brand identity experience from his time at some top creative agencies and Dalia has a wealth of skills to help drive our creative offering into digital, animation and other multi-media channels. The team is looking ahead with confidence at continuing to build on our track record of creating engaging brand identities and award winning campaign work, and the new additions to the team will help us move forward with real purpose."

Mark Huxley, executive director of brandformula & Lamb added: "This is a really exciting time for us. It will soon be 18 months since we merged the two businesses and the intervening time has seen a consistent period of growth, with increasing levels of support from existing clients and many new friends made. Being able to build our team in such a positive way is a wonderful testament to this and we are really looking forward to the great work they will deliver."

Our social media predictions for financial services in 2014

It's no secret that over the last couple of years Social Media has become inescapable. 2013 saw the growth of Twitter hashtags across all media - from TV adverts to billboards! And it's not just Twitter, we've seen increased use of Vine (video), Instagram (photos) and other more creative forms of Social media being used commercially. So if 2013 was all about the growth of creative material being developed for social media then what will 2014 hold?

At Lamb we believe the integration of social media channels into all forms of marketing and advertising will continue. Campaigns will become more sophisticated through being run across multiple channels simultaneously. The Xuber brand launch and AGCS Cyber Protect product launch showed good examples of this in 2014.

Further to this we believe that a wider sphere of the financial service industry will embrace social media this year. Financial Advisers and Investment Professionals look set to close the gap on the Legal and Insurance industries. The fear of interacting with financial service brands online or displaying an opinion is subsiding as people's understanding of the channels develops.

Finally we see 2014 as being the year of professionally created video content. The use of video from a marketing and public relations point of view came on leaps and bounds in 2013, with a wealth of content being developed by companies of all sizes. Unfortunately a large percentage of this content was not fully thought through and produced with poor sound and lighting, a rushed delivery or even an ill advised choice of tie. We believe that video is a hugely important tool in the marketing kit bag but it has to be well produced with value adding content in order to boost a customer’s perception of your brand. Anything short of this risks doing more harm than good.

If you agree with our predictions or have some of your own we'd be very interested to hear from you. Let's start 2014 as we mean to go on and continue the conversation on social media. You can find us here:

Twitter

LinkedIn

photo credit: Jason A. Howie via photopin cc

Is Instagram suitable for B2B brands?

Instagram may be growing as a marketing tool for B2B financial service brands. Instagram defines itself as a “fun and quirky way to share life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. We’re building Instagram to allow you to experience moments in your friends’ lives through pictures as they happen. We imagine a world more connected through photos.”

It has a large number of strong communities focused on specific interests and locations. These communities are willing to engage with brands as long as those brands understand the platform and behave as the communities expect.

Whatever your industry Instagram could play a part in your marketing and communications strategy to help clients and potential clients discover more about your business. This may be around the products and services you offer, the personalities and expertise of your employees or events, conferences and exhibitions that you are attending and participating in.

Instagram in numbers:

• over 150 million users on the platform, 16 billion photos shared, and 1 billion likes happening each day
• 22.4% of the Fortune 500 have Active Instagram Accounts. With the platform being launched in the USA first, American brands are ahead of UK and European businesses
• compare that to 387 of the Fortune 500 having Twitter accounts and 348 out of the Fortune 500 that have Facebook pages. While not as mature, Instagram is growing very quickly among the Fortune 500
• in terms of managing expectations it was found that for every 33 likes you get 1 comment on average
• among the F500 brands there is on average 18.54 likes per photo per 1,000 followers

Sources:

- http://blog.bufferapp.com/instagram-stats-instagram-tips - http://info.trackmaven.com/fortune500-instagram-report (provide your details for the free report)

Craig Freeman interviewed by Insurance Age about social media

Craig Freeman, director of digital services at Lamb and brandformula, was interviewed today by Insurance Age about social media engagement in the insurance industry.  Read the article below to gain an insight into his expert thoughts on the topic.

Craig Freeman, director of digital services at brandformula has revealed that he has seen a “huge sea change” in the way brokers engage with social media although he is yet to experience chartered brokers using it to promote their status.

Mr Freeman, told Insurance Age: "In the last 18 months we have had a broker get in touch every other week asking us to come in and talk about digital which is a huge sea change from just over three years ago."

According to Mr Freeman, an expert at the specialist B2B branding agency which has a particular strength in financial services marketing, in the past brokers were worried about finding out what was being said about their companies on social media because the bosses may not be pleased.

"It [the change] has been driven by the smaller brokers initially who were willing to take a little bit of risk," he claimed adding that the two most relevant avenues from a professional stand point are Twitter and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

"LinkedIn is an extension of the traditional way of doing business [such as] networking and shaking people's hands," explained Mr Freeman. "It is the relationship they have offline in an online environment."

He listed the reasons for brokers to connect on LinkedIn as including getting involved in groups, professional development opportunities and the chance to associate with their peer group to share ideas and insight.

Turning to Twitter he said: "If they [brokers] have got good content on their website and have people in their business who want to communicate then Twitter is brilliant.

"But our advice is always to focus back on the website."

Two potential mistakes that Mr Freeman has seen are having out of date content or too basic a homepage whereas he advocates that the call to action on Twitter should be to visit the website.

One way that he suggests brokers can generate interesting, engaging content on their website is through a weekly staff meeting.

He recommends that staff highlight questions they have been asked that week or articles they have read which they have found thought provoking. In turn the company should generate a 300 word blog for specialists to distribute on social media.

Massive time waster

"Social media can be a massive time waster if they [brokers] are not doing it in the right way," he pointed out.

"I know a lot of brokers who have spent an hour on Twitter and haven't talked to anyone useful or posted anything of use."

An area of social media that he sees as coming back into fashion for the right sort of brokers is Facebook.

"Lot of brokers are getting more savvy with the content," stated Mr Freeman.

It has been a notoriously difficult platform to sustain with interesting and engaging content and certainly will not be right for every broker. His advice is to make sure that "there is an underlying education message as well as the value adding entertainment area which is what drags people in on social media."

Chartered opportunity

However for chartered status it appears there remains more opportunity than delivery.

Mr Freeman admitted he had yet to be asked to promote chartered status although he has proactively told chartered clients to use it to their advantage, particularly on LinkedIn.

"If you do have chartered status tell people and make people it is on there [LinkedIn]," he urged.

"Things like LinkedIn are your shop window and what people will see first.

"The more you can do to show that you are professional, credible and knowledgeable the better and chartered status is part of that."

See the article on the Insurance Age website.