Using Advertising as a customer empowerment strategy.

Some of you may have noticed that i have this morning added advertisements to the blog.

As a first impression you will probably think i am trying to profit from this endeavour and social media experiment. Although i must admit that would be nice, we all dream of being millionaires ;-)

Unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen. Just to be clear profiting from this endeavour is not the goal of the experiement.

See below.

I think that you can see from the above that this is not a profitability strategy.

As such why would i add advertisements to the blog?

There are a couple of reasons for this. Partly i am curious and want to learn what this is all about and how it works but also and more importantly as alot of you have seen Google have changed their privacy policy recently. The idea of which is basically so that they can target you more accurately with advertising.

Now as i understand it the advertisements that will appear on the site are going to be targeted at visitors based upon their previous history of searching google, other web behaviour, their referring source destination to the blog and the way in which the site has been indexed by Google themselves. In this way google adsense should target visitors with relevant advertisements.

This is something that companies of course have been doing for years and i have seen already that If Vakuutus are doing this themselves. As such the question is.

Can I use existing advertising in the Insurance Industry to apply additional pressure to If Vakuutus? 

What i mean with this is,

Wouldn't it be great if one of my site visitors upon landing on the site was presented with a Tapiola or Pohjola advertisement to take insurance from them. As i am getting alot of traffic from If's own facebook pages. I am able to effectively place advertisements specifically for If's own customers or stakeholders. I am sure that If vakuutus in particular would not like that there own customers are firstly visiting my blog but then also being presented with advertisements for their competitors products.

Imaging what would happen if If vakuutus started to lose customers as a result of this advertising. In this experiement this has much more value as a pressure tactic than a profitability technique.

With this in mind how can i influence which advertisements are being presented on My blog? See my later post regarding SEO (search engine optimisation) and Google's affiliate network.

Let me know how succesful i am, let me know are you getting insurance ads? Once again i will update you as to how this pans out later.

Following Someone in the Hope they Follow You Is Not Good!

When i started the Twitter account four days ago i realised that i needed to try and get a lot of support quickly. One of the strategies i employed was to try and follow as many people as i could who i felt would be interested in the story, would support it by following themselves or even retweeting or were members of the Finnish media who may be interested.

If i had taken the time to read other blogs on the subject as i have done now i would have realised then that..

I was totally wrong!!!

All that i have done is reduce my own reputation on Twitter. It really does not look good to follow many more people than follow you. I think of the many people i have followed only a few have started following me.

Social media must be entirely voluntary, for people to follow you you must offer content that is valid for them and let them find it for themselves. All you can do is try and write content people are interested in and make it available to them on their terms. If they find you and want to follow you that is great. If they want to participate for themselves even better.

As such i as a policy will not follow anyone who does not produce content that i am interested in for this experiment or has followed me.

NO MORE JUNK FOLLOWING!! and SORRY

Please bare in mind i am learning as i go as i have never tried this kind of thing before and never had to generate large interest in something quickly.

P.S. let me know what you think about anything i am here to listen also!

Channel Performance Analysis

Well after four days i thought i would write something about how succesful the channels that i have been utilising in this endeavour have been.

As a recap the main channels i have created are:

A dedicated Twitter Account @IFinsurance (surprised i was able to get this user name)
A dedicated Facebook Group IF Vakuutus Social Experiment
This blog, no link required ;-)

The pre-existing channels that i am utilising are:

IF's Own Facebook Group. If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö I am particularly trying to draw attention to mine and If vakuutus's conversation there.

As described earlier i plan to expand upon the utilisisation of If vakuutus's own social media later. Read on to understand why.

Twitter as a Channel

Prior to this experiement i was a Twitter user and had been for a few years. However admittedly i was that kind of user who was just a "follower" i was not a contributor other than the occasional retweet of content i found interesting. In all honesty i think that summarises most Twitter users. I used it as a way of getting up to date info about the things i was interested in, when i wanted it. On twitter there is always something new.

With this in mind i understandably did not have many followers around 50 of mostly people i already knew based upon around 300 tweets of my own (sorry retweets, the occasional tweet from services i had subscribed to and those that i had connected other social media to) Unsuprisingly then that my followers were low.

Just as a quick point i just do not get people who post things like "I just ran 30minutes hard via heia heia" Quite honeslty who cares! I don't even care about what my "real friends are doing". Anyway back to the point.

Well having started the new Twitter account @Ifinsurance for the sole purpose of publising this blog and story i am pleased i have been more succesful. For a while i did ponder if i should carry this out through my own @daniel_miles account but decided against it. I decided to have a campaign specific twitter account for people who just want to follow the story and not my other tweets. I also was afraid that i would annoy some of the followers of my personal Twitter account with the changed content of my account. So having balanced this against the advantage of already having a starting base of followers i decided to start from scratch.

So how has my new Twitter account performed.

Well with Just 100 tweets i managed to gain 75 followers in less than 3days merely by tweeting the story. This is 50% more followers than my personal Twitter account in roughly 1 3rd of the tweets and in 1% of the time. In this sense then i would certainly consider this a success if you were to measure this against my prior performance.

This has well been publisised else where in the blogosphere but Content is King, contributors get more followers! As well as just publising my story i have also tried to add content that may be relevant also to people who simply follow social media. Hence for example this post which has nothing really to do with the story with IF directly.

I have also managed to have the blog republished on other news sites each day. I have been retweeted countless times and have had several @mentions. I have also gained a couple of followers who seem to be pretty closely following me and retweeting a lot of what i tweet thanks for that!!

In this sense it seems i have managed to at least generate some interest among the twitter crowd. Further more by looking at the traffic statistics to the blog i can see that around 45% of the traffic has been coming from the shortened bit.ly type of link which indicates a lot of traffic from Twitter. More about the site traffic in the other sections.

On the whole then i have been pretty happy with Twitter as a channel, well at least based upon my previous experiences.

My Own Facebook Group.

This has been less of a success in terms of gaining members, i am now at 4 :-). I desribed my reasoning behind this in a previous post so won't go into it in too much detail here.

Generally though i felt that facebook groups needed to be known about and were better suited for companies than individuals as a channel to garner support for something.

In any case lookin at the traffic coming into the blog I can see that the top contributor for traffic has been facebook so although the Group has not gained members perhaps it has contributed to traffic. However i believe that the biggest contributor to the referring site was probably If Vakuutus's own Facebook group. See below.

If Vakuutus's Own Facebook Group

In my opinion this has been the best channel to utilise, even more so than Twitter. This is why,

1. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media and existing following you are able to piggy bag on If vakuutus's own success.
2. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media you are able to reach out to their own stakeholders. Who else would be on their social media?
3. By having a constant presence there and maintaining your position at the top of their wall you are able to get a regular stream of traffic to your blog and to your story.
4. By placing your content directly to If vakuutus's own facebook wall you are able to disrupt or interfere directly with their marketing messaging, branding and campaigning. This dilutes the power of their own social media as a tool and increases the risk and pressure upon them to act.

40% of Traffic is coming from Facebook and most likely alot of it is coming from If vakuutus's own group page.

The Success of My Own Blog

Well as i tweeted early i have now had more than 1000 visitors to the site so in that respect i am really happy.

The blog has been tweeted and shared directly from the blog in all, around 100 times so roughly 10% of visitors have spread the word further. Of course i cannot really tell how many times outside of my own social media the word has spread. I am sure though that for the 1000 visitors i have had many more have had some contact with the story even though they may not have visited the blog.

Coincidently i would like to know if If vakuutus's own traffic to their Facebook Group page has increased. I did note previously that they got 250 odd new members there after i started. This trend seems to have slowed now though.

Anyway i see the main strengths of the blog as:

1. You can have a media that you can control and tell your own story.
2. You have a single location where you want to drive traffic to (admittedly it is nice to drive traffic to the converation with IF also)
3. If If vakuutus's decide to start boycotting me or deleting my posts from their social media then there is a complete record of the story outside of their control including the Facebook conversation with them. Deleting it does not make it go away. 
4. If vakuutus cannot control this media, they can only contribute. BTW they are free to do so). It would be nice to see them trying to tell their story on my blog.
5. Long after this story is dead people will still be able to find the blog. It will be a constant reminder to If vakuutus of this event. And who knows from time to time it will get retweeted, shared or even posted back on If vakuutus's wall. In this respect If vakuutus particularly should be aware and think how they should act. The degree to which this occurs i feel is dependent upon how If vakuutus react to it postively or negatively.

Summary of Basic Stats to Date (First 4 days)

1. 1100 Blog Vistis
2. Blog republished 4 times in other online news papers (that i know about, i was tweeted to be told)
3. 40% of Traffic from Facebook and mostly likely If Vakuutus's own Facebook group.
4. 45% of Traffic from Twitter or bit.ly type links
5. 10% of Traffic from Direct Links implying they have saved the blog to their favourites
6. 75 New Twitter Followers on the new account (gained 25 on my personal) 150 people following my Twitter media related to this then.
7. Countless retweets and mentions and several avid supporters
8. 45% or so of blog traffic coming from Finland despite the English Language.
9. Only about 10% of Twitter followers are from Finland though interestingly.

Engaging Companies in Social Media Channels Politely Does Not Work

Well after the latest If vakuutus's response it seems clear to me that If vakuutus have missed their opportunity to turn this into customer service and marketing success story. Something i wished that they had because this alone would have shown that social media has empowered the consumer and that companies have recognised this and have changed their behaviour accordingly. This has not worked.

As such previously i was playing the role of a customer who was merely trying to communicate and engage with a company in a public channel with the hope that this combined with a growing support and interest base via this blog and the @IFinsurance twitter account would change their behaviour.

In this Experiment: Using a company's own Social Media as a channel to engage a company does not guarantee success even with a valid case and a growing social media presence.

As such a change in strategy is required so as to apply more pressure to If vakuutus through publicising the case and further damaging their brand image.

I will continue to try and engage with people in Finland, the conventional media, persons interested in social media, the insurance industry and PR and Marketing Generally. I will do this primarily through Twitter @Ifinsurance.

I have also expanded my use of Twitter. I decided that instead of just posting my own content i will redistribute content created by others writing about relevant subject material. I realise that social media is not only about pushing your own messaging but also spreading the word and collaborating with others. If i do not spread the message of others how can i expect others to spread my word. As such i have started a process of retweeting other relevant content via my twitter account.

I will adopt a new strategy of Interference Against If vakuutus.

Actually i am not sure if this is wise but i feel that at this point in time it is the only option really left to me. To try and increase the pressuse on IF i will interfere with their other customer dialogue on their own facebook group page and expand on this later to further increase the pressure if IF continue to resist.

This is a risky strategy as i risk alienating my own audience. I hope that this is not the case.

I have communicated very clearly with IF via their facebook wall what i hope to achieve and what will bring this to an end. If know what they need to do to stop this.

I have started the policy of interference see IF vakuutus's Facebook group to start with....... more to follow if necessary.

Please note i am not telling any lies about If vakuutus's, i will only post truthful comments. IF are very welcome to comment. I will continue to promote my own story via the blog. This is a very important fact, i do not want to do anything that could be conceived as slander. This is and always will be an entirely legal endeavour!!!

My primary goal is to publisize my story and disrupt If vakuuts's own brand messaging through factual story telling and interaction with people who are posting on the IF Facebook group.

I do not think that this is unreasonable. What do you think?

You can get live updates of the conversation on the Facebook thread by liking it. http://t.co/JlbiA65M Liking will also show support. Comments of course also appreciated. Follow the conversation live also on Twitter @IFinsurance.

Upping the Anti: Trying to Muster Support On Twitter

As part of my strategy to increase interest in my story and experiment I have been trying to follow people who are in Finland and may have an interested in following the story on the blog, twitter or facebook.

I have also started to retweet my blog posts more than once at different times as each tweet has been shown to result in a spike in Interest.

Above: Basic Blog Stats from http://myifinsurancestory.blogspot.com/

I think that this has been going quite well considering everything started from scratch a couple of days ago.

We have now over 500 visitors on the blog.
Have gained about 40 followers on the new twitter account.

However in alot of social media stories there is often talk of an explosion of growth of interest. Social media spread virally. This experiment to be succesful is going to be on a very short time line. We need to strike while the iron is hot.

As such i have done something that i really wasn't so happy about. I have direct messaged people in Twitter who i think are better able to enable a viral explosion of interest in this story against IF insurance. I have left these under the twitter account at the risk of annoying my followers and others in twitter. In retrospect i should have thought a little more about the content of the message particularly but there you are. I am flying by the seat of my pants on this experiment and making it up as i go :-)

Below is the quick overview of some of the people i feel can help. These are generally classic media in Finland TV and Newspapers and people who tweet about social media who have a very high number of followers. If just one of these works then it was worth it. Sorry for those i may have annoyed!!

Again we wait and see what happens......