Adoption of Twitter in the Insurance Industry in Finland

As part of this story i first attempted to engage If vakuutus through Twitter. I discovered that If vahinkovakuutus had no twits and only a few followers and did not follow anyone except their Norwegian counterparts.

You can read more about If' Vahinkovakuutus's social media performance via the blog Post If Vahinkovakutus Social Marketing vs If Sweden Social Marketing.

In any case i decided to have a look at whether or not this pattern was reflected by other insurance companies in Finland.

So in short i took a look at the above. Finnish insurance company's presence on Twitter.

Good news, they were there!!! but..........

Pohjola

Well enough said a big company in Finland. There is no description, the default image, no following, only a few followers, not even a link to the website, no tweets. Well there was not any other. My Evaluation is POOR

Well enough said another large insurance provider in Finland. There is no description, the default image, no following, only a few followers, not even a link to the website, no tweets.  Well there was not any other. My Evaluation is POOR

I have never heard of this company but they seem to have at least added their website and a description but that is about it. Strategy seems simply to drive people to their site not to engage them via social media. Performance is also POOR

Maybe the largest insurance provider in Finland. Well just the same as the others sadly, no content, no following, no followers. Performance can only be described as POOR.

Well If vahinkovakuutus are the only insurance company i have heard of to have a link to their website at least. They also have the most followers but that is artificially high as i have drawn attention to thi sprofile through my actions. It was about 12 followers when i started. There are no twits and not even a description. They only follower their Norwegian colleagues. Performance is POOR.

 So what can be surmised from this. Well it is clear that Insurance companies in Finland have not understood Twitter. For the most part they see it as their own channel to drive traffic to their website which concidently is such a turn of the century strategy. They have not even tried to push out their own marketing content. BTW another prehistoric strategy. This indicates to me that they clearly and simply,

1. Insurance companies in Finland Do Not Get Twitter
2. Insurance companies in Finland do not have Twitter in any real social media strategy
3. Insurance companies have not attempted to engage customers through Twitter in Finland
4. Insurance companies in Finland are behind the rest of the world.

But Why?

Why would Insurance companies in Finland not be present actively here in this media?

Insurance companies in Finland do not value Twitter as a marketing and engagement channel.

But Why?

Well from my own experience during this experiment and when i consider my own twitter followers related to this experiement i see a trand.

Of the followers i have only around 5-10% of them are from Finland. This suggest that even though the content of this experiement was targeted at Finnish people in Finland, they did not follow me as often as people from other countries. Of course language may be a factor here but let's consider the average Twitter user.

The average Twitter user is under 40. In Finland pretty much everyone under this age can speak English despite what they may think themselves. Finns are pretty bashful when asked "can you speak English?" The usual answer is a little but then you proceed to have a fluent conversatipon.

In anycase we are left with the situation where perhaps the level of adoption of Twitter is low by both the companies and the population as a whole. In this case i will not enter into the "which came first the chicken or the egg" type conversation but will simply state that, perhaps Finlands reputation as an early adopter and innovator of new technologies is not justified based upon the populations behaviour regarding Twitter. Or perhaps it is just that Finns are not that "social" which is something that does fit the sterotype of a typical Finn.

Who knows why, but the pattern is clear and i believe is indicative of many Finnish companies performance regarding social media and Social CRM and in part explains If Vahinkovakuutus's slow and not very "customer orientated" response to my own Social Media Experiment.

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.

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......

Let's Go Social

OK so we are up and running.

I have created a new twitter account: https://twitter.com/#!/IFInsurance @ifinsurance

Feel free to follow retweet and mention. I will use this to communicate new blog posts mainly and to try and generate interest at least in the Finnish social media community to start with.

I started by following IF and everyone who was following IF (there stakeholders) as well as people who are in the Finnish SCRM scene.

I have created a Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/322104997840963/?profile_pic_upload=1&success=1#!/groups/322104997840963/ for anyone who wants to show support (or criticise actually), comment, give ideas and suggestions or to tell their own "hate" stories.

Most importantly i have posted onto IF's own Facebook and Twitter profiles.

As this is social media comment communicate whereever you want to, on the Blog, FB, Twitter on mine or IF's profiles.

Let's see what happens. Will IF respond? Will this experiment gain support in the social community. Can people really have power of these big faceless organisations or is it a myth?

Nothing ventured nothing gained :-)

I can't wait to find out.

n.b. i have also added all relevant links to the column on the right ;-)

Let's go to the Mattreses: My Social Strategy

Well all else has failed so what is the plan?

Briefly about Social CRM (customer relationship management) and social media. I understand that you are not all buffs on the subject nor want to be but in short with the creation and addition of social media technology and services such as Facebook and Twitter people are supposed to have been empowered and especially consumers.

Social CRM talks about companies engaging with customers and having a dialogue with them. It is of course going to be used as a marketing channel for companies but there should be a shift in the traffic of the conversation from one way like traditional advertising such as tv commercials to a more interactive and communicative strategy and style.

Customers should be able to get service on their terms and through the channels that they specify and not based upon what the service provider deams. Consumers are able to leverage the power of social media to receive outstanding service. This can be beneficial of course to the company and also when bad service is received can be negative.

The purpose of my social marketing strategy in this case is to achieve my goals.

1. Force IF to change their decision regarding my claim :-)
2. Prove that social media can be used in Finland to empower consumers more than before
3. At least cause some pain and embarass IF publically and damage their brand regarding their poor customer service if they do not respond positively to this type of customer support request
4. Highlight and warn stakeholders in Finland particularly about issues with IF insurances 
5. Create an internal stimulus for IF to improve their internal systems, process and products to meet consumer needs.

For a little bit of fun here is a story of how social media in conjunction with a good CRM system can be used well by a company.

http://shankman.com/the-best-customer-service-story-ever-told-starring-mortons-steakhouse/

Strategy:

1. Document the story: This blog is that :-)
2. Make IF aware of the story on their own social media where all their fans can see how it is handled.
• If facebook
• IF twitter
3. Try and gain support across the board  by communicating and utilising my own social media channels
• The truth about IF: Twitter account (number of followers is important as are retweets and mentions)
• This Blog (comments, tweets and likes)
• My own personal twitter/facebook account. (to get the ball rolling)

OK so that is it all i need to do now is apply this simple strategy and see what happens :-)