This is the end of the story.

So to finish the story then.

If Vahinkovakuutus did finally give me the recording and based upon my girlfriends wishes not to publish it, i decided not to. The whole incident upset her quite a lot. So as not to make her feel worse i will leave it here.

However the basic content of the message was as remembered and described earlier in the blog.

If Vahinkovakuutus certainly implied that we were covered and gave examples of what was covered and sums of money. We were never told that we were not speaking to an If specialist and a generic customer service provider. We based our decisions of how and when to return home based upon this information at significantly greater costs to ourselves.

So with this and If´s continued resistance i decided to stop the effort here. Now the story is here and complete make up your own mind about what you think and if you wish to, try and learn from my successes and mistakes.

As far as the social experiment is concerned i certainly was succesful in a number of ways.

I did manage to generate interest in the story and traffic to the site.
I did manage to create additional pain and embarassment for If Vahinkovakuutus
I managed to use social media to publicise my story and certainly empowered myself more that through traditional channels.

In this respect the experiment was a success.

On the downside this did consume quite alot of time. There was no framework for me to follow, no examples of how others had tried to do the same thing. As a consequence i certainly made mistakes.

However the main things i learned through trial and error are,

You cannot force a story to go viral, you can enable it but people will only spread it if the content is relevant to them. In this respect a customer complaint story perhaps is not the best medium as this for the most part is a very personal thing and generally not too interesting to none engaged parties. To gain attention a story has to be so shocking or highly relevant to an audience to attract interest.

If you do attempt this kind of engagement, do not try to manipulate your channels too much for example repeated junk twitting does not work, asking people to perform tasks in your own interests does not work and should not be tried. Allow your story to grow organically based upon the content and style of writing and you will be succesful without having to resort to manipulating your own audience. This is something that i myself learnt the hard way from time to time during this process.

My advice is however to use statistical tools to follow how your actions perform. Ultimately this is the only way of measuring your success, especially if the party you are engaged with are silent or not acting how you would like them to act. Blogs and google analytics are a good starting point.
Well that is it, the blog navigation has been updated so that you can find things of interest to you. I hope you enjoy. Signing off.....

Until the next time a company ticks me off ;-)

If Vahinkovakuutus Social CRM and Customer Service Conclusions

I am slightly cutting with tradition here and skipping the analysis and jumping straight to the conclusion. I will add stats and analysis later along with my Social CRM Customer orientated Engagement Framework (i may need to come up with a shorter name). I will base this upon what i have learnt in this experiment and with an eye to enabling other customers out there to learn from my mistakes and engage companies through social media successfully. This will be added to the blog in installments during the upcoming weeks.

IF Vahinkovakuutus Customer Service Conclusions

One of the goals of this experiment was of course to get customer service via social media and Facebook in particular. I will start by summarising my thoughts with regard to this.

How did this score as a customer service experience in terms of technology?

Well in terms of my own experience of having to wait for responses it is no different than any other chanel a company may have you operate in. You write your question and wait for your response so in this respect it is the same as email, phone, web portal or even face to face conversation. This is as almost always the response is, "we will get back to you". This means that actually the experience is not so much affected by the technology but more by the company in questions own practices. However for me personally, it is a more than acceptable form of communication and fits with my own online presence. It is convenient and more so than having to remember passwords or logging in securely to a dedicated service which in itself causes added pain. Not really a good place for passing secure documents but a nice place to have the conversation.

How did the experience score in terms of  the service i received from If Vahinkovakuutus?

As i will discuss this in terms of SCRM in the next section i will just approach this in terms of general customer service.

With If vahinkovakuutus's responses i was annoyed in the delay in responses to my questions. Particularly where at one point they disengaged for two days and then still did not answer my questions. This made me feel like they were just ignoring my concerns and they were just hoping i would go away. This gave me the impression that they were childish. I was not attacking them i was not slandering them i was attempting to engage them in dialogue and discussion with what i felt was a valid argument.

I was also frustrated by If vahinkovakuutus's almost constant effort to get me off Facebook and force me back into their conventional channels. If vahinkovakuutus seem to only want to use Facebook as a marketing channel. They do not really want to engage me as a customer and they certainly do not want anything that could be perceived negatively there. What they do not understand they themselves can affect this perception by their own behaviour and how they react to the content that is placed there.

I was particularly disappointed that If Vahinkovakuutus did not want to publish results publically with regard their review into using a third party for their emergency customer service or for their lack of customer service in their shops. This just made me feel like they were not actually going to do anything and their promise to investigate this was just PR. I believe that they were not listening at all and i am left with the feeling that nothing will happen. I always felt like If vahinkovakutus had something to hide.

I was also very disapointed that, even though If admitted that they made mistakes, they still refused to compensate me for the costs that their miscommunication had caused me. This is something i just cannot get my head around to be honest. Basically the message i received is too bad we do not care!

Also the they refuse to even discuss any changes to their terms and conditions. I requested that they should,  accept liability in the case if incorrect or misleading information supplied by them. This just makes me feel sorry for their other customers.

Finally, two weeks ago i asked for a copy of the phone call that If based their decision not to pay on, this has still not reached me. This suggests to me that they have something to hide or are afraid that i will publish it. This gives me the impression that If vahinkovakuutus are not a morale company and you cannot trust them.

Social CRM Conclusions

The main goal in this experiment was to engage a company through their own social media and to see, if by doing so, the customer has gained more power in the conversation than through conventional channels.

In this respect i think that although my own personal goals of changing If vahinkkovakuutus's behaviour for the benefit of their other customers and gaining compensation for myself were not succesful i believe the experiment has been. This is why.

Having engaged If vahinkovakuutus through their own private channels i was unsuccesful in achieving my personal goals. I was not going to get my money back anyway, so in this respect nothing ventured nothing gained applies. All that this has cost me is my time.

More importantly by engaging If vahinkovakuutus in this public space i brought awareness to my cause. By gaining support i was able to apply pressure to If vahinkovakuutus above that that i could have through their own channels. From this factor alone the probability of success must rise even with the real danger of annoying them. This is because all of the advantages are the customers. The cusotmer has nothing to lose That is as long as they do not alienate their audience.

This strategy also has the power to benefit the company through excellent customer service (as so often  has been demonstrated) and has added value as a marketing tool. However the strategy also allows for the company to be embarassed publically and to devalue their own brand and disrupt their messaging. This has additional potency of course as the conversation is held on the company's own social media and infront of their own stakeholders. This is the worst case scenario for the company and involves the largest risk and cost for them. This of course depends upon how the company themselves behave and the ingenuity of the customer. Unfortunately for If vahinkovakuutus i feel that they fall firmly into the second category. If vahinkovakuutus have embarassed themselves and eroded their brand equity. This is why.

If' vahinkovakuutus's poor performance is not only about the poor customer service experience that i received (as discussed above) but also from their own attitude towards the use of social media. At all turns they attempted to get me off their Facebook group. They did not want to engage me there.

For some time, the fact that they tried to ignore me and hoped i would go away, is also a very immature attitude to this kind of dialogue. However in this situation i was able to diversify my strategy on their facebook page and other social media to interfere with their own marketing messaging. I believe that, this was the only reason that after two days they did re-engage me. In the social media world there is nowhere for them to hide and in this way the customer is empowered when they act in a civilised way. Again this must always be in a dialogue and never slanderous or you will lose your support and alienate your own audience. It is hard to do sometimes but, it essential to avoid losing your temper. You must always consider how you are perceived as an individual.

If vahinkovakuutus were aware of the risks of blocking me on the Finnish Facebook group. I had forseen that this may happen and had a backup plan but did not have to use it. I was however temporarily blocked from the other If Insurance local social media Facebook pages. I do not know where this decision came from but it says something about If's corporate culture with regard social media. Rights however were returned when i noticed and blogged about it. This again indicates a degree of empowerment. In terms of appearing as a caring socially responsible company this is of course totally unacceptable behaviour. The content that i added was of course not explicit or offensive to any of If's audience.

If vahinkovakuutus clearly only see social media as a way of pushing out their own message and they wish to control it at all cost. They even asked me not to post content related to my blog.

Sorry no you cannot control social media.

Facebook is a public forum, you may start the conversation but you should not try to control it. If vahinkovakuutus seem not at all interested in engaging customers in dialogue especially things that relate to their poor performance or things that are painful for them. Actually i believe this is a Finnish trait generally. This type of engagement is of course one of the mantras of Social CRM. I wonder if If vahinkovakuutus had ever heard of social CRM before this experience. One thing is for sure, they have now.

Additional benefit gained from engaging If vahinkovakuutus in the social media world is also in terms of the company's own costs related to the claim. By prolonging this claim i increased If's own financial costs for this claim dramatically and in all likelihood substantially more than the value of the original claim. This is another factor that empowers the customer. In traditional channels it is easy to diengage a customer when you have had enough of them. In the social media world it "looks bad" so it is harder for a company to do so. This means that as a customer you can continue to force the company to incur additional cost in handling your grievances and increase the pressure on them.

What was the ROI for If vahinkovakuutus?

How have If vahinkovakuutus come out of this experience? Financially the actual costs for handling the claim must be way above what they would have been had they just paid the claim in the beginning. They have also had a lot of negative publicity targeted at their own stakeholders and a permanent reminder of their poor performance preserved in this blog for all time and thanks to my SEO efforts this should be visible to people who search for If Vahinkovakuutus for the foreseeable future.

On top of this i can see from the stats that about 30 people visiting the site clicked an insurance related advertisement. Statistically and based upon the source of my traffic at least half of these were If customers or stakeholders as they came from If's own Facebook pages.  I would love to know if even one of these customers switched from IF to a competitor as a result of this. This is a cost to If i cannot measure and only guess at.

Furthermore as half half of my traffic came from the UK and US and none of these are If countries this is probably the first that those people have ever heard of If vahinkovakuutus. As such this is the first impression that will affect their image of If vahinkovakuutus as a brand. You know what they say about first impressions. This becomes even more pertanent if If vahinkovakuutus decide to venture into those markets.

Really it beggars belief that a company could be this stubborn, childish and damn stupid. As a manager i would have settled in the beginning taken the opportunity and sold the marketing story. I would have eliminated all risk from this. Especially as the customers case is a valid one and the original value of the claim was only 500 euros. I thought insurance companies were big on assessing risk and ROI.

Well it just shows me that even in the face of a valid argument (by their own admission) they will not put their customers first even when it is in their interest to do so. I just cannot understand this, it makes no sense at all.

What was my own ROI for this Experiment?

Well personally i did not do well, i was unable to turn over the claim decision and admittedly i spent a lot of time on this. However i have learned alot about how to engage a company and i can share that with others and i will. This blog is an enduring testament to that.

In the upcoming weeks i will add new content here that will outline a Social CRM engagement model/framework from the customers perspective. The purpose of which is to show customers how to succesfully engage a company in dialogue pertaining in particular to Social CRM. I will also add more content related to analysis of channels and statistics. In this way customer's everywhere will be able to learn from my mistakes and successes to engage with their own service and product providers.
Perhaps then the ROI for me is in terms of legacy. I hope that others can learn from this experience and apply some of the techniques. I also hope that companies themselves will learn from this and learn how to and how not to engage customers. At least everyone (including me) should learn something about Social Customer Relationship Management.

Conclusion

During this process i tried to find other examples of someone trying this kind of engagement and was unable to do so. All of the literature seems to have been written from the company's perspective in terms of their marketing successes. As far as i know this is the first time a customer has deliberately attempted to engage a company in an organised dialogue and not a rant and as part of a wider self organised social media campaign. Of this i can be proud.

As a final note, i managed to gain 50% of my traffic through If vahinkovakuutus's own social media. This meant i was able to target their own audience, on my site, with insurance advertisements from If's competitors. Originally this was to increase the pain to If vahinkovakuutus. Although the revenues are small from this endeavour (a few cents so far) and profitiability was not the point of this experiment, in about 100 years i should have recouped the losses originally caused to me by If vahinkovakuutus. In this respect on a long enough time scale this endeavour will not have cost me anything. This means the only costs were incurred solely by If vahinkovakuutus.

Well done If, we salute you! Sometimes when you win you lose and sometimes when you lose you win. Given a long enough time scale of course.

If Vahinkovakuutus have blocked me!

How is this for nice customer service and PR. In terms of social engagement If vahinkovakuutus have again failed.

This time it is not If Finland who are necessarily at fault. I have been blocked from using the other If regional facebook groups.

As i mentioned in a previous post i have been using If vahinkovakuutus's own social media as a piggybacking strategy and tool against them. This could have actually been beneficial to them if they had not lost the opportunity that i originally highlighted to them in the start of this story.

As i mentioned in the social media as a piggybacking strategy post i would later reveal how succesful this was. Well during the first day i did notice an increase in traffic from Latvia, Lithunia and Norway in particular but interestingly not from Sweden.

This was short lived however. Today for interest sake i decided to take a look to see if those original links i had put to link to my blog were still there.

Original Post added to If Insurance Swedens Facebook Group

As you can i see i did not put anything offensive or derogatory i just asked simply would you be interested in seeing what is going on in Finland?

Well it seems that this is enough for If Vahinkovakuutus to block me from their other Facebook groups. Well that is a nice engagement strategy. Granted it is not nice for those areas and they were just trying to protect their own customer base but i think that this goes against the principles of Social CRM.  Also i believe that this also fuels the negative perception of If as a whole. I did not attack them i did not criticise them on their own social media i just tried to engage them. I only posted once on those Facebookg groups.

Once again nicely played If Vahinkovakuutus. You are showing the world that your social media strategy, social engagement and customer service suck.

In a response to this i have today mentioned politely the existence of this blog on If vahinkovakuutus's competitor's Facebook groups such as Tapiola and Pohjola. They cannot control that media :-)



Visit Tapiola's Facebook Group

How to: SEO for your Blogger Blog

So finally as promised a post about SEO for Blogs. Well firstly why is SEO important for not only my blog but your blog.

SEO means search engine optimisation and basically means that you optimise your blog so that, among other things your blog will appear higher in search results for search engines such as google, yahoo and bing.

However this is not the whole story, as i mentioned in my previous post this will also have an influence upon the type of advertisements your visitors are presented with.

In any case without search engine optimisation it at least makes it very difficult for your audience to find you. This in turn means that there are an awful lot of quality blogs out there that have fallen between the cracks and simply for most people do not exist.

Basically there are two sides to this coin. What you can do on your site-blog and what offsite strategies can be employed.

Onsite- Within your blog

The first thing to think about is your audience. Who do you want to attract to your site, what kind of search words do you want them to be able to find your blog with. With this in mind you need to.

1. Use your most important search words in the naming of your blog. If you already have your URL and do not want to change it then at least change the title as it appears on your blog.
2. Write a description (header) for your blog that describes the content and uses again more of your keywords.
3. Ensure you have enough content. The more content that you have on your topic the better.
4. Use the labels of your posts to also reference your keywords.
5. Not only thnik about volumes of content but also good content on a subject people are interested in. Volumes of traffic will affect your ranking.
6. Recent content needs to be added so as to keep the blog fresh and alive in the eyes of the search engines. See point 15 also.
7. Try and use your keywords in Headings of your articles and in their URL's
8. Use alt tags on your images. See how 
9. Use heading tags also See how
10. Site design. Obivously a nice looking site will work for your users but it also helps those little robots that search engines send to index your site. Avoid deadlinks especially and try and interlink the content on your blog. This will not only help your visitors navigate but also those little pesky robots.
11. Write optimal length posts at least 250 words.
12. Don't duplicate blog content in multiple posts.
13. Outgoing links. By Adding links to sources outside of your blog that is relevant to your content then this should also help your blog appear higher in search results although exactly how effective this is is often debated.
14. Add a sitemap to your blog. This is nice actually for your users and may/maynot help with SEO but here is the solution i employed. See here. You just need to create a page and paste in the HTML from the linked blog. This is the easiest solution that i could find in the blogosphere.
15. Ping. Use tools such as Pingomatic to tell those little robots to come and take a look what is going on. Also add your blog to google's blog search. See also offsite SEO.
16. Submit your site to be indexed from google webmaster tool site submit.
17. Add a sitemap under google webmaster tools simply sign in with your blogger account and go to sitemap as shown in the below image. All blogger blogs have a predefined sitemap that automatically updates. To add yours simply add rss.xml to the url of your blog home page. This is effectively your rss feed and not really a site map but it will allow google to index it. 

Offsite SEO.

In this respect quite honestly there is not so much that you can do. This is because you cannot control this yourself for the most part.

One of the main factors affecting this are offsite links that direct to your blog. There are some services where you can buy these but i would not recommend that as it requires spending money and also there has been a crackdonw on this practice by search engines in recent times.

However one free way to generate these links is by having your blog listed in various blog directories. This also has the added benefit of being able to garner yout blog a little extra traffic from these services. For the most part adding your blog is free to these services but quite often these services require a reciprical link back to their service to be added to your blog. I have added a page simply called blog directories where i have added these links. Some services will offer you a specific code snippet or button code that you can simply paste into the HTML of the page of your reciprical link location. Click this once to let the services know that you have added the link. Others will just require the location of your link and they presumably check this manually later.

In any case adding your blogs to these directories may take some time for the directories to process so start as soon as you have enough content that they will agreee to add your blog. I would recommend at least 10-15 posts to start with.

Almost all of these services ask for a description of the blog and meta key words so i would recommend spending some time thinking about this. Save this into notepad or word so you can simply cut and paste it in each time. If you don't do this, it will very quickly become annoying if you are trying to add your blog to many directories in one session.

Here is a list of blog directories available on the web. This should keep you occupied for quite some time ;-)

Well that is about it. And Just to prove it works here is what i managed to achieve using these techniques. I managed to get my blog to appear second in googles search results for "IF Vakuutus" (if insurance in Finnish) second only after If's own Finnish site even though none of my content was in Finnish.

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.

Why Excellent Customer Service is Essential in the Insurance Industry

When we think of most companies they sell physical products and when i think back to my school day Geography classes something that we were drilled with then were the three main industry types, Primary (mining in particular), Secondary (manufacturing), Tertiary (Selling consumer products and the service industry).

Well for most of us as consuners we only ever have contact with the tertiary industry as part of our daily private lives.We buy, we use and we experience.

Most companies sell physical products. If i buy a TV i watch it, i use it, i experience it on a regular basis. The buying experience is a very small part of the overall equation and user experience. The products is used everyday or at least on a regular basis. For the most part, the manufacturer or the provider of the product is not involved in this at all. The only time that they may become involved is when something goes wrong. In many cases though this is the responsibility of the retailer to handle the end customers service request.  As such for Sony or Samsung or LG the most important thing is the daily function and performance of the product and not so much the customer service.

If we think about the service industry such as a reastaurant they are selling a produc,t the food but, also an experience which is strongly affected by imeasurable factors such as ambience or atmosphere in the restaurant. The customers themselves contribute to this. However the company are able to nurture this in the design of the restaurant and most importantly the customer service they offer. People come back to restuarants because of the experience. The product i.e. the food, the ambience and the customer service. In this case all three are important.

This brings us to the Insurance industry. Despite what they like to think they do not sell products. The policies and the insurances you purchase are not products in themselves. They are not physical they are not affected by ambience. What insurance companies sell is piece of mind. You know, believe and trust that when something goes wrong they are there for you.

In If vahinkovakuutus's slogan they state "don't worry, we help". This is the core of what they do.

Unlike in the other industries there needs to be trust for the "product to work". Without trust there is no product and no customers.

As a customer you only ever really experience your product personally when something goes wrong. Day to day you experience the insurance product simply as piece of mind. Why else would you contact the insurance company. As such the essence of what an insurance company does and when you experience their product is when you need to test that piece of mind. As such as an insurance company it is essential that this is recognised and that the absolute most effective service for the customer is provided. In order to serve their customers an insurance company should focus their resources on customer service and supplying the customer with a superb experience.

When a customer approaches an insurance company it is when something bad has happenned to them personnally. This is a very personal and often painful and stressful time for them. They need help and for them they are experiencing some kind of emergency. Granted this iswith differing degrees of scale. Someone has died, their house has had fire damage, they are stranded abroad or ar sick or injured or they have had a road accident. These are incredibly stresful and worrying times for a customer and this is when they NEED a very professional, accurate, caring and personal service experience to help ease their pain and certainly not to add to it.

Well here are some facts about If vahinkovakuutus's customer service.

1. You cannot get face to face service related to claims in an If Vahinkvakuutus office. In Finland (You can in Denmark)
2. If offices in Finland only sell insurance. At least o me this indicates they care more about sales than service.
3. When you call If's emergency number representative you may be speaking to a third party (Elisa)who do not know If's policies and can cannot give you accurate information even about whether or not you are covered.

Think about it when you have a car accident, if someone dies or gets injured or your house burns down. In these most important situations.

Do you not want to be able to speak to someone personally face to face, would this help you?
Don't you want to know that the information you receive is accurate and correct and you can act upon it.

This is the essence of experiencing the insurance product and as such,

An insurance company's product can be measured by their customer service experience. In fact NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

When you do not get this you may find that you have been sold "piece of mind" but with this kind of service you may get home and discover that your television box is full of rocks or your restaurant food has come straight out of a garbage can.

Without a great customer service experience can you really trust an insurance company?

So as to help IF improve their customer service experience this is what i have asked for.

Read the full thread

Let me/If vahinkovkuutus know what you think. Post here or on their own wall.

A Bit of Fun: IF Vakuutus Finland vs IF Insurance Sweden

One thing about the Finns is their love hate relationship with Sweden. For a long period of it's history Finland was ruled by Sweden and of course this explains alot.

Like England and Germany's relationship this is usually most apparent on the sports field and being Scandanavia most importantly on the ice hockey rink. To summarise that relationship so far.

World Champiosnships                                                   Olympics (Gold, Silver Bronze, Total)

Finland 2,6,3,    Total Medals 11                                       0,2,3,     Total Medals 5
Sweden 8,17,15 Total Medals 40                                       2,2,4      Total Medals 8

The Finns wont like that at all but it is the truth. However nicely for the Finns in the world championship victories they did beat the Swedes which adds extra satisfaction!

Coincidently

Britain World Championships Ice Hockey 1,1,1, Total 3 Medals!! Amazing don't have a clue how that is possible.

In terms of love for the Swedes

This is most apparent in the amount of interest here in the Swedish royal family. Especially since the baby arrived.

Ok so the Match UP is IF Vakuutus Finland Online Marketing Vs IF Insurance Sweden Online Marketing

Finland and Sweden are countries of roughly the same size population (a couple of million difference) so the numbers can be interpretted in that way.

YouTube Performance

If Insurance have both a Swedish and Finnish advert. Both are identical except the language. See my Youtube channel for all the content described here.

The current one contains a girl getting out of the pool. Both of these adverts have approximately the same numebr of views and in fact Finland is slightly winning that competition. As such we need a tiebreaker.

Lets take a look at a slightly older advert. Their "Toy Shop advert" also on YouTube of course.

Swedish Advert views 3 756
Finnish Advert views just over 1 169

In this case there is a marked difference. Why?
The swedes applied a trick which worked amazingly well. They uploaded a video of the advert but also with info about how they made it. In the video the toy shop is destroyed and they explain how they did it.

Swedish: how the advert was made advert 73 576 views.

This is amazing they managed to get people to watch the whole advert first (nice one) and then they got to see how it was made. This undoubtedly is a big reason why the Swedes out performed the Finns. Why didn't Finland copy this? They usually do.

If Insurance Sweden win Youtube contest hands down

Twitter

Swedish Twitter 239 Tweets 135 Followers
Finnish Twitter 0 Tweets 27 followers including me (it was about 12 when i started)

Enough said If Vakuutus Finland have not adapted to twitter at all.

IF Insurance Sweden win Twitter competition hands down.

Facebook

In this one group membership is roughly equal.

Finland 5051 members 224 Talking about
Sweden 6504 members 169 Taling about

Finland win talking about, Sweden win membership (Did i affect this?)

Facebook Result Score Draw

LinkedIn

Well only IF Sweden have a profile that i could find so it can only go one way.

IF Insruance Sweden win the LinkedIn Competition.

Final Score

I Insurance Sweden Social Marketing 3 If Vakuutus Finland Social Marketing  0

Epilogue

When groupon came to Finland suddenly there were about 5 copies of the same business idea. That is once the Finns saw it worked.

The large volume of copies of foreign television shows and the lack of original Finnish made shows in Finland is testament to that also. Finns like to copy stuff that works generally and in terms of marketing especially original campaigns and marketing concepts are few and far between.

In my opinion Swedes are much more extravert and this generally leads to a more independent creative environment. Finns are a fairly homogenous population that strives to keep everyone the same. They are more introvert. Finns are not encouraged to be different and are actively encouraged to conform to the norm or to follow the rules i.e. expected norms of behaviour. In this way for professional fields that require creativity, independent thought and looking at and doing things in a different way that may be against the normal way of working, Finns are not culturally suited. This ultimately means they do not excel in fields that require alternative thinking or ways of working outside of the traditional or established means, roles and structures.

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.

The Human and Cultural Aspect

Within this experiment there are other factors at play that have not yet been discussed. Namely the behaviour of the people involved in the experiement and in particular culture.

Within the experiement there are 3 main players whose culture can have an influence on the experiement.

Me and My Cultural Perceptions

I am English, i have lived in Finland for 8 years. I have studied here worked here for Finnish companies and I during this time i have had relationships with Finnish women.

Despite these experiences i am sure i still retain my English culture and still behave as such. However i do also have a unique view of Finnish culture and behaviour that Finns themselves (outside of academia) probably do not.

As an English person or at least as me. I question things, i am passionate, if i get it into my head i am right i do not back down even though the "rules" in place suggest otherwise. I am not passive i am proactive and am not afraid to question, learn and improve myself. I am certainly not afraid to try things that others would not.

In short i feel that these are not generally Finnish traits and i think that Finns and IF do not know how to deal with this as a Finn would not have done what i am doing. This is something new and i am not sure how the Finns will react inthis situation.

Social Media and the Social Community

Social media has helped globalise industries even though the companies themselves may be domestic. Finnish companies (with the exception of Nokia and the paper industry) generally have at least  80% of their business in Finland. People here ask why there has not been another Nokia "miracle". Is culture part of it? Is psyche part of it?

Finnish companies may be even unaware that with the invent of social media and even the internet they are not just visible to Finns alone they become global even though their sales do not necessarrily follow suit. As a marketing professional it is important to maintain their brand not only in their own country but abroad and to all people who may have an interest (customers and stakeholders alike). By doing what i have done i am clearly putting IF onto the global stage. As such in this blog and on IF's wall i am communicating deliberately in English so as to evoke a wider interest than just in Finland. Finland only has a 5 million population that i can target. The globe has 7 billion and growing.

In terms of the members of the social community who are participating in this endeavour their culture also pays a part. As we have had visitors from many countries it is difficult to apply cultural theory here.

However from the data i can see that for example on Twitter most of the followers are from outside of Finland. However if i look at the traffic to the blog 50% is coming from Finland and 50% from outside.

This says something about culture or at least the adoption of Twitter. Although Finns have visited the blog they have not subscribed or started to follow on Twitter. Instead they have chosen to remain anonymous and passive. Why? It could very well be that they totally disagree with what i am doing, a Finn would never do that ;-)

Others who are following on the blog are commenting and sharing on twitter, retweating and liking on Facebook. If this is indeed conducive with If's responses and expectations and hence behaviour this would say much about my increasing frustration with them as perceived from my English perspective.

Finns would not behave this way so they do not know how to respond effectively. They need to understand they are dealing with an Englishman who has different expectations from a Finn. I am their customer though and as such they should adapt to service my needs and expectations. Do they realise this?

Finns and Finland

As an English man i have much higher expectations for customer service than an average Finn.

Finland is not an hierarchical society and in my opinion this in itself  means that Finns do not naturally accept a master and subordinate relationship. People here are always equal and that is the way Finns like it. In my opinion this has a detrimental affect on the level of customer service you receive here. The average Finn working in customer service considers the customer their equal, they do not naturally accept that they are there as a subservant in that relationship. I have experienced many examples of totally unacceptable customer service here, of course as perceived from my English perspective.

It seems often to me here that the simple customer service principle "the customer is always right, even when they are wrong" has not been widely adopted in Finland. I think this is clearly demonstrated by this experiment and IF's responses. I should say here though that is not always that case, i have had excellent customer service in Finland. I will just briefly mention Iitalla who have given me excellent customer service in the past when they themselves have made mistakes with orders and faulty products.

As an Englishman I am more likely than a Finn to interpret rules and apply them based upon the situation. This is often in combination to what we often refer to as common sense. This is especially valued when the rules in place do not apply to a situation, the situation has not been planned for or the whole thing is in flux. A metaphor for this could be that of a football referee (soccer for the Americans).

The football referee has a clear set of rules that apply to the game. The rules are written to give clear black and white guidance that the referee is there to apply. Applying these rules word for word and perfectly will not make you a good referee.

The referee is there also to control the game, violence, anger, the fans the players the coaches and at the top levels the media. If the referee fully applied the rules to every situation the game would very quickly get out of control. Top referees understnad this. They use common sense to apply rules where appropriate.

For example:

If we consider penalties. Many times i have heard, "if that was outside the box, it would have been a foul". That is true, but why was it not given, because the referee wants to control the game, avoid controversy. If he gave the penalty he would potentially affect the game, come in for criticism himself and lose control of the players and fans, especially if he was wrong. In this case the referee interprets when it is best to apply the rules and only does so when he is sure.

When the foul is outside the box it means less in terms of effecting the outcome of the game so he is more likely to give a foul even when he is not sure that it is. This is especially true for example when there have been a series of strong tackles that have not technically been a foul. In this case the referee often blows to give a foul so as to regain control of the game and to calm the players down before a serious injury or bad foul does occur. In this case the rules are applied liberally.

Other examples for the game are, players not getting booked early on in the game for a foul that would get them booked later in the game. Contact with goalkeepers, referees protect them to avoid controversy.

As such a great referee knows when to interpret the rules and apply them to the situation and when it is appropriate to do so. In this way rules are interpretted, bent and applied to situations as appropriate. In this way at some level rules become guidelines and common sense is applied.

In my opinion, Finnish culture does not readily adapt to what English people refer to as common sense. Finns like things nice and black and white they need a rule to apply to a situation to be able to resolve it. As such when a new situation occurs that their are no rules for or when the rules are not suitable finns will often continue to revert to the rule book instead of questioning it and using common sense to resolve the situation. This often causes problems for me personally in other walks of life when compromise and conflict resolution skills are required between parties. It is true that sometimes the rules get changed after the situation occurs so as to avoid the situation next time but for most part the situation acts as precident and the rules will be applied again in the future as in the first case.

Through the media of this blog, i have communicated with IF, i have tried to describe their opportunities and risks early on in the experiment to them. They did not listen. I recognised this Finnish trait described above and i tried to influence them. I obviously failed. If are afraid of setting precident rather than measuring the risks and benefits in this unique situation that they probably do not have any specific guidelines or rules for.

At this moment I have had getting on to 1000 visitors to the blog (and growing daily) as well as what i feel is a valid argument for challenging the claim. In response to If i have clearly outlined what i expect from them and how i wish them to respond so that they can have a framework to work with. Let's see what happens. Next

Conclusion

Characteristically of Finns, in the eye of criticism or conflict they shut down, become defensive stop listening and stick to their guns no matter what.

I am sure that this post in itself will prompt at first a negative reaction from IF and the Finns reading this. If will want to stick to their guns.

I am writing this though as i feel it is valid for the experiment and should be written even though it will probably have a detrimental affect on the outcome from the point of view of changing IF's mind about overturning the claim.

This is after all an investigation into the effectivenss of social media to empower individual customers against organisations and as such it would be foulish to ignore this content as a variable.

However Finns have one more interesting characteristic they seem to be very interested in what people think of them and Finland. I hope that this characteristic will counter act any hostility that may be felt and people of all nationalities will read this and think and maybe change their own behaviour.

Culture is a major factor that affects all business everywhere and in my opinion is often neglected or underestimated.
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......

What is the value of a Facebook group?

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At this point in the blog I thought that I would start to evaluate the performance of some of the channels I am trying to utilise. In particular the Facebook groups that are in play here. First there is my Facebook group which i created for the purpose of enabling debate by people who did not wish to comment on the blog or whom wished to get information via Facebook about updates to the blog experiment rather than Twitter. Social Media on the visitors terms, not tied to the blog, RSS, email or Twitter. So how has this performed?
My Own Facebook Group
	Well as you can see my Facebook group has not been that succesful. This does not mean i will give up on it yet :-) There are only 2 members including myself Only content comes from me with the exception of 1 comment
Well what can the reasoning behind this be? Well how have I promoted the group? Firstly I promoted the group through my own Facebook profile. I have also added the information on to the blog where the main content related to the experiment is being held. I have also started very recently (1 minute ago) to publish twits specifically related to the Facebook group.
IF’s Facebook Group IF’s own group as below has a little over 5000 members. Concidently it was about 4800 before my little endeavor started a couple of days ago. Of course I have no way to verify what affect my actions had because I cannot see the historical trend data in any case there has been a moderate increase in numbers there recently.   This has been in the absence of any visible actions by IF on their Facebook group at least. Of course other media may have had an effect. IF are currently utilising television advertising in Finland. So what content is on IF's Group Now?
	Marko wants to get a reward for being the 5000nth member. Then my post and social media experiment.
	Kai is someone complaining about the wait times for customer service Sini is telling her customer satisfaction story of being rescued off the motorway
Interestingly this is all on the first page of the Facebook group mixed in with the usual company communication and PR articles which I won’t bother mention here.
Well what do these examples teach me about Facebook groups? People only find groups when they are actively looking for them. Facebook is not good at making it easy to find groups you may be interested in. Users need to know they exist or at least think they may exist e.g. in the case of a large company’s group. Secondly these people need to have a reason to want to join the group. Joining a group is a way of showing support but is generally passive and if you are not really that interested can potentially bung up your own Facebook home page. This in itself may hold you back from joining. As such the content has to be very interesting to you and you will probably want to have a vested interest in participating or at least following. In the case of small to medium size companies an investigation would almost certainly show that a high proportion of people who are member of a Facebook group either work for or have worked for/with the company in question. They may also be other stakeholders such as shareholders who have a vested interest in following what is happenning with the organisation. Other members are ones who wish to communicate with the company and generally want or expect something. They join the group to win something or because they want to actually place negative information about the company onto the group wall. In my opinion these are the only real group members or the ones that have real value. What is the benefit of a Facebook group to an Organisation? If you are a company therefore you want to get as many members as possible (sorry obviously) but why? Well this depends on the industry but based upon IF’s wall. Simply the organization should be trying to  show how great their customer service is and be showcasing their success stories. The main benefit of which is brand enhancement, allowing customers to get service via Social Media (if they want). If you wish people to be more active then there needs to be content that your stakeholders are interested in. This depends upon your brand and your market but in the Financials and Insurance segment perhaps content that Coca Cola would add to their Facebook group is not the type of content that your group members want. Currently IF have a competition running on their Facebook group to sing their “marketing jingle” and win 100 euro gift coupon. It would be nice to know how successful this has been for IF. Not something I would usually associate with the insurance industry. What are the benefits for Individuals to start groups? Coincidently: In this experiment I have also found a Facebook group (in Finnish sorry). The groups purpose is to try and get people to boycott IF Insurance. This group also has only two members. This group however at this point is not open so you cannot comment without joining which somehow defeats the object of the group. I guess this occurred as a result of yet another facebook update but indicates also that an individuals interest waivers over time and of course this is expected. An individual trying to draw attention to his or her cause will have a limit where they stop believing they can make a difference and give up. This is of course true also in this experiement. Let's see where my own limit is? In the case of a company the company will always have an interest in preserving their brand and presence in social media (unless it is just a fad?) and hence over time the group gains members and content even if the content is only provided by the company itself. Often once you join a group it is quite a rare thing to leave those groups so the overall trend is upwards. That is unless something external (like this experiment) has an affect on individuals desire to participate in the given group. If you consider the boycott  IF group and the performance of my own independent group then it seems clear to me that if you want to cause pain or influence a company then the best place to do it is on their own social media and try and garner support there. It is easy for a company to ignore an independent counter productive kind of group when it is not visible to their stakeholders and the group itself needs to be found by people who are looking for it. Even if this kind of group is found it seems to me that in all likelihood the group has already been discontinued and is not actively managed or promoted. As such to make this experiment more successful and to help show that we as consumers have power anyone who wishes to show support or finds what I am doing interesting please like my comments/posts on IF’s own Facebook Group.