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.

Can you please just answer the questions

As i mentioned in my previous post i have strated to think that my own ROI is getting a little bit out of hand with this project. As such i have moved away from the original facebook thread and have started another as a summary of that thread.

In short i summarised the argument by cutting and pasting the relevant parts of the thread into a more coherrent conversation. All parts of the image below themselves were images and no text content has been edited or changed. The text that is shown below is as it was originally written by the party. I even included my spelling mistakes.

I have added this to the top of If's wall. I have asked them simply.

I added the following as a comment below the main image. In the new thread.

I hope that this will now bring this to an end quickly, whatever that end may be. I do not want this to consume anymore of my own resources and time. Both side of the argument have been out forward so let's see what If vahinkovakuutus think. View their answers here.

Daily Summary 8 and 9. Sorry i have been away.

Hi there faithful followers, sorry i have not been so active over the weekend. Let me explain,

When i started this endeavour i thought that if i could attract a lot of traffic to my blog i would be able to put alot of pressure onto If Vahinkovakuutus to conform to my wishes and agree to my terms.

I have been pretty happy with the amount of traffic i had generated regarding this story however to generate that amount of traffic did require an awful lot of effort and most importantly time.

This does not include only writing these posts and tweeting that they are out there. I have been spending an awful lot of time thinking about SEO and adding my blog to various blog directories (i will write about SEO for blogs when i get a chance). This is work that as a visitor is going on behind the scenes and requires a lot of effort.

Well in short the ammount of time i was spending on this especially in the evenings started to really affect my own personal home life and started to really annoy my girlfriend even though what i was attempting was in both of our interest.

In earlier posts i wrote about what was the ROI on this endeavour for If Vahinkovakuutus. Perhaps i should have thought about what is the ROI on this for me personally. Yes i have learned alot by doing about social engagement, yes i have been able to engage If vahinkovakuuts publically and have managed to cause them public embarassment and pain but at what price. Even if i was able to change If' vahinkovakuutus's policies and protect their other customers from having this experience. Even if i was able to get If vahinkovakuutus to agree to pay my costs caused by their miscommunication then this would still have been a huge layout in terms of my personal time and my own ROI. I guess then that this has made me an activist. I have never thought as myself as one before but i guess when you fight for something for the good of others way above your own personal good then this makes you an activist.

I guess in my naivity i thought that having read a lot of stories about how social media can go viral and spread and grow at unbelievable rates. I had thought that this would have happenned also to my story. I had thought that if i could trigger this kind of viral spreading then the resolution i was looking for with If vahinkovakuutus quickly and due to popular demand. Well as this has not happenned and i have not been able to engineer this then i will no longer spend a large part of my day attempting to do so.

However i have established a steady daily traffic of visits from people who are interested in this story so i can continue this endeavour by adding content here and finishing the story.

In any case, in this blog,  If vahinkovakuutus will have a permanent record of how this customer service story was handled and long after i have stopped and this story ends there will be a constant reminder to If vahinkovakuutus and to anyone who finds this story that something was tried that as far as i can see was never tried before and that it may even have been succesful.