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April 27, 2012 at 01:13 PM
One of the failures of the age of automation in maintaining customer relationships was the resulting disconnect created between businesses and customers.
This chasm was particularly pronounced in the insurance industry, where the sales relationship slowly shifted from valuing rich one-on-one interactions with potential customers, to pursuing the creation of automated Web portals that drove high volume sales.
Fortunately, the adoption of new media gives us an opportunity to reestablish one-on-one relationships with health and disability insurance customers through such old-school business values as conversation and availability. With new media, you provide customers with information where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it while maintaining the high volume of growth that is possible through online sales.
Over the course of the past few years I have spent countless hours building the new media strategy of the insurance provider I work with, and honestly, it has been a hard road. Developing a new media strategy is a demanding process. As I built an online network of over 130,000 followers, I found that the launch process can be simplified by following a few steps that help begin any new media campaign with purpose, drive, and a great chance for success.
Consult with the compliance term early.
Avoid aggravation and last-minute changes by making sure you know exactly what you can and can’t say and what kinds of communications you can and can’t elicit from potential customers.
Reserve your new media accounts.
This may seem like an obvious first step, but it is a very important one. Register your business name and the names of all of your products. Make sure that the account names and handles you choose are consistent with your brand image.
Use the character limit in each user name intelligently. For example, the name HCC Medical Insurance Services is incredibly long and would not work as a Twitter handle. To get around that problem, I used our commonly known abbreviation HCCMIS. This option was still very recognizable for our customers and conveyed the brand. Make sure you keep consistency. HCCMIS’s Facebook and YouTube profiles use the same abbreviation: HCCMIS.
After your accounts are reserved, do not jump the gun. There is no need to start producing content right away, as there is still work to be done.
Best Practice: When you reserve your social network handles, be consistent. If you cannot get the name you want on Twitter, come up with something that will work for that network, and that you can use on all of your other networks.
Monitor new media conversations BEFORE you interact.
