April 20th, 2009 | 
Author: Been swamped lately. Absolutely. But in this economy, I’ll take it…
First, an informal Poll: What do you think is critical must-have functionality on a new affinity insurance distribution Web site? Please comment below – and remember the mantra: Lurking is Lame! Just a quick thought would be GREAT!
Got a great new podcast coming up with Peter van Aartrijk from Washington on agent Web sites. Look for that on Friday.
Any guesses on what this structure is?
Saw the future of some insurance companies – empty cubes with morale-booster signs still hanging on walls. I won’t mention the insurance company name, but it was quite a chilling experience. I’ve mentioned this before… what happens when big insurance companies don’t adapt to change. Please comment below (I know I’m pushing buttons here…).
Launching three new insurance affinity sites in the next two months. Can’t wait. Each one is unique in the problems and challenges it solves. Of course, as they roll out, I will be reflecting and discussing. June will be a busy launch month. But that also means we’ll have some bandwidth coming available. Of course, we have a bunch of projects in the pipeline, but it might be an opportunity for some of you…
Web-enabling agent onboarding, contracting, and training for two major insurance companies in the Med Supp space. Lot of interesting things happening in Senior Medical. Two of our larger clients are glad they’ve Web-enabled a bunch of their processes as money tightens up-stream.
Speaking of Med Supp, the Jesse Slome conference is coming up in Scottsdale. I hear there will be record attendance – over 200 registered. I’ll be co-speaking with Sam Halpern of Senior Market Sales about Web-enabling agents for greater productivity. Should be really good. Jesse also asked me to pinch-hit about email marketing in another session.
Oh yeah – very excited… Launching a client Blog/Web site shortly. Call it an interactive Web site, but it’s really a blog, actually a team blog built on WordPress technology. Glad someone finally caught the vision that interactivity is what people want. Will be talking off-line about this at the PIMA summer conference in July.
The last couple months, I’ve been working on a bunch of strategic alliances. Look for details in the next few months.
Did you know that we also do Portals?? Any kind of portal. Seems to be some confusion on that. Portals are great – extremely useful.
Trying to figure out Twitter – getting there. How are you using twitter? Please comment
Trying to solve the riddle of independent agents without Web sites… or with bad Web sites. Any ideas?
Spent some time up at Houghton College with my son, Zach Wise – amazing school, amazing people.
Posted in Insurance-Technologies
MIke – A social linking strategy is a great start. A good example is the "ShareThis" button you have on your blog. But a social linking strategy is more than just building links. Is your content relevant? Is it compelling? Do you give visitors a vehicle to comment on your content? In your case, yes.
Take a look at allstate.com . At the bottom of every page is a list of social media links. Why the bottom? Why not relative to the content? A smarter strategy would be to have a "sharethis" relative to the content. To me, this looks like an afterthought. Most likely a reaction to someone challenging the marketing/web group on "why don't WE have this??".
Newyorklife.com is doing it right. The content is relevant and they are empowering the user to interact with the content. All of their product pages and supporting content has a social linking tool on the right margin, but they also have a "rate this" tool going on as well. Adding the link tool either in the right margin or at the beginning/end of an article is far more intuitive to the user. Now where NYL hits a home run is where they give the user the ability to also leave comments. This, in my opinion, is a treasure trove of information that can be used for research, product development, etc.
Just my two cents worth….
John, great examples of social networking, good and 'bad'. http://allstate.com/ definitely seems like an after-thought as you suggest. Who looks at the footer of a Web page?!?! Wow.
I see the NYL Web 2.0 functionality – not bad. On a side note, the site could definitely benefit from a usability analysis. I will say this about http://www.newyorklife.com/: I don't know if I've ever seen a busier home page – geez. A ton of stuff on there. Some day perhaps they will just ask me, "What are you looking for? How can we help you?" Like a clothing store attendant. "Thanks for coming in. Tell me what you are looking for and I'll point you in the right direction…" Possible?