Archive for the ‘Social Tech’ Category

Someone asked me recently to develop a job description for “the-buck-stops-here” role over Social Tech. I’ve been reading some great new books on Social Business, doing research on Google, and reaching out to people who have experience. So let’s create a space for the dialog. Please share a thought or two. Even if someone has already had the same thought, add yours as clarification and reinforcement.

First, I think this discussion applies to an enterprise of ANY size, but what do you think?

Second, we have existing title like CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, CMO, CSO. Do you think this role should be C-Level? I’ve heard roles characterized like the following, understanding that titles don’t matter so much, but “seats at the table” do, right?

Chief of Social
Chief Social Architect
Chief Social Officer

Third, what’s involved in the role? I know I’m missing a few things, but here’s what I have so far. What’s missing? But most important, how would you rank these functions and why?

1. ORM
2. Brand Management
3. Organizational Voice
4. Sales Support
5. Marketing Support
6. Customer Service
7. Rating Systems
8. Rivers of Information
9. Internal Networks
10. Internal Media
11. External Networks
12. External Media
13. External Relevance
14. Partner Communications
15. Relationship Management
16. BI/BD
17. Adaptive Culture
18. Virtual Teams
19. Governance
20. Policies & Guidelines

That’s it for now. What do you think? Please pause and share a thought or two. Thanks in advance.

Recently I had the chance to make the connection with a few members of the terrific Jive Software team in NYC. Quite a providential meet-up. Ever since, I’ve been wanting to give them a shout-out on the Blog. So now is the time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks again to all who shared thoughts. It’s been interesting. Before I share some interesting statistics for those of you that like numbers, let me pull some of what I see as the most salient concepts and see if there’s a pattern.

Restating the question:

“Best in class organizational setup. Where should social media be located in the organization (Marketing, Online Service, Corporate Communication, own department). What are the typical function to be in place to run it and what are the key skills and competencies the staff need to bring in to fill such roles?”

“None of this means that we [insurance industry] can’t change, just that we’re very S L O W to change. And that’s something we will need to improve upon if we’re to survive the fast paced world of the 21st Century.”

VP Marketing, U/W – Large Health Re-insurance Company, NYC

Speed. Reminds me of Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: “Must go faster.” The insurance industry – as it exists today – should start acting like there is a T-Rex ready to eat it. Because there is.

“Organisations should realign to structure teams around the consumer/customer experience with your brand…One of the most effective ways I’ve ever structured a team was when I had individuals who were skilled up across both traditional and online media, focused on running a campaign from start to finish across those channels. They were also trained in PR and social, and this focus on end goals and know-how across media helped us achieve a lot in a constrained budget environment…requires a willingness to challenge the orthodoxy of silos and a commitment to training and education…”

Director – Brand and PR, Creator of Erin Esurance, London

Experience. Training. Change. Customer experience rules. The 25 year-old, female, college grad stereotype Social Media Manager? Probably not a good idea.

“The Hub and spoke approach … is my vote as it stands. Build up a center or excellence, that is the phase we are in today and then migrate that group to be that center. There will still be a triage center, the social equivalent of the switchboard. … it should have a direct line to senior management because part of the requirement is speed and the ability to take action…”

Consultant, Web & Social Properties, insurance industry analyst, Boston

Speed again. Central Hub with distributed SME’s.

“…it is best driven by the CEO who takes an active role in the process.  Ideally the company would have a single individual who is adept at organizational change, and that individual would lead the charge while reporting directly to the CEO on this effort.”

P&C, Life Insurance CIO, Dallas

CEO influence. Btw, Follow CEO of Aetna and CEO of AmFam on Twitter. Case in Point.

“For the first, what sprang to mind was the telephone, which — like social tech — is used for two-way communication. So who inside your company gets to have a phone on their desk? And who is responsible for deciding what the people with phones on their desks should be saying to the people to whom they talk? And, even more important, who decides what to do with the information they get back?”

CMO, Life & Accident Insurance Distribution, Columbus

Good analogy that seems to suggest that Social Tech activity should be ubiquitous. Agreed

“Chief Customer Officer.  Today’s insurance enterprise must be built around customer engagement. Across product-lines, markets and sales channels, companies need be able to drive organizational customer-centricity… Consumers talking to consumers…they need to be at the center of everything an insurance enterprise does.”

CMO, Insurance Marketing Services, Chicago

More on customer centricity. Change.

“Couldn’t agree more. The ideal org setup would be a Chief Customer Experience Officer heading up a consolidated Internet (business) team, with at least dotted line reporting relationships from Corporate Communications, Agency/Brokerage communications and Service communications.”

SVP Digital Marketing, Old-line, Captive Agent-driven Life Insurance Company, NYC

More on Customer Experience, definite pattern starting to appear.

“What will be truly interesting is the increased sharing in rich media formats.”

CEO, P&C Insurance Marketing and Branding Services, D.C.

That speaks to required to skills to create the rich media – video’s, meme’s, infographics, etc.

“An organization must first decide what it wants social media to do for it. Brand? Customer acquisition? Customer retention? Customer service? All of the above? As for organization structure, where to house social media depends upon the org itself.”

VP Distribution, B2C Health Insurance Company, Jacksonville

Strategy. Actions must be smart, thoughtful, purposeful. Form follows function.

“Your communicator will have the skillset: a strong knowledge of the business, coupled with great writing skills…”

Consultant, Web & Social Properties, NY Metro

Insurance-savvy with Writing skills. Again, the 25 year-old, female, college grad stereotypical Social Media Manager is probably not the right choice.

“Corp Comm is in most companies the WORST place to house Social (and the wider world of the Internet). It almost always has a defensive and protective mind-frame — not the innovative and truly communicative mind-frame necessary for success in Social.”

SVP Digital Marketing, Old-line, Captive Agent-driven Life Insurance Company, NYC

Innovation and creativity, combined with risk-taking, extrovert, must love people

“I think it can vary depending on the organization, its structure, etc… In the end, EVERYONE in an organization has to get social, just like they had to get internet savvy… With social impacting every part of the organization–sales, marketing, service, business intelligence, product development, agency distribution, etc.–the question isn’t what ONE place should be most responsible but how can all corners of the organization best work together to avoid conflicts, redundancy, compliance issues, reputation issues, etc. Here’s the important part: No matter where it [the "hub" i.e organization, education, best practices, common tools] is run, their job is to empower everyone in the organization.  If they fail to do so, then the models breaks down, collaboration and consistence is lost and problems develop….governance becomes the essential issue and not where social is run. It [USAA] has a strong sense of governance, a great culture of collaboration and a willingness to give and take across silos in order to do the right thing for the brand and its members.”

Director, Social Media, Old-line, Captive Agent-driven Life Insurance Company, NY Metro

Company-wide, Education, Governance, Collaboration, Teamwork (Can you say Jive?)

“Organization, to my mind, is THE issue when it comes to realizing the Social vision in a company, not to mention eventually becoming capable of proving the elusive ROI of Social…it was centralization that enabled virtually all our successes — and it is the dispersal of that organization into other Departments — and most of it under traditionalist Corporate Communications, no less! — that will hobble all the company’s “Internet” activities now and in the future.”

SVP Digital Marketing, Old-line, Captive Agent-driven Life Insurance Company, NYC

Governance, Hub, CoE, and another vote against CorpComm.

“What I have seen work most successfully is that one department be the leader, usually marketing or sales. That department coordinates who does what and how everyone is involved. They are in charge of being coordinating the voice, brand and message that is going out to the world. Another success is when there is a Community Manager that has full authority to manage social, involving everyone in the company in a manner similar to what is described when led by a department.”

Consultant, Web & Social Properties, P&C, Ft. Worth :-)

A vote for Marketing and/or Sales. Full authority. Managing Social by Committee? Nope.

“Digital communication does not work in a silo… it works best when there is one “owner” in each business segment who reports up to a manager of some sort. It really starts with culture though.  There is no “best practice” if the culture of the organization, which includes above all else leadership, doesn’t embrace digital and social communication.”

Director of Agency Sales and Marketing, Regional P&C Agency, Albany

Culture trumps Strategy, right? Culture starts at the top. Follow Tony Hseih, Zappos and watch.

“Ideally, all of those areas of the organization and more should leverage social technology and practices to move the business forward. If you are first bringing social business concepts into an organization, place it with the leader best positioned to champion it, and assign a person who can help each area adopt social in a way that is relevant to the organization’s goals.”

Director, Social Media, Independent Agent-driven P&C Insurance Company, Columbus

A Champion that loves Social Tech – and can also facilitate and bring along others.

Stats:

1. Around 50 discreet ideas
2. 20 Comments (not including mine)
3. 6 Channels used (Blog, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, email)
4. Several Shares and Retweets
5. Global conversation – page seen in 9 different countries
6. Visitors: 108 Total to the site since the post
7. Time on Page: 7:52
8. Page Views: 82
9. Source %: Direct-37; Google-46; Facebook-13; Linkedin-12; Twitter-7

Time spent:

• .5 hour on the post
• .5 hour on the graphic
• 1 hour asking people to Comment
• 1 hour thanking Commenters on the fly via email

Some may say these aren’t significant numbers. I agree. The sheer volume is small on a relative scale. But the important part is not the total, it’s the individuals.

Essentially, the answers to the original question were Crowdsourced. What’s the key to successful Crowdsourcing? Building relationships with a community via face-to-face interactions, Social Network dialogs and mentions, emails, and phone calls. Just like anything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Was it worth it? Yes, absolutely. Who knows how many of the readers took away something. I know the Commenters definitely did. And I know I did – on several levels. And over time, the SEO implications will only grow.

Or I could have watched the Miami Heat v OK City Thunder game for 2 hours.

Before I get to the question:

I came home from a trip last Sunday. My wife had lovingly bought me a DVD while I was gone. As I decompressed and watched it on Sunday, I began to realize why she was so excited for me to see it. I recorded what I considered to be the essential point as it relates to new technologies and ways of doing business in insurance sales and marketing. See what you think…

Click here to see the Video Clip

For those of you who’s company still blocks Facebook, here’s the text:

“I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always. It’s a threat not just a way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins, that have their hands on the switch, they go bat-shit crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not tearing their team down right now, and rebuilding it using your model – they’re dinosaurs!”

-John Henry, Moneyball, speaking to Billy Beane (Brad Pitt)

Common Insurance Company Silos
… with respect to Social Tech

Spot-on regarding Social Tech and its impact on insurance companies and agencies.

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A question for the crowd: As we move into the “Experience Era” (as I heard one insurance executive aptly put it recently), here’s a question that was posed to me regarding Social. Note that this question came from an insurance company on the other side of the world. But it’s a question many people would like to discuss and hear actual data-points on.

“Best in class organizational setup. Where should social media be located in the organization (Marketing, Online Service, Corporate Communication, own department). What are the typical function to be in place to run it and what are the key skills and competencies the staff need to bring in to fill such roles?”

Please Comment, perhaps based on your own experience, perhaps based on conversations with industry peers. The more specific the better. What have you seen work well? Fail? Thanks in advance.

Four years ago, I presented on Social at The Big “I” Agent’s Council on Technology (ACT) meeting in Tampa [pictures - boy was I young!]. I was impressed with the savviness of the group, the leadership, and the breath of fresh air they gave me as one coming from the Life & Health side of the insurance industry. So I stayed in touch and have helped out with various things, like the Social Media Policy Guidelines and various Webinars and other projects.

Last week I participated in a very active Webinar with over 600 attendees and an active Hashtag on Twitter. The recording is HERE.

Yesterday, our fearless leader, Jeff Yates with The Big “I”, sent an email that stimulated thought. I’d like to share it with my community – and ask a couple questions I’ve been asking a lot these past 4-5 years.

Next week I will once again be attending the ACT Meeting, this year in Dallas, with a talk on The Future. As always, I’ll also be grabbing media and sharing thoughts via Twitter, probably via the same hashtag. Feel free to follow along if you can’t make the event in person. It’s going to be REALLY GOOD.

From Jeff Yates via email:

The latest live webinar put on by ACT’s Social Web Work Group – “Getting a Grip: How to Manage your Independent Agency’s Social Media” – attracted 634 attendees last Friday.  There is obviously very strong agency interest in this subject, which is a very good sign!  Our panelists did a great job and shared a number of excellent insights gleaned from their successful experiences using social media.

As Chuck Blondino, Safeco Insurance, a long time industry participant and observer, remarked to me after attending the session:

“I think it’s interesting how people like your panelists today all started at the same place as beginners, but today they’re speaking a different language, one of accomplishment, achievement, success and confidence, while others are still at the beginner stage and have a hard time seeing past challenge and the unknown.  Agents of the future will need to take stronger steps towards change…

Thus, it remains extremely important for us to continue to publicize the successes agencies are having with social media and to continue to extend the reach of our message.  A good place to start is to communicate the availability of the recording of this session on the ACT website at this link.

From Me (Mike):

The thing that I find remarkable and the reason why I wanted to share this in an area where others could comment:

Chris Paradiso with a Customer

Chuck with Safeco is right on target. Socially-enabled and savvy agencies like those around Ryan Hanley, Chris Paradiso, and Angelyn Treutel, not to mention Claudia McClain, Jason Cass, and others, and the Socially savvy carriers that support them, like Katie Peet at State Auto, and others, are indeed speaking a whole new language. They are implementing all new bizdev, sales, and service strategies and tactics that very successfully leverage new technologies to grow their agencies, often at the expense of their competitors, and increase take-home profitability, PLUS improve customer satisfaction, referrals, recommendations, etc.. And those who listened into the Webinar but who are NOT doing these same things, they are sort of out in the cold, knowing there is something good going on inside but they just can’t get in there.

I’ll go further than that. It’s been my observation that there are still a ton of insurance executives, the actual leaders of agencies and companies, who still today snicker about Twitter, barely use Linkedin, block Facebook and YouTube, are still using dread Blackberries, are not savvy to Crowdsourcing, and essentially prevent people on their teams from advancing their agencies and companies with these tools and strategies.

We’ll be chewing on these tough issues next week at the ACT meeting in Dallas (Reg deadline is Thursday). But in the meantime, 2 questions I’ve been posing across my Social graph for the past 3 years:

1. How do you convince – mentally – a very successful Agency or Company executive, one who has achieved that success in the past, largely non-Social Tech era, and as a result who is now suffering from an awful cocktail of success, wealth, complacency, non-technical skills, and resistance to change… how do you encourage them to loosen the grip, to go from the “command-and-control” business model to the round-org-chart-Social-enterprise with an adaptive culture fully leveraging new technologies and concepts like Big Data?

2. And what’s at stake if very successful Agency or Company executives DON’T go hard after these new technologies, to the point where they themselves can set the strategic business priorities and guideposts that INclude, not EXclude, them? What is the likely trajectory for their enterprises?

If you see this, please take a moment to settle, think and comment. Please. We need these ideas. And they need to be public. Thanks in advance.

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