Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer gives some relevant tips that are useful for any health insurance company beginning involvement in social media.

1. Develop a plan, then get commitment from the top levels of you company. You need a CEO and board behind the idea and your proposed implementation of the idea before you dabble. If not, you may have the rug pulled out before you even get started. The top level involvement will also help assure compliance with regulation requirements.

2. Be proactive about compliance. Don’t try to skirt regulation requirements simply because you’re using social media. Work closely with your compliance officers to explain social media interaction, then work out solutions that integrate best practices for compliance as well as interacting in social media. This may mean you have a pool of approved Tweets from which you can pull, or that there is a delay of hours or days in responding to some questions, but that’s part of the equation.

3. Know your Media. It’s important to know your media tools and how they are used, and then educate your team, including top executives, on how those tools work. Let
them know that corporate blogs don’t need to be on the front page of the website, for example. Also, that there can be a review and approval process for any customer-
generated content, as long as that review process is clearly stated on the blog.

Some executives won’t understand a moderated environment or how moderation works – make sure you’re prepared to explain it.

4. Have a team approach. Making a single person in charge of all social media, moderating input and making comments can be exhausting for that individual, and may cause problems for you down the road, if they go in a direction that you didn’t like. The team approach is by far the best.

5. Shorten timelines for review. Social media does, by nature, demand a kind of immediacy. This will likely involve a streamlined process for communication review. Aim for 24 to 48 hours on most comments, but allow for a quicker interface if there is a situation that demands it.

If you take the appropriate precautions and plan ahead, there is every indication that the health insurance industry could benefit from utilizing social media opportunities with their customers.

For example, there are a plethora of privacy regulations governing what can and can’t be exposed about a specific patient. When you’re on social media, you’re about as public as you can be.

In a related challenge, there is also a government regulated, complex approval system for any communication from the insurance industry to the public. Each piece of communication, including social media messages, has to complete the approval process, which can take weeks. Not the typical turnaround time for a status update!

Also, if you are attempting to answer specific questions with a medical professional, you’re taking a qualified nurse or doctor away from their traditional duties, and with many medical facilities understaffed, it may just not seem important enough.

However, there are some good arguments to be made for including social media in a health insurance marketing and information plan.

• Access — many people who are daunted by forms, lines and technical language are completely comfortable logging into Twitter or Facebook. South Carolina is looking at using social media to reach Medicaid and Medicare customers.
• Also, many people will know exactly how to find a company on Facebook, but have trouble remembering your web address. They can get questions answered more quickly through social media.
• Some Companies are Already There – with the popularity of social media, even an industry with obstacles like the health insurance industry’s will find some early adopters. They are out there, with blogs, Q & A columns, and customer service.
• The Customers are using Social Media – Customers comparison shop, seek information, and communicate with others via social media. Health insurance companies seeking to be relevant may need to join in.
• A “Friendlier” Feel. Health insurance companies have the image of being distant and inaccessible, not to mention unresponsive, in many cases. A presence in social media could soften that image.

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The Sales Standard is effective because its services evolve with your company and developments in the marketplace and with buyer trends. Based on a client’s sales operation, market position and goals, The Sales Standard create solutions that are 100% tailored to clients’ businesses.

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Recently, Facebook and Twitter added location options. Twitter announced in April that they will allow users to attach metadata to tweets. This data could include location information.

Facebook is teaming up with McDonald’s in what some see as the future of location based social networking. When users check in at any nearby McDonalds, they’ll receive reward coupons for the restaurant.
With 100 million Facebook users who check or update their status from mobile phones every day, Facebook and McDonalds are both hoping the project takes off .

The first, smaller location based companies may be concerned about Facebook’s entrance into the market, given the size of the behemoth. Facebook is also planning to allow members to add their location to any status updates.

The early companies offer games, finding friends, and recommendations of places to visit. With the entrance of Facebook, there may be a quicker move toward targeted advertising and coupons from the businesses a person checks in, such as McDonalds.

For users, the value becomes not only the fun of a game, but an opportunity to get personalized deals. For advertisers, the opportunity to reach a specific niche helps them target their advertising dollars.

Should you jump on board location based networking? Many people predict that this feature will grow, particularly as more and more people begin using smart phones. Privacy and safety will be a primary concern for Facebook, as it has been for the smaller players in the business. However, more people being involved means the more concern about privacy and the more attention companies will pay to the issue.

So as a business, its worth watching location based social networking and its worth considering having a presence in the trend.

Let’s take a little gander at these two general categories and see why Apple is so well described by these titles.

Apple’s hypocrisy takes a variety of forms, but one of the easiest to see is the advertising. Apple’s ad campaigns, ever since the first, “throw the computer at big brother,” ground breaking ad have been about the “little guy” versus the “big guy” and about the smart, cool apple user versus the dull, witless and completely uncool user of any other products.

There was the “Think Different” campaign and the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” campaign, along with the “Switch” campaign, all of which imply that Mac users are somehow inherently wiser, more innovative and just generally have better judgment than those who use PCs. This is ridiculous, smug and arrogant. Clearly, the type of computer you use has nothing to do with how intelligent or innovative you are.

Apple advertises trouble free, crash free computers even though they also have crashes, and they also have notoriously high fail rates on certain pieces of equipment. Somehow, those problems keep getting byes from technology gurus and the public.

Apple consistently exaggerates speeds and device performance ability, with seemingly no consequences, while at the same time they aggressively call out any one else who does the same kind of exaggerating.

And another of the Apple hypocrisies leads directly into my next point. Apple professes to be innovative, individual and unique while at the same time aggressively crushing innovation and individuality while operating on notoriously closed architecture.

That closed architecture is the root of the claims of draconian techniques. Apple keeps it’s developers at arm’s length, keeps a tight leash on developers both by denying applications to it’s app store and by giving developers only limited access, and carefully managing its image in the outside world.

They act as a bully – see stories about them suing college kids for leaking info to the press and having the apartment of Gizmodo’s Jason Chenn searched by police and having his equipment seized after he bought an iphone prototype which was inadvertently left in a bar.

All these techniques leave a bitter taste in the mouth of many, especially those who would like to see the promise of Apple’s professed aura be reflected in the reality.

His argument? Flash “falls short” of what it could be and what is needed on a mobile device.

What would Jobs have said if everyone jumped Apple’s ship when their iPod batteries “fell short” of operating for more than a year? Rather than fix the known problem, they continued to sell iPods with faulty batteries.

They followed the same strategy with faulty power supplies that burned out after a year or two and power cords that ripped and failed. Did Apple quickly fix the problems, apologize for the inconvenience, correct the problem?

Of course not — that’s not Apple’s MO. Customers who stuck it out can buy replace

From a company that engages in that kind of “customer service,” complaints that Flash “falls short” of what it could be ring hypocritical.

Adding to that hypocrisy, Jobs complains that Flash is a “proprietary” and “closed” system. Really, Apple? So you can’t take your own medicine, is that the problem? Apple continues to create a closed, stifling environment for developers and yet criticizes Adobe for the same thing?

While I’m not a fan of Adobe’s encouragement of a probe into Apple’s monopolistic tactics in mobile technology, I am in favor of Apple becoming a team player in the mobile marketplace. Until then, I’m sticking with my open and ever-improving Android phone.

But while Apple likes to promote itself as a freedom-loving, innovation above all company, that moniker applies only to the users of its products (and now, it only applies to small pockets of those users).

Apple itself is a company that is closed, exclusive, and protective – all values that don’t blend with the ethos it tries to project, and doesn’t fit well with innovation and development.

Take the recent lawsuit that Apple filed against HTC. They have accused the Taiwanese company of infringing on their patents. They’ve used a careful strategy, filed in two courts, and have addressed tick tack little issues, like sliding a button to unlock a phone.

But what is Apple really after? Well, Apple has found that they like zero competition – it drives profits immensely. So now that the Google Android platform has proven to be a formidable opponent to the iPhone, Apple has decided that instead of fighting the Android on features, price and user interface, they will fight the platform in court.

Rather than going after Google directly, they are starting with the smaller companies that use the Android OS, chipping away at the base. Experts like patent attorneys and intellectual property consultants see Apple filing multiple suits over several years, starting with those that don’t have the money and power to fight back.

Instead of using patents to increase and forward innovation, Apple uses patents as weapons in a war to limit innovation through competition and try to whittle the electronic world down into a one-screen theater, where Apple is all that can play.

We find that Sitecore offers flexibility, power, ease of use and constant innovation that serves our clients well.

In the fast-changing and evolving world of web content, it can be difficult to know if a particular WCM product is keeping up with the changes and spearheading innovative solutions.

However, a Gartner’s MarketScope analysis has again confirmed that Sitecore is not only a solid performer in the world of WCM, but is in fact a visionary and a leader in the market.

Gartner’s analysis examines factors such as the core services and products offered in a content management system, including the features and feature groupings, the quality of the offerings, and whether or not the features are native or offered through agreements with third party vendors.

They also consider the overall business stability of the organization, their financial vision and strategy and likelihood of continued support for their WCM product.

Other factors taken into consideration in the equation are market responsiveness, the product’s track record in the past, the quality and execution of the product’s marketing program, actual customer experiences with the product, and the functionality of the business organization itself.

In a comparison to 17 other content management systems, no other system beats Sitecore for its completeness of vision or its ability to execute it’s vision and make it happen in the real world.

Take a look at Gartners evaluation, and see if you’d like to put the Sitecore system to work for your online business. If so, our Sitecore specialists at WebDatamation can make it happen for you.

Obama transformed campaigning and politics through his use of the Internet as a campaign tool.

He did not stop with a simple website, as many candidates have posted in the past, or a simple money raising campaign as Howard Dean and Ron Paul effectively ran.

Obama created a complete internet package for his political campaign that took full advantage of the new medium in ways that had not been fully imagined before.

Remember his videos – which he compared to Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” — on YouTube? Those were viewed millions of times — for a total of 14.5 million hours. How much would Obama have had to pay for 14.5 million hours of television advertising time? According to the New York Times, $47 million.

And with the YouTube videos and internet messages, Obama was able to get his own message out, the way he wanted it told and as long as he wanted it to be. He wasn’t constrained by 30 or 60 second advertising spots, and he wasn’t filtered and quoted by journalists.

His message was framed, produced and presented entirely according to his own standards and what he wanted to accomplish. Best of all in a political campaign, the cost was negligible to reach those hundreds of thousands of potential supporters.

For politicians, this internet opportunity is the merging of all the best possible factors for campaigning: unfiltered messages going directly to supporters, low cost, wide accessibility, and good credibility as a source of information – great messages for individuals and businesses to keep in mind as well.

The buzz isn’t about great styling, open source systems, or amazing features. It’s about the price. At $85, it’s definitely a “value” based computer with some basic features.

Coby focuses on portability and small LCD televisions at value prices, so moving into the netbook market wasn’t a huge stretch.

The 7″ screen displays a Windows CE operating system, running with a 624 MHz Marvell PXA303 processor.

The memory is strictly flash, and it’s limited — only 2 GB. For those who know the technology, the Wi Fi is 802.11 b/g not 802.11n. Still, the WiFi is built in and ready to go. For internet browsing and other limited applications, it could be useful.

Whether or not the Coby smartbook works for you, (there are some mixed reviews on the quality of Coby’s “value” products) it can be seen as a preview into the future of mobile computing.

Prices will continue to go down as technology improves, and that means more people in the market.

Parents may spring for the under-$100 netbook for younger and younger children, opening the mobile kids game market even wider. People who won’t spring for the $300 or $400 smartphone will perhaps go in the $85 for a simple smartbook.

Bottom line — more people with access to your website more often. Make your site appealing, and make it work on mobile platforms.

We’d suggest testing out your site with a mobile device and see how your different page elements load, and make any adjustments that you need. Ask us for some help arranging your web page for the burgeoning mobile market.