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.

“I’ll add you on Facebook!”

“Hey, we are Orkut friends!”

“I’ll subscribe to your RSS feed right away!”

You will agree, these are some of the most touted phrases that we use when we “network”. However, this is not the way the journey had begun. The transformation from toys to tools was a revolution that brought out a whole new “Social Economy” in “Social Networks”.

Emotions have been replaced by emoticons, expressions have given way to smileys and the English Language has seen drastic reforms in the present era. Yes, we are using a super condensed and more “expressive” way of communication, thanks to social networking.

Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and many others took birth in the World Wide Web and primarily made their presence felt as networking toys. Little did we realize then, about the enormous networking capabilities they had. Soon, along with inviting our near ones to hang out at a party, we were “inviting” them to our online profiles on these websites. There were friends, friends of friends; can I say an online “big bang”?

Yes, the concept might be surreal, but the sheer fascination and excitement to be a part of this revolution paved way for the dynamics of theses toys to mutate into tools. It would be quite difficult to point out the exact period when this transformation took place, but you knew it was there when you were networking more online rather than calling up or e-mailing the same people. Your business cards and identities changed during this era and now included information of your online profiles or networks.

“Human networks” is the word of the hour. We have been consistent in synthesizing our conversations through these digitally woven, close environments, with a wide array of inbound and outbound hyperlinks dominating our online presence. We are scheduling meetings, hanging out, having conversations, sharing interests, making a social statement in a world of our own. All these worlds come together in the digital universe. The good news is, we are getting addicted to it every day and striving to reach its epitome.

“To err is human…” What is human? Is it an online Avatar or the one who sits behind it and controls its actions? Are our online counterparts facing an identity crisis?

The principles associated with this new social economy have brought about the tools in toys and I am now a part of it. The trick of the trade is to propel your identity towards the proper direction and your intended audience.

Welcome to the world of social networking once again…have you noticed the change?

If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson’s blog, Trends in the Living Networks.

A New Conversation

Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them. Here are a few insights from trying to stay up with how Web 2.0 is changing how companies interact with prospects and customers:

• Overbalance the scales with offers of knowledge, not sales hype. Instead of blasting out PDFs that tell prospects how great your company is, think about setting up weekly webinars where you invite in an industry expert that freely shares their knowledge of what’s working in the area your products, services or software deliver value. Before you dismiss this as just for the Fortune 1,000 realize that industry experts need PR coverage too and often you can get them do these in exchange for promoting their practice.
• Define a Web 2.0 strategy now for your company and start executing on it fast. The two best bloggers in this area are Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester who write Groundswell. These two authors, through their analysis of social networking and the Web 2.0 landscape, continually show how transparent and more connected previously isolated social networks, both in private and commercial areas, have become. What also emerges from their analysis is that when Web 2.0 technologies are used for connecting with customers, sales hype is dead. Informative, knowledgeable content that solves a complex question or problem for a customer is all that matters. Blogging to deliver solutions to customers in the form of knowledge generates real leads. It takes some companies a year or so to see any sales from this, yet it is hardly time wasted. These companies have changed how relevant they are to customers by delivering significant value without first asking for an order. Sales follow knowledge.
• Consider your own YouTube University. Getting a channel on YouTube to upload videos that can be inexpensively produced is another approach to gaining a reputation as a company willing to share knowledge with potential and present customers. The development of your own YouTube University also needs to have periodic updates, fueling new traffic in the process. It’s a fairly large resource commitment to make, yet getting your best product experts onto your own YouTube channel can increase your company’s credibility across the industry and with prospects.
• Work with any channel, technology or services providers to offer them participation in your trade shows and events, and vice versa. This works well as many partnerships have overlapping customer bases, yet have their own unique market segments as well. Developing this type of partnership significantly reduces the costs of trade shows and increases face-time with prospects, a critical part of lead generation.
• Understand that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords is only as effective as your landing pages, lead management process and continual managing of keywords. Google has delivered some exceptional tools in this area during 2008, including the ability to optimize a landing page design by testing it iteratively before its launched. This is the largest lead generation strategy for many technology companies, and their continually improving of landing pages and key words generates significant results.

Knowledge Is Power

I’ve not spent years studying lead generation, yet what I have seen is that many companies are still doing very well with leads despite news about the economy this year.I’m convinced it’s because they have worked very hard using the strategies discussed here to get and stay relevant to prospects and customers. They’re delivering more knowledge, value, insight and intelligence than anyone else.

As a result, they’re trusted more and sales happen. Lead generation cannot be reduced to a series of causal factors; it all begins with trust in your company. In a Web 2.0 World, earning and retaining that trust is much more about offering insight and knowledge first.

Start Small

Many times when people think about getting publicity for their business, their wishlist goes something like this:

• I want to be featured in Forbes
• I want an interview in Inc Magazine
• I want to sit down with Donny Deutsch on the “Big Idea”

Having lofty goals is great, but it’s not always possible. Many times, it’s much more realistic (and effective) to start smaller. Think about all of the blogs that are out there. Find out which ones your potential customers read on a daily basis? Determine the ones that reporters for those bigger publications use (Who are they quoting? Who are they linking to online?). Start there. Most times, it will be easier to get featured on a smaller blog than a major publication. You can then use this coverage later on when you pitch bigger publications.

Hang Out In All The Right Places

Social media has made it so much easier to build relationships with people and get noticed. A great place to start for this is right on Twitter. Use one of the Twitter search engines or directories (I really like Twellow) to find reporters who are in your space. Simple searches — like this one for “reporter” — can be really helpful. Connect with them. See what types of things they are looking for. Become an invaluable resource to them.

When you have somewhat of a relationship built up, connect further through places like Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s all about building those relationships. Once you have a relationship with someone, they are much more likely to want to write about you or your company. But don’t forget, just like everyone always preaches good content, the same is true here. If your products or services aren’t really that good, you’re not going to get too far.

Traffic Is Noticed

Let’s say you’ve now built some relationships and received some initial press coverage. Promote that content just like you would promote something from your own site. Do you have strong accounts in social networks? Get it out in StumbleUpon. Get it on Digg. Share it with everyone. This will have a two-fold effect.

First, it will get more coverage for you. The more people who see it, the better.

Second, newspapers, magazines, TV stations and other media outlets are all thirsty for traffic. Many of them look very carefully at what articles are most viewed for the day (more views = more ad revenues). And many times this trickles down to the reporter. Do you think he or she would probably want to write about you again, if they got a big pat on the back from their boss? Of course they would….

So after I went off on a bit of rant about them in the office I thought I needed an experiment to prove my point.

I chose the bookmarklet tool from AddThis and using Yahoo Site Explorer I found some websites using the tool.

To get a random selection of websites I chose the website ranked 1, 101, 201 etc on SiteExplorer all the way to 1001. The idea was for the websites to be of mixed quality, as it would have been too easy to choose rubbish websites and try and make my case with those sites.

For each of these sites using the book mark tool I tested there presence on Digg & Delicious to see if to some extent the bookmarklets were working, then finally on stumbleupon (which isn’t included on addthis bookmarklet by default) to ascertain whether the sites in question would have gained their votes without the bookmarklet.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/why-i-hate-social-bookmarklets-proof-they-don%e2%80%99t-work/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/top-6-ways-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/top-6-ways-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website/#comments Sat, 23 Aug 2008 22:25:53 +0000 admin http://www.kronikmedia.co.uk/blog/?p=112 With the recent increase in internet usage and more recently in internet access via mobile devices, online marketing is becoming increasingly important to the success of any business today no matter how small or large. Online marketing has evolved in recent years. The rise in the popularity of social networking phenomena and the resulting rise of [...]]]>

With the recent increase in internet usage and more recently in internet access via mobile devices, online marketing is becoming increasingly important to the success of any business today no matter how small or large.

Online marketing has evolved in recent years. The rise in the popularity of social networking phenomena and the resulting rise of social media websites such as My Space and Facebook provide website owners with new ways to market and promote a business online. Online marketing today is not only restricted to major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Today an effective online marketing strategy is aimed at increasing a websites profile not only on search engines but on a number of online channels that were previously non existent.

Today an online marketing strategy focuses on Search engines, Blogs, Forums, Social Networking websites as well as PR and Article websites.

The following are some of the ways to market your business online and generate traffic to your website.

1) Organic search engine optimisation

Organic search engine optimisation is focused achieving high rank in the non-paid section of search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
This is the most important method that can drive a lot of free traffic to a website and probably the most difficult and time consuming. If you are able to achieve a first page ranking for your website on major search engine such as Google, you may never need to use any other form of paid advertising ever.

2) Pay per click Advertising

Pay per click advertising presents a quick and efficient method to promote your products and services on search engines and increase traffic to your website. Pay per click refers to the paid ads that usually appear on the right or top of search engine results. With Google’s Adwords for example you can have your website appear on the first page within an hour of starting the campaign. As compared with Organic search engine results; pay per click can be expensive as cost is calculated each time a user visits your website. However pay per click is quick to achieve and expenditure can be controlled easily by specifying the maximum monthly or daily budget.

3) Creating your business’ profile on Social websites such as My Space, Face book or You Tube

Many people may consider these websites as purely a way for people to communicate informally and share personal information. However due to the sheer volumes of people who visit these sites make marketing on them a highly effective way to enforce your brand and drive massive traffic to your website. You can create your websites profile on these sites free of cost and make your website visible to millions of people.

]]> http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/top-6-ways-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website/feed/ 0 http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/facebook-stands-atop-social-networking-world/ http://www.webdatasource.com/2008/08/facebook-stands-atop-social-networking-world/#comments Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:16:58 +0000 Renay San Miguel
Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the top global social network with 132 million unique visitors for a staggering 153 percent growth rate, according to comScore. MySpace is second at 113 million visitors, and Hi5 grew its global audience 100 percent to land at 56 million unique visitors. A new report from the online tracking company shows global usage of social networking sites growing 25 percent since June 2007. The U.S., however, saw the phenomenon cool off somewhat to 9 percent growth year-over-year.

Think of social networking’s worldwide growth as a variation of performance artist Laurie Anderson’s song, “Language is a Virus.” Language/translation efforts by the likes of Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut and Bebo have helped the contagion of social networking spread worldwide, with comScore reporting growth rates of 66 percent in the Middle East/Africa, 35 percent in Europe, 33 percent in Latin America and 23 percent in Asia.

“I think the scalability of some of these U.S. brands into international markets has been a big factor,” Andrew Lipman, comScore senior analyst told TechNewsWorld. “Specifically, if you look at Facebook and Hi5, what they’re doing in terms of foreign language interface translation and their emphasis on cultural relevance in each of the markets they’re expanding to has helped them grow pretty dramatically across all global regions.”

“What’s interesting about Web 2.0 is that it gives you access to markets [a small-business owner] couldn’t normally reach,” Gilroy told the E-Commerce Times.

Right now, her application “portfolio” includes:

• A wiki to coordinate efforts between programmers in Boston, Idaho and the Ukraine;
• Basecamp, a Web-based project management tools (approximate fee: US$40 a month);
• Highrise to track contacts and activities (much like a small business version of Salesforce.com); and
• A raft of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) tools (e.g. Google Docs spreadsheets, Google Notebook for blogging, Google AdWords for keyword searches, etc.).