Who's sexy enough for social media?

I’m not sure if you’ve looked at your social media accounts this morning, but if you’re awake and are within arm’s length of your device, then you probably have.

As I scroll through my feed I see cats in graceless positions, a few holiday snaps, lots of carefully curated food set-ups, and a tonne of ads I’m not interested in. After tagging my co-workers in my favourite morning memes and waiting for a response acknowledging how funny I am, I settle into the job I’m paid to do – strategic social media communications.

Following the 2011 and 2012 Canterbury earthquakes, conversations on social media about AA Insurance significantly increased. These events put the insurance industry at the forefront of people’s minds; New Zealanders were asking questions, and customers wanted to provide us with feedback.

During this time, we listened and we learnt, but by 2016 we knew we needed to be part of the conversation, and it needed to be now.

Understandably, we are risk adverse. Insurance is unlike most businesses. We sell a promise – a promise that, when you need us, we will be there for you. But unless you’re looking at a new house after a fire, or a new phone after you’ve dropped it, our promise is intangible.  As a financial institution, we are also held to higher standards of service than other businesses and bound by legislation such as the Privacy Act to keep personal and confidential information out of the public eye.

So, with this in mind and seemingly nothing to photograph or talk about, our thinking had to be beyond the box. To some, insurance is not overly interesting or exciting. Would it be sexy enough for social media?  Would people follow us?

The answer is no. And yes.

No.  We are not sexy enough for social media, but we don’t have to be. Wherever there is a market for something, there’s an audience with problems to be solved and needs to be met.

Yes. Two years later I can confirm that we did find things to post on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, and yes people do follow us – more than 13,000 in fact. 

For us, success on social media is about building meaningful relationships with our customers through transparent, authentic and consistent content and conversations. The key to this is to anticipate and respond to customer needs in a timely fashion.

We post about a variety things from major event information during a storm, to community groups we support. We want to be useful, but to also show that we are human and care about the same things our customers do.

To finish, I thought I’d share a few rules I regularly fall back on:

Move quickly. You need lean sign-off processes that move as quickly as social media does.

Be agile. Don’t waste time planning what you’ll be posting in 6 months – I guarantee you won’t be using it.

Resource up.You wouldn’t under-staff your contact centre, so don’t under-staff the teams responsible for responding to your followers.