Social Media guidelines – a freebie for insurance and reinsurance bods

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Mairi

It's Free!

Some say you don’t get something for nothing – well that is not true. Today we are feeling generous.

At rein4ce, we feel that social media should be part of the public relations (PR) offering – and we help clients get to grips with it.

And the first thing we do is issue guidelines for staff – they need to know where they stand, and management needs to draw a line in the sand to legally protect their company.

Today, below, you will find sensible social media guidelines to use in your company. This will not only help your employees know what they are and are not allowed to do, but also help you with risk management by ring-fencing your company from inappropriate behaviour from rogue staff (and it happens, I tell you).

Here below I’ve pasted a short set of rules, and a longer set of guidelines. They are based a lot on common sense, other guidelines we Continue reading →

“I don’t believe in social media” – how the insurance and reinsurance professionals have moved on

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Mairi

I am still amazed by how many people I still come across that say they don’t “believe” in social media or social networking. But this is no religious cult. Saying you don’t believe in social media is like saying “I don’t believe in mobile phones” – silly really. It is just a new technology we can use to communicate with each other.

That said, last month I was asked to speak to a women in insurance group called TWIN in the UK about social media (and a very nice group they are too).

What struck me about this group of insurance and reinsurance professionals was how many of these very clever women were now using social media on a day-to-day basis. Almost everyone in the room was on LinkedIn, many were on Facebook and one was blogging and on Twitter. Continue reading →

How to convince an executive to invest in social media? Speak his language.

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Mairi

I was just reading the blog post by Mike Wise on getting executives to “buy in” to social media – and it made me think to post up my thoughts on this here as it is something I deal with all the time.

I spend a lot of time with executives talking about social media. And I am often brought into board rooms to help the executives understand what social media is and look at it to see if it can help them in their particular field.

To get the “buy in” (I don’t like that word, but it fits the bill), I feel I need to look at it from their perspective. I take time to show them that there are good ways to use these things – and the four pillars – blogging, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – are simply tools that will make it easier to communicate with other people. Just like when websites came in. Or emails became the norm. Or Blackberrys took over the insurance world. Continue reading →

The risk/reward of social media in insurance and reinsurance

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Mairi

Our industry deals with risk every minute of every day. So it is a little surprising to find out how little thought has gone into the risk/reward equation for insurers and reinsurers and the use of social media.

Here I’ll look at the most common risks associated with using social media in insurance and reinsurance. Continue reading →

More on insurance, reinsurance and social media

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Mairi

A young Cindy

As the new year starts, pr and marketing departments in the insurance and reinsurance markets are starting to keep their promise to take social media on board. Slowly but surely, the market is recognising how powerful a tool social media can be as part of a marketing or public relations campaign.

Evidence is there – Zurich has a shiny and brilliant new blog called Zurich Risk Debate headed up their equally brilliant chief economist Daniel Hofmann. Continue reading →