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 →

Insurance industry gets social media – check out the Twitter use at #BIBA2011!

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Mairi

Last week UK brokers gathered at their annual event, BIBA 2011 in Manchester and for the first time in UK insurance and broker communities, social media was used fairly widely.
This follows hot on the heels of risk managers and insurers gathering in Vancouver a week earlier for RIMS 2011, which was a staggering success on Twitter.
BIBA attendees used #BIBA2011 to bookmark their tweets about the event, RIMS used #RIMS2011.
What was interesting was who was using Twitter. In Vancouver, what was most striking was the use of Twitter by BIG corporates – there is a list here in the last blog – but included Aon Corporation, FM Global, XL Capital, ACE Ltd, Zurich, Willis and Marsh. In the Manchester event, there were a lot more individuals and much of the noise came from press such as Post Magazine, Insurance Age and Insurance Times and their reporters. Continue reading →

What a Tweetup! Well done to those at #RIMS2011

Posted on May 5, 2011 by Mairi

RIMS (knicked from excellent Risk Management Monitor)

Well, well. Knock me over with a feather – social media has come to risk management. At the RIMS conference in Vancouver we saw a whole swathe of mega-corporates Tweeting their hearts out, expressing opionons, talking to each other and delegates.

It is normal for the press now to tweet, but the most surprising thing was the gusto with which some really embraced Twitter this year.I have to acknowledge Risk Management Monitor here – I’ve stolen one of their pictures here. They did a grand job for those of us who could not make it and kept us up to date with words and pictures.

There were some big corpoations who obviously get it, with @AonCorp and @ZurichNAnews topping my list of non-press Tweeple (twitter people). Other biggies out Tweeting their corporate messages out (and doing a very good job too) were: Continue reading →

Social Media – is it the “Green Eggs and Ham” of insurance, reinsurance and risk management professionals?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Mairi

I do love Dr Seuss. From reading the books as a child to reading them to my own children, they really are a joy. One of my favourites is “Green Eggs and Ham”.

For those of you who have not had the fortune to read this kids book, it is the story is a tale of Sam who tries to persuade someone to eat green eggs and ham. “You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! and you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Well I do sometimes feel like Sam, trying to persuade the insurance, reinsurance and risk management world that social media is not the devil’s work and actually, believe it or not, is a really useful and effective communications tool. Sometimes I do, finally, get someone to taste and they don’t just like it, they love it. So, I urge you to take the time, log on to Facebook, Twitter, google for some blogs, pop in insurance, reinsurance or risk management into YouTube and see what is out there – there is a whole world of communication developing. 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 →

Back to risk management with Facebook – for insurance and reinsurance companies

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Mairi

I had a huge response to last week’s posting on Facebook inserting Wikipedia pages of Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies without their permission – or even knowledge. It is a potential public relations disaster.

Many listed insurance and reinsurance companies and large insurance and reinsurance brokers (and other large corporations) now have “Pages” which are listed under their name under the tag “Organization”. Swiss Re and Munich Re are there. As are many, many others. The bigger the organisation, the more likely it is to have a page.

A little technical detail now to follow up on last week’s post: Continue reading →

The risk and rewards of Facebook

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Mairi

Part II

Risk Management

For years the insurance and reinsurance markets have been talking about Enterprise Risk Management. Well, believe it or not, these days, risk managers should be looking at not just media, and communications in general, but also taking a good hard look at social media.

Again, Facebook is high on the list of factors that could impact on reputational risk. Facebook is probably the least useful tool so far in business to business social media for insurance and reinsurance markets. Those doing it well include Insurance Journal, Travelers and of course the rather wonderful Allianz Knowledge – who astonish and amaze at every turn.

So – don’t get to “het up” about it, as we say in Scotland. Like all social media, it is not rocket science – it just takes a wee bit of time to learn and understand – and a whole lot of common sense. Just think about what you want to say and who you want to say it to – before you do anything – and don’t do anything on Facebook that does not fit in with your corporate image or guidelines.

For those new to this, have a look at the recent Business Insurance webinar on the risks associated with social media – Marsh’s Simon Barker makes a lot of sense when he talks about social media in context of enterprise risk management and also on how to react to negative comments. Continue reading →

reinsurance YouTube video a huge hit with over 21,500 viewers

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Mairi

In the worlds of wholesale insurance and conservative reinsurance, we are not really into gimmicky or flashy marketing campaigns.

But it is interesting to note that even for us, YouTube can work. We may not be on the same level as Old Spice Man – see here:

He has sadly ended his successful YouTube/Twitter campaign.

One REINSURANCE video has shown we can make a difference and here it is:

Called The New Insurance Tax, it is a YouTube video for the Washington-based Coalition for Competitive Insurance Rates shows just how powerful new social media tools can be – but only if you have a good, clear message. Continue reading →