The Mission Imbloggable Booth

Awaneesh, Bernice, and Brooke

Mission Imbloggable is all about using social media to engage an audience in a topic that is otherwise bland or blah. There’s no question that in this age of the groundswell, many companies (not just innovators or early adopters anymore) are looking for ways to have a genuine conversation with customers.

One of the first questions we asked our visitors was, “Do you blog?” Followed by, “What do you blog about?” or “Are you thinking of using a blog to start a dialogue with your customers?”

Those opening questions generally got our guests thinking in the right frame of mind. Oh… I get it… some things are easy and fun to blog about (video games, new gadgets and technology, entertainment). But what about when we’re talking about products and services that aren’t so very exciting?

It’s still possible, in our opinion, and probably even more important, to get the product development and marketing message just right. Obviously, we chose home insurance as our “mission imbloggable”. Here are some key take-away points from the trade show:

• Who are the bloggers? First-to-mind are young and tech-savvy groups, but increasingly, the more mature generations are logging on and sharing their thoughts. Do we see a fit between these mature generations and those who buy insurance products? Absolutely!
• Look at demographics in BC. Higher-density housing developments on the rise; we’ve got renters on the move; renters switching to buying; first-time home buyers starting to take better care of their homes and belongings. Tenant/condo/home insurance issues are starting to float to the top of priorities.
• Many in that same demographic are already users of blogs and know what to expect from blogs. While there might be some intimidation to approach a financial or insurance institution with questions about coverage and cost-savings, there is little hesitation to poke around the blogs and learn about the relevant issues.
• So, this is a targeted approach. Too targeted, some might argue, and not meant for a broad audience. So what? The amount of energy required to manage and maintain the blog is far outweighed by the ability to genuinely converse with your customers.
• From the modest number of comments received so far, we already have a good idea of what the next conversation-starters on the blog will be. A two-week exercise in listening is starting to pay off!
• There are so many tools available to measure the progress of your blog. The tools help gauge traffic and thus track interest in certain topics. We can also see which conversations were passed along (oh boy, word-of-mouth!) and which were abandoned quickly.

It was exciting to be able to demonstrate that we’d taken as much as we could from the ‘blogging best practice’ concepts and put them into a live blog, Mission Imbloggable. I won’t go into them now, but the linked files below capture the Do’s and Don’ts, and some Top Blogs for inspiration.

What were some highlights? Brainstorming blog ideas with a sales rep from Pacific Coach Lines and a sales manager from the in-tube feeding line from Nestle; showcasing aspects of the blog to the marketing team of a local insurance company; telling the Associate Dean of the business school that our value proposition is “to not bullsh*t you”.

We drew considerable advice from Robert Scoble and Shef Israel’s book, Naked Conversations. This is an excellent starting point, as is Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

Hopefully our demonstration will inspire some companies to engage in naked conversations. We’re looking forward to your comments and feedback… keep them coming!

PS, here are some linked files to handouts we used at the trade show.

Do’s and Don’ts

Top Blogs

If you own a condo or are a renter, when you buy home insurance you’re buying coverage specifically for your personal property. Personal property includes items like your clothes, your furniture, your dishes, your cutlery, even your cleaning supplies. When trying to determine how much coverage you’ll need, you should consider what it would cost you to replace everything you own brand new. The brand new part is especially important because even though your couch may be older, for example, if you suffered a loss, most policies provide replacement cost coverage. That means that you’d be able to go out and buy a new couch and not have to find an older one in the newspaper!

One really good way of determining how much stuff you have is to use a personal property checklist or inventory form. BCAA provides a checklist that you can download to record what kind of stuff you have in each room. Another option is to use personal property inventory software, such as that provided by the Insurance Bureau of Canada.  I’ve never used this software personally, but it seems pretty easy to use.

Once you’ve had a chance to review the value of all your belongings, you’ll have a much better idea of how much coverage you actually need. I think that most people under-estimate the value of all their belongings and you’d hate to not have enough insurance if something were to happen.

Did you know that some of the steps you might take to save yourself some money on energy bills or help protect the environment can also help reduce the likelihood of having a claim on your home insurance? Installing new and efficient appliances, for example, means that you’ll be less likely to have maintenance issues that could damage your home or property. Additionally, you might even be eligible for certain discounts on your home insurance policy when you make energy efficient choices around the house.

I hope you found this video useful! Please send me your questions or comments below.

First off, let me introduce myself. My name is Brooke Hanson and I’m the home insurance product manager for a BC based insurance company. Home insurance can sometimes be confusing so I hope to be able to share my expertise with you. Some of the topics that I’ll be talking about include:

• determining how much insurance you need
• what you can expect when making a claim
• ways to prepare your home against winter storm damage and
• tips for increasing your home’s energy efficiency

Please feel free to comment on or ask questions about any of my posts and if you have a topic that you’d like me to discuss, just let me know.