The Insurance Carrier Latest Twitter Activity – USAA maintain top spot, Farmers and AMFAM key movers

Posted by Terry Golesworthy on August 23, 2010

2 comments | 6646 reads

Twitter continues to be used by most insurers to provide soft marketing messages about promotions, sponsorships and customer endorsements. Other activities include financial quizzes, insurance related education materials, warnings regarding impended natural disasters and Facebook announcements. Some insurers do respond publically to customer questions but, largely, this is not the significant activity. Some of the direct auto insurers have created separate customer-service twitter identities but their primary identities are still more prominent. In a previous post, I referred to a poll run on behalf of the Red Cross indicating a 1 hour response time is becoming the customer expectation and most insurers are simply not geared up to deliver at that level. One overriding goal for many insurers is to have a dialog with consumers and customers outside of their traditional periods, the policy payment and a claim.

USAA continues to lead the follower count and while their growth rate has slowed, they were able with an early entry to establish a solid follower base. It is not as if USAA pound the twittersphere with information, being consistently low volume tweeters. On the other hand, State Farm has always been up there at or near the top of the tweet count. A possible surprise is Travelers managing just 8 tweets a month but growing the follower base by 46%. Part of this is due to a consolidation of Twitter activity into a new corporate identity.

Overall the number of tweet has growth within the industry with the average now at 69 per month, up substantially from just 6 months ago at just about half that number.

The movers and shakers and people to keep an eye on include Farmers with a 88% increase in followers over the past 3 months from an already strong base. New York Life and Westfield have impressive growth rates but from initially low numbers implying a new focus and effort on social media. This is certainly the case at New York Life who have also burst on the scene with Facebook.

Leaders by Number of Followers

			Growth		Av Tweets
Insurer	Primary Twitter Handle	Followers	1 Month	3 Months	Month
USAA_news	@usaa_news	10187	4%	11%	13
State Farm	@StateFarm	6900	7%	20%	229
Aflac Duck	@aflacduck	6629	5%	14%	86
Allstate Insurance	@allstate	5623	7%	20%	182
Progressive	@progressive	4608	5%	13%	131
Chubb Insurance	@ChubbInsurance	2886	9%	15%	28
Nationwide	@Nationwide	2627	4%	11%	15
Farmers Insurance	@FarmersGroup	2343	21%	88%	64
Liberty Mutual	@libertymutual	1640	14%	38%	63
Travelers Insurance	@TRV_Insurance	1580	22%	46%	8
The Hartford	@TheHartford	1564	10%	27%	25
GEICO	@GEICO	1507	14%	38%	45
Esurance	@esurance	1141	3%	9%	97
Northwestern Mutual	@NM_News	993	8%	26%	16
Thrivent Financial	@Thrivent	914	6%	17%	27
American Family	@amfam	808	44%	80%	108
Westfield Insurance	@WestfieldIns	574	20%	119%	81
Amica Insurance	@AmicaMutual	482	17%	45%	54
New York Life	@NewYorkLife	286	26%	123%	47

Industry Average		53292	8%	21%	69

Leaders by 3 month Growth

			Growth		Av Tweets
Insurer	Primary Twitter Handle	Followers	1 Month	3 Months	Month
New York Life	@NewYorkLife	286	26%	123%	47
Westfield Insurance	@WestfieldIns	574	20%	119%	81
Farmers Insurance	@FarmersGroup	2343	21%	88%	64
American Family	@amfam	808	44%	80%	108
Travelers Insurance	@TRV_Insurance	1580	22%	46%	8
Amica Insurance	@AmicaMutual	482	17%	45%	54
Liberty Mutual	@libertymutual	1640	14%	38%	63
GEICO	@GEICO	1507	14%	38%	45
The Hartford	@TheHartford	1564	10%	27%	25
Northwestern Mutual	@NM_News	993	8%	26%	16
Allstate Insurance	@allstate	5623	7%	20%	182
State Farm	@StateFarm	6900	7%	20%	229
Thrivent Financial	@Thrivent	914	6%	17%	27
Chubb Insurance	@ChubbInsurance	2886	9%	15%	28
Aflac Duck	@aflacduck	6629	5%	14%	86
Progressive	@progressive	4608	5%	13%	131
usaa_news	@usaa_news	10187	4%	11%	13
Nationwide	@Nationwide	2627	4%	11%	15
Esurance	@esurance	1141	3%	9%	97

Industry Average		53292	8%	21%	69

Leaders by Average Tweet Activity

			Growth		Av Tweets
Insurer	Primary Twitter Handle	Followers	1 Month	3 Months	Month
State Farm	@StateFarm	6900	7%	20%	229
Allstate Insurance	@allstate	5623	7%	20%	182
Progressive	@progressive	4608	5%	13%	131
American Family	@amfam	808	44%	80%	108
Esurance	@esurance	1141	3%	9%	97
Aflac Duck	@aflacduck	6629	5%	14%	86
Westfield Insurance	@WestfieldIns	574	20%	119%	81
Farmers Insurance	@FarmersGroup	2343	21%	88%	64
Liberty Mutual	@libertymutual	1640	14%	38%	63
Amica Insurance	@AmicaMutual	482	17%	45%	54
New York Life	@NewYorkLife	286	26%	123%	47
GEICO	@GEICO	1507	14%	38%	45
Chubb Insurance	@ChubbInsurance	2886	9%	15%	28
Thrivent Financial	@Thrivent	914	6%	17%	27
The Hartford	@TheHartford	1564	10%	27%	25
Northwestern Mutual	@NM_News	993	8%	26%	16
Nationwide	@Nationwide	2627	4%	11%	15
usaa_news	@usaa_news	10187	4%	11%	13
Travelers Insurance	@TRV_Insurance	1580	22%	46%	8

Industry Average		53292	8%	21%	69

Average tweets per month over the past 3 months

Republished with author's permission from original post by Terry Golesworthy.

Terry Golesworthy

As the president of The Customer Respect Group for 7 years, I focus on the online experience of consumers. Online experience has always been bigger than the company website, from the response to email to integration to other offline channels. It has now grown to include social media.

About Terry Golesworthy |
Connect:

Categories:

6646 reads
Print
Email

2 comments »

Ryan Hanley

August 25, 2010

Agents and Agencies Leading Social Media

Looking at the results from this article it really shines a light on the fact that Agents and Agencies are driving the Social Media movement within the Insurance Industry not the Big Budget carriers.

I work for an independent agency in Upstate New York and I would finish 6th on the list of total followers right behind Progressive and right ahead of Chubb. And I not nearly the tops as far as Agents go.

How is this possible? Relationship. Many carriers are still using Social Media as a Broadcast advertising tool and not a relationship building tool. People engage on Social Media for the relationship.

Thank you,

Ryan H., www.RyanHanley.com
@AlbanyInsurance

Terry Golesworthy

August 25, 2010

Social Media and Insurance

Ryan

You make a couple of excellent points. Major carriers have very low conversation levels, typically just 1 in 10 is to a person (@replies). The primary goal for many has been to create a broadcast channel and not to engage in a dialogue (with the exception of a few direct auto carriers). This is partial driven by the fact that carriers really have little or no ongoing relationship with the customer and therefore not entirely sure how to proceed.

Some more enlightened carriers are looking at the problem the other way around. Have agents recruit followers and fans and work with them as a channel to suppliment their own news and stories. This is more in line with how the business runs today. Facebook is more condusive to this approach and American Family is probably a good example. If each agent has 500-1000 friends and a carrier has 4000 agents, that is a huge reach but it must be done in co-operation with agents who must see the value. The agent then engages in the dialog possibly talking about information provided by the carrier.

Terry Golesworthy

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <hr> <table> <tr> <td> <th><ul> <ol> <li> </li><blockquote> <colspan> <rowspan>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

Post

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

Notify me when new comments are posted

All comments

Replies to my comment

CAPTCHA

No spam permitted! Moderator reviews ALL content before publication to ensure compliance with the CustomerThink terms of use.

To block automated spam submissions, please answer this question.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

MarketPlace

Drive customer loyalty, empower support teams, and reduce costs. Get social.

[Feb 22] Guest speakers from Forrester Research, Allscripts, and CustomerThink will discuss market trends and research on social customer service strategies, as well as proven tactics from the trenches. Join the live webcast on Feb 22 at 10am Pacific (1pm EST).

Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Program

[March 13-14, Paris] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 33 times in 13 cities with attendees from 50 countries, the program is developed based on the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Method which aims to drive customer loyalty and brand differentiation with quantifiable business results. Limited offer: USD300 early bird discount.

10 Steps to a Single Customer View

Linking customer data across department databases and business units improves business intelligence, customer profiling, and customer management. This paper outlines 10 steps to improve the quality of customer contact data, including physical mail, email, and telephone information.