Allstate and GEICO were noted as having the best overall social media presence in a new report from
Both of those firms received “A” grades, while Progressive received an “A-“ and both Nationwide and State Farm rounded out the top five with grades of “B+”.
Insurers were noted for hosting a presence on many social media sites, updating them frequently (daily in some cases), promoting mobile apps through them, connecting to them from a company page, updating a blog and presenting opportunities for users to provide feedback and rate their presence. Interactivity was factored in and is encouraged for all of the elements above.
Overall, the report found firms underwhelming when it came to promoting their social media presences on company sites. Liberty Mutual was noted as the only firm to place links to all their social media pages in the top static menu of their site—Chubb was noted for this as well, however, they only present the links on their homepage. Most firms were spotty in their promotion, presenting links to one or two social media pages, but not all of them.
Forty-two percent of firms using social media also offered a blog, the same percentage include customer reviews in their networks, and only 58 percent of Facebook pages had rules for posting, such as warnings against soliciting, sharing personal information, posting spam and offensive language.
Being as active and creative as possible in terms of content creation and interaction is only half the social media battle however.
To this point, social media remains a mystery from an advertising perspective as well, yet a new white paper from
The report focuses metrics for success, pointing to engagement rate and frequency as the KPIs most heavily correlated to campaign success. Additionally, the report attempts to introduce a new metric: exposure rate, which unique impressions divided by targeted audience, and aims to figure out how much of the desired targeted audience is being effectively exposed to a company’s message.
The report also attempts to pick apart the multi-faceted approach Facebook provides for, outlining owned media (brand assets created by your organization within social networks), paid media (ad space purchased within a social network) and earned media (“incremental exposure that your brand earns through viral engagement and interactions”).
The findings revealed sponsored stories (earned media that garners enough attention to become paid media) and post ads (ads generated through owned media) garner about twice as many click-throughs as web ads and social ads, which are ads that simply direct a user to a company’s social network or website. This correlated to lower cost-per-click rates for post ads ($0.24) and sponsored stories ($0.46) compared to web ads ($0.59) and social ads ($0.78).
Lastly, the report recommended balancing the exposure rate with frequency, using web ads and social ads for driving volume and off-Facebook activity, and to use interest targeting to make sure your reaching an audience that your ads will affect the most.
