Web 2.0 and Insurance

Andrew Berry wrote a thought-provoking article for IRMI last quarter and I wanted to offer a couple of comments.

Readers should know that IRMI's stated mission is to be an "authority in providing expert advice and practical strategies for risk management [professionals]".

To summarize some salient points, Andrew explains how the web as a platform and software as a service is a key part of the newest generation of internet applications and Andrew even credits Advisen for being one of the first such providers.

He correctly points out that the insurance industry is slower to adopt technology and that firms are notoriously hesitant to contribute data and insight to the public domain in order to reap the rewards from looking at aggegated information from the whole industry. For example, Advisen benchmarking took years to get critical mass in terms of data.

Couple of comments. First off, I hope Andrew follows up his commentary on collaboration. Key to the success of web 2.0 applications is user-generated content and collaboration. The most-trafficked part of the RIMS.org website is its members forum.

How will other forms of web 2.0 tools help IRMI readers (risk managers) leverage the greater community to learn more? Some of the risks may be specific to particular companies, but there is so much overlap in how companies manage risk and implement ERM, that I see a huge opportunity for Advisen to help risk managers come together.

I'd be interested in Andrew's thoughts, especially about one of his conclusions, "The industry is still wary of the Internet and the potential disruption it could create for parts of the distribution channel".

Secondly, I noted his point that insurance-industry blogging is very popular and showed the following chart depicting it as much more popular than blagging in banking or real estate. And the data was summarized before this blog started, I can only imagine the spike when they next tally this data...

Small Businesses & Web 2.0

Alan Meckler posted yesterday about the over-hyping of Web 2.0 citing a good story on internet.com about how small business owners need to have clear ROI before engaging in blogging, wikis, social networking, etc.

The report covered in the article says that these small business owners are twice as likely to care about e-mail newsletters and having quizzes and calculators on their site rather than blogs or wikis or social networking.

I will need to read the report to see if the businesses rely on internet marketing or if their web site and internet marketing are not core.

We're forming our 2008 marketing plan at Advisen and determining exactly where some Web 2.0 products could help. Our goals are to deliver great content to new and existing readers and to drive them to consider the advisen.com premium product as well to deliver a higher level of customer service by informing our clients about new information and analysis that is relevant to their book of business. We want to do this with technology versus more staff.

Advisen's #1 marketing tool is a series of vertical e-mail newsletters and Advisen has had great marketing success with topical surveys so we have some of the "web 1.0" bases covered.

In terms of web 2.0, I started this blog in large part to learn how blogging has helped other businesses and to show our team that it is not too difficult. We launched one in 2004 that covered the Spitzer investigations into the insurance industry and I'm very pleased to see that our developers have installed new software and that we will launch a new blog soon, likely to cover the developing subprime story for commercial insurance professionals.

I'm particularly delighted that they built the blog into the advisen.com navigation like our newsletter so that with the first release of the blog we will not only show in natural search engine resuls but also drive interest in our premium subscription offering.

If I've learned anything from Alan it's that you can't be all things to all people, small businesses can become bigger businesses by publishing vertical content. We are betting that social media can generate additional vertical content and help achieve our goals for growth and a higher level of service to premium customers.

Have Sponsors, Need Inventory

Advertising on Advisen Front Page News works.

Among our returning sponsors, FM Global buys through Ogilvy & Mather because of the results.

The next stage in developing this growing revenue stream for Advisen is to spawn new inventory. Social media applications can help and I was encouraged about the pace of adoption this post from Marketing Week.

As a goal for our product development and ad sales team it's possible, that just like Adivsen published the first social network for the commercial insurance industry, that Advisen will take the first social-media advertising buy in the commercial insurance industry.

Just Do It

In the couple of weeks since I started blogging:

1) A colleague at Advisen started a blog to promote a series of educational initiatives for our subscribers. Very little of our freely-available content shows up in Google searches. Blogging allows us to target particular niches of the insurance industry with relevant content and to offer sponsors additional ways to connect with our audience. We are also looking to link to other bloggers with great content relevant to commercial insurance professionals.

2) I relayed an idea to Fred Wilson who's AVC Blog I read daily and Fred responded with a nice note.

You have to start somewhere and I can see more of where it can lead.

Piece of Cake

Getting a successful internet start-up from idea to execution sounds easy these days. It's not. Just when you have dug in with late nights and long weeks to deliver a project, you dig deeper to deliver the next one. You have to believe, despite hearing "no" a lot.

Having just finished reading "1776" I'm struck by the parallel ups-and-downs with the early days of the business. Apparently George Washington's most-used word in motivating his officers was "perseverance".

Steve Carpenter married my stepsister and has believed in his manifest destiny to found a successful internet business. After Harvard Business School, Steve brought an idea to market and I congratulate him for his perseverance in launching Cake Financial. See their write-up in Forbes here.

Speaking to many

Atop my list of reasons why social media helps in measurable ways is how easy one speaks with many. Key to Bloomberg's success was our key which enabled bond salesperson communication with many customers simultaneously.

Today I saw another great example of this from Advisen's PR all star. Patrick Ward and his team at 104West represent a series of new customers. Using the technology from one of these new firms (Goldmail), Patrick sent a video by e-mail with voice-over a slide show talking about these clients and proudly showing off his new offices and growing team. It was very effective communication.

Among the new customers was Hivelive which offers white-labeled social media applications for plug-in and they appear to stand out in a crowd because their tools enable the readers to configure the social media apps rather than the publishers.

It just goes to show that because I respect Patrick's views, I took the time to look at all 7 of the new clients mentioned. Patrick, if he took the time to think it through, would realize Advisen would be interested in some of these. New media/social media saved him that time and maybe gave HiveLive a lead.

Facebook as a business debate

Two people I respect greatly have recently commented about Facebook and really all social networking. Eliot Pierce who has been a force for good at NY Times Online says he's in the "Facebook is not a business" camp.

Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia, blogged about about it here pointing out that value will be in vertical social networking (see my earlier post about sphinn). Alan has made a number of fortunes by providing targeted information to niche audiences and brokering this audience to relevant sponsors. I suggested to Alan that he should start or buy a site that would appeal to interactive marketers who are beginning to include social networks in their media buys (agencies are assigning full-time specialists to them). Generally Alan is skeptical about the true (and long-term) value of generalist sites like Facebook.

Have a look at the discussion thread following a post by Fred Wilson which reinforces Alan's point.

There is no seamless approach to anything these days. Key to technology project success is proper stitching of the seams based on thoughtful planning. The same will hold true with social media - it will be the social middleware that will enable vertical communities to reach outside "the club" as needed. How the middleware providers make money while the networks own the page views is beyond me at this point.