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 (finally!) used fairly widely (it’s not like we’ve been writing much about why reinsurance and insurance companies should adopt social media as part of their PR plans, how to get executive buy-in or offering free social media guidelines or LinkedIn tips or content plans…).
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.
#BIBA2011 and #RIMS2011 hashtags for the win
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.
What is interesting in both cases was how much buzz a core handful of people could create – those that were listening, were listening intently, and those who were not listening, wanted to know what it was all about.
The insurance industry is changing – and will keep doing so
I feel these two conferences will be remembered as watersheds in the use of social media in insurance. What would be nice next year is to see if they are used as part of a social media strategy that incorporates not only other social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogging but also works in tandem with advertising, marketing and PR – how much more effective could this be? We will have to wait and see…
