How to Use Social Web Tools to Expand Contacts and Increase Opportunities
Every insurance professional knows that our industry is built around relationships. Through rapidly developing Internet innovations, there are now entirely new ways for insurance professionals to build business contacts. These new tools can raise your profile, enhance your personal brand and expand your prospects. Moreover, these opportunities are available on your desktop and are basically free.
The newly emerging tools, sometimes referred to collectively as Web 2.0, offer more than just the opportunity to retrieve information — they offer the ability to interact with the network in general, and with a customized, personal network in particular.
Twitter offers users a way to communicate broadly, using no more than 140 characters.
Twitter made more sense after I started using a Twitter application called TweetDeck, which allows you to monitor a series of columns of “tweets,” with a column of constantly updated tweets from the sites you have signed up to follow on the left side of the screen. Additional columns are arranged from left to right across your screen relating to additional search topics you are following.
Twitter simultaneously facilitates several different activities. First, it accelerates information gathering. Most news organizations are on Twitter. For example, I subscribe to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many others. These outlets tweet on subjects that may not become published articles. In addition, many governmental organizations, such as the SEC and the White House, also are on Twitter.
Second, many commentators, and observers are constantly twittering their insights and comments. This commentariat also reliably “retweets” an incredible variety of articles, links and other tidbits. (The “retweets” are identifiable by the prefix “RT” preceding the name of the source.)
Third, Twitter provides an information exchange medium. Because Twitter messages reach the wider Web, you can launch an announcement or post a question and reach an enormous network. For example, I recently spotted a tweet from a journalist looking for information about Canadian securities lawsuits. I was able to point him toward a recent blog about Canadian class actions. (Replies can be discerned by the “@” prefix preceding the name of a Twitter site).
Fourth, Twitter allows you to quickly retrieve tweets on a particular topic, many of which contain links to sources. For example, after the Stanford Financial scandal broke, I used the search function to quickly retrieve the tweets about Stanford, many of which I would not otherwise have found.
For insurance professionals, Twitter offers a potential new source of underwriting and claims information. For example, a D&O underwriter could search for tweets about a particular company and then monitor ongoing Twitter traffic relating to the company. For all insurance professionals, the ability to broadcast questions offers another way to obtain information.
Finally, the ability to develop a group of “followers” and to communicate with them and others using the reply and “retweet” functions provides a way to network and expand professional contacts.
LinkedIn is a networking site for professionals that has over 30 million users. As a minimum it is a place to post your resume and contact information, which makes it easier for others to find you.
But LinkedIn is all about building connections. By asking others to join your network, you add their names to the connections listed on your LinkedIn page. Each new connection allows you the opportunity to browse your new connection’s own network, as a way to find others to add to your network.
In addition, there are numerous LinkedIn affinity groups, where persons with similar interests can identify exchange news and information. There are a host of insurance-related groups. For example, the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) has a LinkedIn group. So does RIMS. There are numerous other specialized insurance groups as well.
Many of the insurance-related LinkedIn groups are characterized by a relatively low activity levels. However, I can easily imagine these group sites functioning as community bulletin boards where important information is regularly updated and read by people throughout the community
But even if LinkedIn may not yet have fully realized its full potential, I have personally had several experiences where my LinkedIn presence enabled me to form new and valuable relationships.
I long considered Facebook a place where college kids wasted time. However, I recently learned that over 20 million of Facebook’s 150 million users are over 30, and that the over 30 crowd is Facebook’s fastest growing demographic.
Facebook facilitates a way to reconnect with a lifetime’s worth of acquaintances. The reconnection potential is not only personally rewarding, it is also valuable for business networking. For example, I recently reconnected with a childhood friend who is now a public company CFO in my home state.
Facebook also has many groups and affinity sites. I have already signed onto Facebook alumni sites and even a group page for my college fraternity. Some of these groups are larger and more dynamic than the groups on LinkedIn.
Facebook also recently entered a partnership with TweetDeck, as a result of which it is possible to monitor both Twitter favorites and Facebook friends’ status updates on the same page.
Some might be concerned that getting active on Facebook might run the risk of mixing social and business contacts in an undesirable way. However, Facebook allows you to create separate friends’ lists, with different privacy settings. That way you can control who sees which of your various Facebook posts.
These tools all have the potential to become time sinkholes. Some people might conclude that these media are just not for them, and they might well be right.
My view is that these tools all have potential to allow anyone to expand their business contacts and opportunities. My own blogging experience convinces me that the opportunities these tools afford are real. Over the three years I have been blogging, I have several times met someone virtually through my blog, and then having that virtual contact turn into a real relationship, which in turn has led to real opportunities and real projects.
In addition, my blogging experience convinces me of the potential to use these web-based tools to develop or enhance both a personal brand and a corporate brand. Though I am based in suburban Cleveland I have through my blog developed an international audience and a professional profile, because I have been able to exploit the communications potential of the Web.
The interesting thing to me about Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook is that each offers a similar potential to leverage the Web, but in ways that are not only distinct from blogging, but that are also unique to each separate tool. I have already found that the networks I have formed from each of these tools largely do not overlap.
Almost everyone in the insurance industry conducts day-to-day business on the Internet. The new social networking tools also provide a means to obtain information directly related to our daily business activities. The Internet also offers a host of new ways to try to develop business contacts and build a professional profile.
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