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What are the essential elements of a Web presence?

By Mike Wise, VP IdeaStar Insurance Technologies

Things seem to have changed a lot in the past three years. I'm curious as to what people feel are the essential ingredients of a comprehensive Web presence for a marketing company, especially insurance, given the state of the Web today?

IMO, the presence need to accomplish the following critically important functions. (I got these from Bill Tyson who I think got them from Groundswell.) Btw, if anyone can recommend any reading material or "Understanding Web 2.0" sites, I'm all eyes...

Listening – gathering feedback and customer insights for research purposes.

Talking – spread messages about your company and their products and services.

Energizing - find your most enthusiastic customers and use the power of word of mouth.

Supporting – deploy tools to help your customers engage with each other.

Embracing – Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design new products or improve services. (Most challenging)

So what are the tools to do all this? Corporate site with content management? Individual blogs? Corporate blogs? Portals for distributors, agents, vendors, etc.? Corporate MySpace page? Nimble and well-designed quoting and enrollment site? Asking for referrals every where? Employee portal?

Interested in comments.

Next week: PIMA Summer Conference in Newport, RI. - but first a little R&R. Check smugmug for the pictures along the way...

Meantime, I had some international soccer coaches staying at my house last week - Reginaldo from Brazil and James from England. We introduced them to corn hole, smores, and fireworks. Got a tri-pod and tried my hand at shooting fireworks. Interesting learnings if anyone is interested... See more - click here.

Some interesting stats re the Web and social networking….

By Mike Wise, VP IdeaStar Insurance Technologies
Social networks - Possibly the next frontier of affinity and association marketing… Some interesting stats:

MySpace – 1 billion visits/month (did not even exist 5 years ago)
Facebook – Traffic ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th from 09/06 to 09/07 (source: Alexa)
Linkedin – 700% growth in 2007, 11 million visits/mo as of 04/08
misc –

91% of consumer use social network for information

Social networks are 21st Century word-of-mouth
Considered “most reliable source of information”
67% of purchases influenced by word-of-mouth
Real people, real lives, high level of trust
Promotes exceptional ‘virality’

Source: Building Your Brand in the World of Social Networking
Webinar by American Marketing Association and Ramius Corp.

Did you get your copy of Groundswell yet? Some more stats from the book... I only wish it showed associated growth percentages for the last couple years - and sheer numbers of users. Might be an eye-opener.

Participation in groundswell activities (page 42)

Watch video from other users	29%
Read online forums and discussion groups	28%
Visit social networking sites	25%
Read customer ratings/reviews	25%
Read blogs	25%
Update/maintain a profile on a social networking site	20%
Add comments to someone's page on an SN site	18%
Contribute to online forums or discussion groups	18%
Comment on someone else's blog	14%
Post ratings/reviews of products and services	11%
Publish, maintain, or update a blog	11%
Use RSS	8%

Some recent pictures:

If any Boomers can identify this house, I'd be impressed. Hint: it's from an after-school TV show in the late 60's, very scary... located in Oradel, NJ.

Zach Wise, my son, playing volleyball..

Latest soccer favorite...

Opening the door to outsourcing Web development

By Mike Wise, VP IdeaStar Insurance Technologies

Best of times, worst of times... Dickens?

So I got two calls out of the blue this week from major insurance carriers known for doing things in-house. They both said that senior management is changing their tune and now opening the door to outsourcing Web development. Hallelujah! Needless to say, the business unit folks are ecstatic, if you can say 'ecstatic' that about Home Office folks!

Here's the amazing thing. One of the callers said, "My marketing department has said, 'We don't want to have anything to do with Web sites - that's IT.'" It's unfathomable! Honestly, I can't get my arms around that... speechless.

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Hosting some Australians doing a documentary of the impact of soccer on people's lives. In town this week. Cool stuff. Introduced them to an American summer tradition. Any guesses?

Major Launch - Ground-breaking?

By Mike Wise, VP IdeaStar Insurance Technologies

Postlude to the Social Networks series: Interesting article on Corporate Blogging and how it can lead to NEW BUSINESS! I'll go further than that. I got a call this week from a major player in a major insurance category who found me via a Google search on 'online insurance quoting'. I came up in third place on his natural results. I was happy to get that call.

FTJ.com

We had a major launch three weeks ago now. (Been busy!) Check it out. I'm in the process of writing a white paper on the underpinnings of the site because it seems to be ground-breaking. It really seems like we have moved a category to a higher ground with this site. I could be out in left field, but I haven't run across anything quite like it yet.

Here are some stats:

30+ carriers
80+ associations
100+ products
thousands of members

All of this complexity is being administered through the site. Online, e-signature enrollments are available in core products. Other products have links to fillable pdf's, standard pdf's, brochures, or external links - with tracking for commissions. Of course, best-practices were used for high-conversion rates on the e-signature workflows. Almost everything seems to be in place. And Phase Two has some very interesting ideas. I must say that even though this site took almost a year to develop, test, and launch (with adversity of course), I'm not sure there's another company out there that could have pulled it off in the timeframe and budget we did, especially not the IT department, no disrespect intended, just candid observations.

On a personal note, saw my youngest graduate from High School last weekend. Been working on a music video, a collection of accumulated pictures set to three sound-tracks. It's a bittersweet time.