What does social networking mean to us in the protection insurance industry? Some would see it as something unfathomable that youngsters engage in while talking in a different language of ‘tweeting, de-friending, poking and following’. Others don’t see it as relevant – a medium that they should perhaps look at but aren’t quite sure whether it really offers any opportunities.  But there are a few who are already integrating it into their marketing communications and starting to see rewards.

A whole generation of people, those who will be our customers of tomorrow, have grown up unaware of what life was like before the internet. They are completely at ease with researching products and companies online, buying online and complaining and complimenting online.

Don’t mock the social networks. Use them to tell the good stories.

Facebook alone has seen a recent successful campaign to prevent Simon Cowell’s X-Factor winner from achieving the Christmas number one slot. Instead an obscure heavy metal band had pole position on TOTP whilst we sat eating our turkey. There are rumours of a similar campaign to elevate Ultravox’s classic ‘Vienna’ to the number one slot 30 years after it narrowly missed out to a dreadful song called ‘Shaddap You Face’. Apparently there is another faction gearing up to dust down Joe Dolce’s awful single so that history actually repeats itself and Ultravox again come second. And what about the Facebook initiative to get Sky News journalist Kay Burley sacked for making Peter Andre cry?

You might mock and say this is irrelevant for protection insurance. But what if the Facebook campaign was about a claim you had turned down and a million people signed up to it? Would questions be asked in Parliament? Or what if it was about poor customer service or bad advice? Wouldn’t it be better to use such social media to create positive stories about the industry and use it to promote the good things that we do?

Whichever camp you are in, social networking is here to stay. Protection product providers, advisers, and PR companies need to be planning their strategy for how they deal with it – even if the short term response is a watching brief. The key challenge is to engage with that next generation of customers. How can we poke them into becoming avid followers of protection insurance?