How many Facebook pages should a self-respecting insurance company host? It seems there is no right answer with a lot of experimentation going on.
Most major companies have a corporate Facebook page but the objectives seem to vary – some companies consolidate information onto multiple tabs while others seem very comfortable developing and abandon, if needed multiple pages. USAA, a leader in fan recruitment is one company focused on providing a consolidated site now attracting has over 85000 fans. The benefit is to attract fans for multiple reasons who all then get company messages.
Allstate has taken a different approach. It has one of the less functional corporate pages but has a broad range of additional pages based on marketing and advocacy campaigns, and even games. Games, possibly aimed at the mobile market seem least successful with Sudoku and Solitaire pages with just 16 and 13 fans. Progressive is another company with a game strategy with Route-Rageous! described as a cool brain teaser that’s sure to test your mental moxie! It has also struggled to gain significant activity though reviews are positive. Maybe the summer driving season will prove more successful.
Progressive also provides pages for a range of demographic groups including ‘first-time’ insurers, motorcyclists and commercial drivers but again variable success; motorcyclists leads the way with 3000 fans but just 54 new drivers (going solo) have signed up. Progressive’s goal is to deliver messages to specific groups without overwhelming all customers with irrelevant messages. State Farm has consolidated most functionality on its primary page but has developed a teen page with 1700 fans. American Family are one of the few to provide a Spanish Facebook page but so far has just 167 fans compared to the 10,800 on the English site.
Personality sites are cropping up to exploit popular brand icons and, mostly, been successful, helped by the viral effect. The clear leader in this category is Flo, the Progressive Girl, with well over 500,000 fans. This Flo page however is operated by fans and not Progressive. HelpFlo, a page that is operated by Progressive has just 793 fans. GEICO has personality pages using its many TV commercial images including the Gecko, Caveman and Pothole. The Pothole, not used in my region thereby personally unaware, leads with 13,000 fans. Nationwide has enjoyed success with ‘The World’s Greatest Spokesman’ who has 29,000 fans. AFLAC is another leader with its iconic Duck page with 170,000 fans.
One of the newer and quite successful page extensions is to support advocacy pages for allied causes. Allstate is a leader in this space and they support many pages including “Safe11” and “Thumbs Up”. Thumbs up described as ‘helping raise awareness about the dangers of texting while driving’ has 65,000 fans whereas Safe11 that looks to help passage of the Safe Teen and Novice Driver Uniform Protection Act boasts 21,000 fans. On both pages, the Allstate brand image is very noticeable but more to the point are associated themselves with worthy causes that also satisfy the objective of online contagion.
Careers is another key application for Facebook pages and while strategy is varied with some sites integrating into the main Facebook page, the trend is to develop separate pages. State Farm has over 10,000 fans well ahead of the other insurer including USAA with 1700, and Allstate and GEICO both with 1000 fans.
