Episode #18: How Cover-More is winning with travel social media

Insurance winning with travel social media

In episode #18 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we chat to Lynton Manuel, Social Media Manager for Cover-More Travel Insurance. We chat to Lynton about 'big business' using social media and how even a travel insurance company can come to life through social media activities. In this podcast we cover a range of topics including social media measurement, content, tools, platforms and social media ROI with a focus on Cover-More's YouTube which hit 1 million views at the end of 2014.

Highlights, Notes & Links We Mention in this Episode

Social touches across many parts of the business at Cover-More Insurance including being used as a sales tool as well as customer service and communication tool.

Videos forms the basis of the social content with these videos used on YouTube but then also used in blog posts, tweets, on Facebook etc... Although there was no set number for what Cover-More wanted to achieve with its YouTube views they understood they wanted to get way more exciting with the content that was being produced and not deliver stock standard bland content.

At about the 6 minute mark Lyndon talks about 'Dan' who is the key content creator making many of the YouTube videos and Instagram images and how they came to meet and work with him.

Through all the content one thing is clear which is their customers are there to travel and love to travel so that is what they want to focus on.

Pay-to-Play or a paid advertising in social does play a role "We look at Facebook now as purely an advertising platform" [Tweet ""We look at Facebook now as purely an advertising platform""]

"We spend money on most posts now where we are actually creating our own content so all our YouTube videos and blogs because we want people to see it, we don't want to have all this great content and none see it."

Lynton explains this is largely as they are a big business and an insurance company at that but there is still room for social with Twitter and Instagram as well as with small businesses it's just working out what platform suits your brand and your messaging that you are trying to get across.

Around the 12 minute mark I ask the question "How do you know if its working?" Lynton says although often bosses will look at certain amount of friends or certain amount of followers he doesn't rate as a metric that has much relevance especially when talking paid content where you don't need any followers to get your message across.

With social media measurement and metrics what Cover-More look at is;

1) engagement e.g. likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc "If people are talking about the brand you are naturally going to get some sort of uplift (and hopefully that is obviously position mentions)"

2) traffic to your website  - as much interesting content that is being created it needs to be housed on the website you want to be bringing people back to the website.

3) brand image and brand awareness - respond, be there and be that brand that people want to build a relationship with that is massive. It can be hard to measure - looking at things like sentiment, online reviews,

4) revenue - are we getting more sales compared to a year ago when we had less of a social presence.

Listen from the 15 minute mark where we talk about how you can try to measure to work out your social media ROI however 'Return on Relationships' may be a better term. [Tweet "'Return on Relationships' may be a better term & measure than ROI"] The more people that feel like they know or like your brand the more likely you are going to have them as a customer".

We chat a little about online reviews "anything where the average person can go to that site and go well actually they seem quite nice - even though that person complained about them".

Lynton suggests 'getting them while they are hot' when they have just returned from a holi...

Insurance winning with travel social media

In episode #18 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we chat to Lynton Manuel, Social Media Manager for Cover-More Travel Insurance. We chat to Lynton about ‘big business’ using social media and how even a travel insurance company can come to life through social media activities. In this podcast we cover a range of topics including social media measurement, content, tools, platforms and social media ROI with a focus on Cover-More’s YouTube which hit 1 million views at the end of 2014.

Highlights, Notes & Links We Mention in this Episode

Social touches across many parts of the business at Cover-More Insurance including being used as a sales tool as well as customer service and communication tool.

Videos forms the basis of the social content with these videos used on YouTube but then also used in blog posts, tweets, on Facebook etc… Although there was no set number for what Cover-More wanted to achieve with its YouTube views they understood they wanted to get way more exciting with the content that was being produced and not deliver stock standard bland content.

At about the 6 minute mark Lyndon talks about ‘Dan’ who is the key content creator making many of the YouTube videos and Instagram images and how they came to meet and work with him.

Through all the content one thing is clear which is their customers are there to travel and love to travel so that is what they want to focus on.

Pay-to-Play or a paid advertising in social does play a role “We look at Facebook now as purely an advertising platform” 

“We look at Facebook now as purely an advertising platform”
Click To Tweet

“We spend money on most posts now where we are actually creating our own content so all our YouTube videos and blogs because we want people to see it, we don’t want to have all this great content and none see it.”

Lynton explains this is largely as they are a big business and an insurance company at that but there is still room for social with Twitter and Instagram as well as with small businesses it’s just working out what platform suits your brand and your messaging that you are trying to get across.

Around the 12 minute mark I ask the question “How do you know if its working?” Lynton says although often bosses will look at certain amount of friends or certain amount of followers he doesn’t rate as a metric that has much relevance especially when talking paid content where you don’t need any followers to get your message across.

With social media measurement and metrics what Cover-More look at is;

1) engagement e.g. likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc “If people are talking about the brand you are naturally going to get some sort of uplift (and hopefully that is obviously position mentions)”

2) traffic to your website  – as much interesting content that is being created it needs to be housed on the website you want to be bringing people back to the website.

3) brand image and brand awareness – respond, be there and be that brand that people want to build a relationship with that is massive. It can be hard to measure – looking at things like sentiment, online reviews,

4) revenue – are we getting more sales compared to a year ago when we had less of a social presence.

Listen from the 15 minute mark where we talk about how you can try to measure to work out your social media ROI however ‘Return on Relationships’ may be a better term. 

‘Return on Relationships’ may be a better term & measure than ROI
Click To Tweet

The more people that feel like they know or like your brand the more likely you are going to have them as a customer”.

We chat a little about online reviews “anything where the average person can go to that site and go well actually they seem quite nice – even though that person complained about them”.

Lynton suggests ‘getting them while they are hot’ when they have just returned from a holiday or trip and want to be telling people about that trip is the best time to ask for a review. And also taking the feedback and working on what you can actually improve (check out my blog post about that).

When asked about what content to post Lynton says ‘ask’ and look at the metrics (listen from about the 19 minute  mark for details).

We chat about Hootsuite as Lynton is a Hootsuite fan – listen is at 23 minute mark as he mentions some cool features I didn’t know about.

For the final question I ask about what Lynton is excited about for 2015 – he talks about ‘the Internet of things’ and then from about the 26 minute mark he gives away an AWESOME idea for travel businesses. Must listen podcast.

Lynton Manuel Twitter

Cover-More Youtube

Cover-more Website

 

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