Securian Financial Group Excels in Social Media Initiative

By Arvind Arora
TMCnet Contributor

The rapidly increasing adoption of social media services and solutions has compelled enterprises across the globe to take these platforms seriously in terms of brand promotion and advanced consumer interaction as well.

Using social media tools to boost the development of their business activities has proven to be a difficult exercise for the financial services organizations. These enterprises have been facing a number of issues that hinder them in leveraging the maximum potential out of social media initiatives, one of which is the provision of regulatory limits upon the content that can be addressed to certain sort of subscribers. It makes it pretty unclear to decide exactly what topics will be successful enough in attracting the users’ attention span.

Securian Financial Group, a provider of financial security for individuals and businesses in the form of insurance, investments and retirement plans, finally entered the arena of social media and launched a social media pilot program of its own.

“We knew that if we waited for ideal conditions to launch a social media campaign we’d fall behind the curve,” commented Angela Schema (News - Alert), manager, communications at Securian Financial Group. “So we picked a topic, ‘Long-term goals need a long-term partner,’ that was both representative of our brand and comfortable for our compliance department. We hired a small crew, walked to a local park and conducted spontaneous interviews.”

These interviews were shot in the form of video clips, and further enhanced to promote the basic brand motto of the company. Afterwards, these videos were uploaded upon the YouTube (News - Alert) channel of Securian. All the videos include a number of people belonging to different segments offering their own insights upon various financial topics such as personal goals, financial strategies, debt and retirement savings.

The company uploaded one video every week in the month of November 2012, and shared the links on its official Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter pages. Important statistics such as the number of followers, subscribers, likes and views on each medium were duly tracked by Securian in the process.

Main goals of the social media drive launched by the company included raising the number of Facebook ‘Likes’ by around 25 percent and the same of Twitter (News - Alert) followers by at least 15 percent. Apart from it, establishing brand identity for Securian through social media platforms and boosting its efforts in enabling people to acquire their long-term financial goals were other targets the company wanted to achieve.

After the campaign, Securian found it to have worked way better than its expectations. The number of Facebook ‘Likes’ increased by 27 percent to reach 571; while the number of Twitter followers increased by 19 percent and became 191. Despite the figures not being very high, the company found its social media experiment to have worked well in a number of ways.

“Finding a way to be both creative and compliant with social media was a win. Even better, our results show that our long-term value proposition is resonating and we can build a social media community around our brand,” added Schema.

In May 2012, Phillip C. Richards, chairman and chief executive officer at North Star Resource Group, Minneapolis, MN, was inducted into the Securian Hall of Fame, commemorating his significant contributions to the values, practices, culture and success of Securian Financial Group, Inc.

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