The insurance industry, like the rest of the wired world, is abuzz about social media, and IASA is no exception. During IASA 2012, attendees can stay connected via IASA's Twitter feed, posts to the conference Facebook page, and updates to the IASA LinkedIn group.
"One of our goals is to educate the insurance industry and our members, so we will be using social media to provide a lot of information to keep people up to speed about what's going on at the moment," says Justin Silver, IASA's social media subcommittee chair. "We will be teeing up new content automatically throughout the conference, using tools to provide updates to schedules and other important details in real time."
The IASA social media team also will be promoting educational sessions via social media and staffing a booth at the conference to answer questions about the IASA's social offerings. "We will always have several volunteers available to help people use our social tools to keep current," Silver says.
Social Media 101
For attendees who are less familiar with social media, the conference website also features a helpful primer. "We have compiled a lot of valuable, basic information about social media so that people who are not as social-savvy can get some information around it," Silver says.
To access this information, visit iasa.org and click the "Social Media" link in the "Member Tools" section on the right-hand side of the page.
"One of our objectives is to help the greater IASA community find information they need not just about IASA activities, but for other topics that are impacting the industry," Silver explains. "For those people who don't really know what social media is, the social media link provides access to a good knowledgebase that lets them quickly get up to speed."
Through the IASA's use of social media at the conference, Silver also hopes members become more aware of all the social media venues in the IASA uses throughout the year.
"While we have the ear of IASA members at the conference, we are going to be promoting the social media channel very heavily," he explains.
Making Content Count
IASA's efforts fall under the direction of the social media subcommittee, which has been charged with managing the three networking venues currently used by the association (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). The primary goals of the committee are, first, to provide a service to the IASA committees for pushing timely information about the organization, the conference and other industry highlights and second, to increase followers within each of those three venues.
"We're trying to expand our user base, and we have already been very successful," Silver says. "When the subcommittee began, we had about 100 members; now we have over 2,000."
To meet its goals, the social media subcommittee spends a lot of time assessing what members need. Led by the office of the CIO of the IASA, there is an initiative underway that is trying to gain more knowledge about what the target audience expects, wants, and desires through social channels.
"Right now, we are pushing out information that we think members want, and our feedback has been very positive," Silver says. "However, we are going to be taking a more active role in engaging members for feedback going forward."
That effort will involve working with local chapters. On Sunday, the subcommittee was part of a panel exploring how to get chapters more engaged in social media and how national IASA can help.
"That's a step in the right direction," Silver says. "We need to get the message out that we need the input of local chapters and that we are willing to help them."
Providing valuable content will also encourage members to tweet, retweet, share, and link. "We want to achieve cross-social media platform engagement, so that our Twitter followers become LinkedIn group members and Facebook fans, and vice-versa," Silver says. "Because a member may miss a message in one particular network, that cross-platform sharing is essential."
If You Build It…
Members of the social media subcommittee understand the importance of feedback in establishing a content-driven strategy. "If you build it, will they come? Not necessarily," Silver says. "That's why we've focused not only on publishing content members need, but also on creating a dialog and providing networking opportunities."
IASA is also looking to social media to encourage users to complete Industry Pulse polls and to drive traffic to the association's website, which has become a key venue for disseminating the volumes of information available to members.
"Social is quick, it's instantaneous, but it's our website that has a wealth of in-depth content," Silver explains.
He says he's excited about the future of social media and knows that the IASA has only scratched the surface of its potential.
"We are still in our infancy around these platforms and where we are able to go with them," he says. "What's important is that we learn from what works, to obtain and use the feedback from our membership, and build on this new media to expand on the historical value proposition of the IASA."
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