Tague Alliance Insurance Agents - Do You Use Video With Social Media?

This is a great article from Sprout Video which Tague Alliance uses to host some of our video content.

The State of Social Video in 2016

HOW TOS SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO MARKETING

The landscape of social media is highly nebulous, and the only constant is change - really rapid, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you change. One of the areas that has seen the greatest amount of transformation is the way video is discovered and shared on nearly all major social platforms. Today, we are taking stock of where we stand in 2016, complete with a demographic breakdown of the audiences on each platform, to summarize the state of social video.

Facebook

In what is now clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy, Mark Zuckerberg declared back in 2014 that the majority of the content on Facebook would be video. Facebook is exploding in terms of popularity as a video destination, with more than 8 billion daily video views on its platform.

This is largely thanks to major upgrades recently made to the Facebook viewing experience, with an emphasis on enticing viewers to keep watching, as well as heavy investments in the technology powering it. These investments have also increasingly made Facebook the place for interactive video, such as 360 degree video and virtual reality. With the introduction of new metrics for businesses, tools for creating videos suited specifically to Facebook, and even hardware, Facebook’s position as a leader in video discovery and technology is being cemented before our very eyes.

Another important factor is that Facebook has sustained an incredibly large and engaged user base for several years now. Research from the Pew Institute reveals that72% of American adults are on Facebook, with a majority logging in every day or several times a day. The demographics skew slightly young, with nearly 30% falling in the 25 - 34 years old range, and almost evenly split between men and women.

To position your videos for success on Facebook, consider uploading them natively, create subtitles to allow your message to get across if it’s played in silence, and target a specific niche with your content. To help encourage sharing, use emotional hooks to engage your viewers, and try to get a strong reaction. Also, test paid promotions of your videos to see if it gives you the boost you need.

Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter

Compared to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter have much smaller user bases in the US, and around the world, although growth rates have accelerated on nearly all platforms since 2012. The rate of adoption is similar; it ranges from about 24% to 30% of all American adults on each of these platforms.

_Pew Research Institute_

It’s important to note that while adoption rates are similar across these platforms, the audience and content strategy vary quite a bit. Here’s a breakdown of how to approach each of these platforms.

Pinterest

Sharing videos as pins does happen on Pinterest, but most people’s feeds and boards remain dominated by still images. One look at how video appears on Pinterest tells you why that’s the case - it appears that little has been done to encourage viewers who start watching videos to keep doing so. Yes, related videos are displayed along with related images below the video, but there isn’t an easy way to advance to another video, and the mix of content types detracts from the viewing experience in a way that’s not true for still images.

That isn’t to say it won’t work - there are anecdotes of Pinterest driving lots of video views out there. Position your content around highly informative how-tos, lifehacks, fashion trends, recipes, workouts, or anything to do with babies or pets, and you might just see some success.

It will be worth keeping an eye on how Pinterest changes the way video is discovered and shared on its platform, especially as they explore video ad opportunities. For now, it’s not a top choice for video marketing.

Demographics: Pinterest skews heavily female, with 42% of women who are online using the platform, compared to only 13% of men. It is also more popular amongst younger demographics, with 34% of adults ages 18-29, 28% of adults 30-49, 27% of adults 50-64, and 17% of adults 65 and over using Pinterest.

Instagram

After Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, you shouldn’t be surprised that video is also taking off on this platform. Although its user base isn’t as substantial as Facebook’s, Instagram has a lot to offer video marketers, especially those looking to drive organic engagement with video. Since Instagram hasn’t been optimized to drive people to paid or most popular content to the same extent as Facebook, you can reach a lot of people with an entertaining, informative, or emotional message just using hashtags.

Instagram has a particularly visual focus, and it’s important to share only great-looking content if you choose to leverage this platform for your business. Recently, Instagram rolled out one minute videos to everyone on their platform, taking a big step forward into longer form content, and creating new opportunities for more involved storytelling.

If you’re willing to pay for a video ad on Instagram, you have up to two minutes to get your message across. The longer time isn’t the only benefit: ads are the only way to include an outbound link in your post. If your goal is to drive traffic with your Instagram video, instead of just brand awareness, promoted video posts are the way to go on Instagram.

Demographics: More than 300 million users, and counting, are sharing up to 60 million posts a day on Instagram. The platform is nearly evenly split between male and female users, with slightly more women than men. Instagram is notably more popular amongst younger demographics, with 53% of 18-29 year olds, 25% of 30-49 year olds, 11% of 50-64 year olds, and only 6% of those 65+ on the platform.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is similar to Pinterest in the sense that it has a lot of potential to be really great for video marketing, but still has a long way to go before that will come to fruition. To their credit, they have made some big strides recently, such as introducing autoplaying video in the timeline. They also completely refreshed their mobile app, and introduced a more modern, streamlined user interface, which will only encourage more video viewing for users on phones.

Importantly, LinkedIn doesn’t support native video, meaning you can’t use their app to record a video, or upload a video directly to their platform. Since you can only share links to your videos, you need to ensure the page containing your video is properly setup with the correct metadata so that LinkedIn will pull the correct information about the video when generating your post.

Demographics: Their recent updates to video in the newsfeed, along with their mature and relatively affluent user base, make them an excellent choice for many video marketers, especially for B2B companies. Evenly split between men and women, LinkedIn’s 347 million-strong user base is also more evenly distributed by age. Roughly 30% of people ages 30-64 use the platform, while 23% of those 18-29 and 21% of adults over 65 use LinkedIn.

Twitter

Twitter is a great home for video, with easy support for native video, autoplaying videos in the timeline, great promotional options, and decent organic reach through hashtags. It’s really just a crying shame about that stagnant user growth.

It’s hard to say whether some of the changes they are making to how tweets are displayed will work in your favor in the long run. For instance, the While You Were Away feature, which surfaces tweets similar to those you’ve engaged with in the past, seems like it could be a good thing. However, all the tinkering that’s happening could alienate their core users, and without any meaningful new user growth, that could make Twitter less attractive down the road.

If you include Twitter in your marketing mix, share your video two or three times throughout the day using different copy and hashtags to see what might resonate with your audience. Buffer, a subject-matter expert, seems to think this is a good idea. Consider uploading your video natively since there is evidence to suggest that, like Facebook, native video drives more engagement on Twitter than links to external pages containing video. Currently, native video is limited to 30 seconds, so be sure to make the most of it!

Demographics: Unlike the other platforms, Twitter counts more male users than female, with 24% of men who are online using Twitter, compared to 21% of women. Their user base tends to be on the younger side, with 37% of people ages 18-39, 25% of those 30-49, 12% of 50-64 year olds, and 10% of those over 65 using Twitter.

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Are any of these platforms working particularly well, or maybe not so well, for your campaigns? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Note: We purposefully did not include messaging apps in this analysis, since they have specific nuances that deserve their own analysis. Look for that in a future post!

All demographic information is from Pew Research Institute’s Report on Mobile Messaging and Social Media 2015.

TAGGED: HOW TOS SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEO MARKETING

WRITTEN BY COURTNEY PURCHON

Courtney is the Head of Marketing at SproutVideo. Follow her on Twitter.

POSTED APRIL 13, 2016

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Tague Alliance - First Half 2014 P&C Insurance Industry Results

At Tague Alliance we want to help keep our members updated and current on what is going on within our P&C industry.  Dr. Robert Hartwig of the Insurance Information Institute just released his summary of the first six months of 2014 with commentary on ISO's report.  Read below to get an update on the state of the industry.

2014 - First Half Results

Dr. Robert P. Hartwig, CPCU

OCTOBER 6, 2014

Overall net income after taxes (profits) in the property/casualty (P/C) insurance industry increased by $1.6 billion or 6.4 percent in the first half of 2014 to $26.0 billion from $24.4 billion in the year earlier period. Over the same period, overall industry capacity (as measured by policyholders' surplus) increased by $58.1 billion or 9.4 percent. However, because industry capacity (or capital) increased at a rate faster than that of profits, the industry overall rate of return (profitability) on that capital fell slightly in the first half of 2014 to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent in the first half of 2013. The seeming paradox of rising profits but falling profitability was just one of several interesting crosscurrents impacting industry performance in the first half of 2014. Sharply higher catastrophe losses (up 24 percent) and lower investment income (down 1.4 percent), for example, were largely offset by a surge in realized capital gains (up 85.4 percent). Net written premium growth, on the other hand, was largely unchanged over the past year, rising 4.0 percent in the half of 2014 compared to 4.3 percent in the first half of 2013. The marginal change in profitability is in part a reflection of relatively stable underwriting performance. The industry’s combined ratio rose 0.9 points to 98.9 during the first half of 2014 compared to 98.0 a year earlier. Maintaining combined ratios below 100 is absolutely essential in order for the industry to maintain reasonable levels of profitability in a still-challenging interest rate environment. While low interest rates are likely to continue to present a challenge well into 2015, a stronger economy presents the industry’s best opportunity for growth, as the nation’s real GDP growth surged by 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014.

The industry results were released by ISO, a Verisk Analytics company, and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI).

Profitability Drivers: Winter, Spring Weather Took Their Toll; M&FG Reverses a Trend; Slight Dip in Taxes Help

The industry’s performance in the first half of 2014 was positive but bore the effects of an extreme winter and several outbreaks of severe spring weather. As noted earlier, the P/C insurance industry reported an annualized statutory rate of return on average surplus of 7.8 percent in the first half of 2014, down from 8.1 percent in the year-earlier period.

Ever since the housing bubble burst in 2008, the Mortgage & Financial Guarantee sector of the P/C industry has disproportionately weighed down the overall industry’s results, and because this line of business is written by only a few companies—some of them monoline carriers—it became common to report industry results in two ways, one including and one excluding M&FG data. In the first half of 2014, however, the reverse occurred. The annualized rate of return for this sector for 2014’s first half is estimated at 13.4 percent, compared to a negative 7.5 percent return for the sector for the first half of 2013. These results boosted the overall industry results reported above; excluding them from the P/C industry’s results for the first half of 2014 results in a 7.7 percent annualized rate of return.

A discussion of the key drivers of the quarter’s performance follows:

Catastrophe Losses

Some of the deterioration in underwriting performance in the first half of 2014 can be attributed to higher catastrophe losses relative to the year-earlier half. Although the insured damage from extreme cold and winter storms in early 2014 did not break the records set in the mid-1990s, 2014 will go down in history as one of the five costliest years on record for winter damage claims. Spring storms, including a number of severe hail and modest tornado and wildfire events in the drought impacted West added to the tally of claims, pushing total insured catastrophe losses through June 30 to $12.4 billion, up 24 percent from $10.0 in the first half of 2013, and up 21.6 percent from the 10-years average first-half total of $10.2 billion, according to ISO’s PCS unit.

Reserve Releases

Reserve releases are generally associated with new estimates of expected costs for claims occurring in past accident years. Overall inflation continues to be remarkably low, likely contributing to these lower estimates, although prices for some items that comprise claims payouts have been increasing at higher rates. For the first half of 2014, the industry reported releases of prior-year claims reserves totaling $7.9 billion, down slightly from $8.3 billion in the first half of last year.

Combined Ratio: Underwriting Profits Continue

The industry’s overall underwriting profit of $284 million on a combined ratio of 98.9 in the first half actually consisted of an underwriting loss of just over $2 billion in the second quarter and an underwriting gain just above $2.2 billion in the first quarter. In a long-term historical perspective, underwriting losses are the norm over the past several decades. Quarters with an underwriting profit have occurred only 21 times in the 114 calendar quarters—28 years plus two quarters—since ISO’s quarterly data began.

Premium Growth: Top Line Growth Continues

Also contributing to positive underwriting performance was continued premium growth, which decelerated slightly to 4.0 percent in the first half of 2014 from 4.3 percent in the first half of 2013.

There are two principal drivers of premium growth in the property/casualty insurance industry: exposure growth and rate activity. Exposure growth—basically an increase in the number and/or value of insurable interests (such as property and liability risks)—is being fueled primarily by economic growth and development. Although real (inflation-adjusted) GDP in the first quarter of 2014 actually declined at an annual rate of -2.1 percent (in part due to the effects of the harsh winter, drawing down of inventories, and other one-time factors), economic growth snapped back in the second quarter, with real GDP expanding at a robust 4.6 percent annual clip. Growth in key areas of the economy such as new vehicle sales, multi-unit residential construction, and consistent employment and payroll growth are clearly benefitting the P/C insurance industry. For the remainder of 2014 and into 2015, the consensus forecasts call for real GDP growth to hold steady at about 3 percent.

The other important determinant in industry growth is rate activity. Rates tend to be driven by trends in claims costs, conditions in the reinsurance market, marketing and distribution costs, and investments in technology, among other factors. Although it’s challenging to foresee the interplay of all of these and macroeconomic factors, it is certainly possible that overall industry growth in net written premiums could keep pace with overall economic growth in 2014.

Improving labor market conditions in 2014 will also affect top line growth in the P/C insurance industry. Job growth benefits the entire economy, of course, but the associated expansion of payrolls benefits workers compensation insurers in particular. The United States economy added 1.68 million nonfarm jobs in the first eight months of 2014; if that rate is sustained through the rest of the year, there will be over 2.5 million more workers than at the end of 2013. Combined with inflation-level increases in the hourly earnings of employees (as has been the case for the past few years), payrolls are expected to continue growing, resulting in billions of dollars in new premiums written being earned by workers compensation insurers in 2014. Indeed, workers compensation, hit hard during the recession by a soft market and a precipitous drop in payrolls, has within the span of just a few years transformed itself from the fastest contracting major property/casualty line to the fastest growing. Workers compensation is likely to remain the fastest growing major P/C line of insurance in 2014 if economic growth and hiring behave as projected.

Strong growth in the workers compensation line, continued growth in the residential construction sector, and strong new car sales are just a few of the reasons why moderate premium growth is likely to continue through 2014.

Investment Performance: Improvement but Interest Rates Remain Low

For the first half of 2014, net investment gains (which include net investment income plus realized capital gains and losses) rose by $3.0 billion (+11.0 percent) to $30.1 billion, compared to $27.1 billion in the first half of 2013. In measuring insurance company net investment gains, accounting rules recognize two components: (i) net investment income, and (ii) realized capital gains or losses. Unrealized capital gains or losses are not considered income and affect only surplus on the balance sheet.

Net Investment Income in 2014:1H

Net investment income itself has basically two elements—interest payments from bonds and dividends from stock. The industry’s net investment income for the first half of 2014 was $23.0 billion, compared to $23.3 billion in the first half of 2013 (down 1.4 percent). Most of this income comes from the industry’s bond investments, which are mainly high quality corporates and municipals. The drop in income mainly reflects the reinvestment of longer-term maturing bonds at lower prevailing interest rates than the previous investments paid.

Corporate bond market yields in the first half of 2014 were slightly higher than in the first half of 2013, but they were still low by historical standards. Moody’s AAA-rated seasoned bond index yields averaged 4.49 percent in January 2014, then slowly receded to 4.16 percent in May before recovering to 4.25 percent in June. In contrast, yields in January-May 2013 held mainly in the 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent range, then “spiked” to 4.3 percent in June 2013. (The spike was a response to the Federal Reserve Board indicating that it was preparing to “taper off” its program of buying long-maturity Treasury and agency bonds; tapering began at the end of 2013.) And although the U.S. economy is slowly improving, the Fed has reiterated that it intends to keep both short-term and longer-term interest rates low for a substantial time even after the bond-buying program ends later in 2014.

The bond market is still beset by the same forces that have held interest rates down since the Great Recession ended (officially, in June 2009): unused capacity (in both capital resources and higher-than-normal unemployment); cautious consumer and business spending, low near-term future expectations for the economy; and Federal Reserve actions to keep both short-term and longer-term interest rates low, all of which contributed to low inflation expectations (and thus, low nominal bond yields).

The other significant source of net investment income (besides bond yields) is stock dividends. Seasonally adjusted, net dividends in 2014:Q1 fell by 9.0 percent (compared with 2013:Q4) and in 2014:Q2 were basically unchanged from 2014:Q1 (specifically, -0.1 percent). Stock holdings in general represent roughly only about one-sixth of the industry’s invested assets.

Realized Capital Gains

Realized capital gains in 2014:1H were $7.2 billion. This is a relatively strong result, at least by recent historical standards. Realized capital gains in the first half of 2012 and 2013 were $1.7 billion and $3.9 billion, respectively.

Policyholders’ Surplus (Capital/Capacity): New Record High Demonstrates Industry Strength and Resilience

Policyholders’ surplus as of June 30, 2014 stood at $671.6 billion—a new record and up $58.1 billion (+9.5 percent) from the year-earlier quarter. Policyholders’ surplus has generally continued to increase in recent years as industry profits rose and as assets held in the industry’s investment portfolio increased in value in the wake of the financial crisis and “Great Recession.” It is worth noting that surplus increased despite very high catastrophe losses in 2011 and 2012. The fact that the industry was able to rapidly and fully recoup its losses to surplus even in the event of disasters like Sandy (which produced $18.8 billion in insured losses in 2012) is continued evidence of the P/C insurance industry’s remarkable resilience in the face of extreme adversity.

The bottom line is that the industry is, and will remain, extremely well capitalized and financially prepared to pay very large scale losses in 2014 and beyond. One commonly used measure of capital adequacy, the ratio of net premiums written to surplus, currently stands at 0.73, close to its strongest level in modern history.

SUMMARY

The property/casualty insurance industry turned in a profitable performance in the first half of 2014. In addition, policyholders’ surplus reached a new all-time record high. Despite an unusually costly winter and a number of costly springtime catastrophes, rising non-cat losses, and persistently low interest rates, the industry posted another profitable quarter aided by capital gains and reserve releases. Premium growth, while still modest, is now experiencing its longest sustained period of gains in a decade.

Fundamentally, the P/C insurance industry remains quite strong financially, with capital adequacy ratios remaining high relative to long-term historical averages.

A detailed industry income statement for the first half of 2014 follows.

First Half 2014 Financial Results*

($ billions)

Net Earned Premiums $237.80 Incurred Losses (Including loss adjustment expenses) 168.1 Expenses 68.5 Policyholder Dividends 0.9 Net Underwriting Gain (Loss) 0.3 Investment Income 23 Other Items 0.7 Pre-Tax Operating Gain 23.9 Realized Capital Gains (Losses) 7.2 Pre-Tax Income 31.1 Taxes 5.1 Net After-Tax Income $26.00 Surplus (End of Period) $671.60 Combined Ratio 98.9**

*Figures may not add to totals due to rounding. Calculations in text based on unrounded figures.

**Includes mortgage and financial guaranty insurers. Excluding these insurers the combined ratio was 99.0.