Guy Carpenter Publishes January 1, 2012 Reinsurance Renewal Report

It's that time of year again, right? The insurance and reinsurance communities scramble to pick up all the information they can about the January 1 reinsurance renewal. Today, Guy Carpenter published its take on the 1/1 renewal season.

Click here to view the Guy Carpenter 1/1 blog post >>

Pyongyang Insurance Conference Highlights

Okay, you just don't see a headline like that every day! But, it's true (at least according to the Korea Central News Agency). The KCNA doesn't say much about the conference, aside from the fact that it ended "with due ceremony at Yanggakdo International Hotel on Tuesday."

The list of people in attendance is pretty interesting, including representatives from the Kumgang Insurance Company of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (also known as the Chongryon). Ezzat Abdel-Bary, secretary general of the Federation of Afro-Asian Insurers and Reinsurers was there, too, along with Roberto Quinto Martinez, permanent secretariat of the Association of Insurance and Reinsurance in Developing Countries.

As with any insurance conference, there were papers presented and plenty of talking. Marine cargo insurance, claims and adjustment was the hot topic at the Pyongyang International Insurance Seminar, in addition to the "art of adjusting catastrophe claims."

Hurricane Forecasts: Common Sense Check

Nothing makes me need to rush outside and light up quite like mainstream media coverage of the catastrophe bond market ... especially when it's paired with an outsider's view of hurricane predictions. Bloomberg BusinessWeek led with:

As the U.S. enters this year’s hurricane season, the market for catastrophe bonds may face its biggest test since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 brought sales to a six-month standstill.

The Single Secret to Successful Blogging

If you’re looking to launch a successful blog – or take one you have that isn’t doing much and turn it around – you really need only one little tidbit of info. It isn’t profound, and it will actually make your life easier.

So, here it is:

Are You Stuck in a Social Media Silo?

Push, push, push. It's tempting to spend all your time pumping out content and hoping that you'll get social media support from the other reinsurance people in your community. If you want to experience the benefit of others' social labor, you'll have to kick in a little help, too. Retweet people every now and then, or leave a blog comment. To get into the weeds on this issue, check out my post over at Blog-Re.

Insights on Social Media: Treat it Like the Internet

Are you unsure of how to put social media to work in the reinsurance or insurance business? Even with the information that's coming into the marketplace, it can still be tough to make the leap. If you need a bit more information to help you understand this environment, check out my guest post on SocialTimes on how to go a little "retro" with social media (no, not that kind of retro). Treat social media like regular internet marketing, despite everything claimed by the "experts," and you'll get a lot more out of your environment ... and your investment.

How to Learn from Other Blogs

If you’re about to get started in corporate blogging, there’s no substitute for getting your hands dirty. You have to learn by doing. Unless you’re an absolute lunatic, willing to commit endless hours to this task, and have a background in blogging and internet marketing, though, there are some things you either won’t learn on your own or won’t pick up for months or years. If you want to make a big marketing splash with your blog, you don’t have that kind of time. Fortunately, you can learn from the people who came before you.
In addition to Reinsurance Blogger, you can take a look at any established blog to see how to get more out of your content and your traffic.
When you check out other blogs (as a learning endeavor), don’t spend too much time on the content (except here, of course). You aren’t trying to learn how to right like TechCrunch or get a scoop like VentureBeat. You want to see how they are using their blogs to retain readers and maximize the value of their efforts. Take a look at the mechanics.
Start with layout. There’s no single right design answer, and some of the debates can reveal religious fervor. I, for example, despise tag clouds. I think they are ugly and can prevent bloggers from tagging thoroughly, which costs you search engine optimization (SEO) results. Yet, some people love them. Look around to see where top stories are featured, whether there’s an integration with Twitter or Facebook and how comments are handled.

Manage It All with HootSuite

One of the toughest aspects of social media marketing is pulling it all together. You have to deal with your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, maybe Facebook … and whatever else you’re using. That means you’ll have to log in to a handful of sites to post your content, communicate with your target market and measure results. I’ve been dealing with this for a few years now, and it’s a colossal pain. A couple of months ago, I took HootSuite for a spin, and the process has become much, much easier.
HootSuite, which you can access on the web, gives you a single place from which to update our social media environment. You can post to Facebook Walls, Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress (assuming you use WordPress.com to host your blog, instead of your own servers). The best part is that you can schedule updates. So, if you write all your blog posts a week in advance or more (as you should for a corporate blog), you can load the relevant content into HootSuite (with compressed links) for the other social media environments in which you’ll want it to appear. Then, as posts publish, they’ll appear elsewhere, too.

New WordPress Version Should Be a Corporate Blogger's Dream

The new features that will be available in WordPress 3.0 have been announced, and I’m more excited than I’ve been in a very long time. This new version looks like it is going to solve some of the biggest frustrations I’ve had with the platform (which is my favorite) as a corporate blogger, including the ability to run multiple websites from one instance (instead of needing to install WordPress three times to run three different blogs) and extended content management capabilities, making it possible to use WordPress for your website and your blog.

Mashable ran a great guest post on the top features coming in WordPress 3.0, and there is a lot of useful stuff in there. For me, the major selling point is multi-site, followed by the extended content management features.

Marketing Implications of a Profitable Twitter

Look, I think Twitter’s going to be profitable this year.
Twitter has eight data licensing clients (including Microsoft and Google), and the going rate for access to the “fire hose” (i.e., the full set of data generated) is reported to be “six figures,” which means a minimum of $100,000 a month. Its ad model is off the ground, and the company’s user base has cleared the 100 million mark. I’ve played with the numbers several ways, and it looks like Twitter is going to clear its annual expenses of $20 million this year. For social media market-watchers, this is interesting stuff … but why should insurance and reinsurance marketing professionals care?