The Friday before Thanksgiving week I had the opportunity to speak to a group of communicators representing the top life insurance firms in the U.S. Our venue was the historic boardroom at the New York Stock Exchange, the topic, social media of course :-)

Here’s the problem though, when it comes to ‘talking’ about their major product lines, i.e. life insurance/annuities, they really can’t. There are so many legal restrictions and federal regulations involved with the industry that it kills conversation. If you have ever called your insurance agent and heard that canned message, “Insurance coverage cannot be bound or changed…..” then you know what I’m talking about.

That leads to the title of this post, what do you talk about when you can’t talk about what you want to talk about? The majority of the folks in the room wanted to know, “How can we blog or engage in any social media initiative around our core products with all these restrictions?” I told them, “You don’t”.

The answer seems simple and obvious to outsiders, but when your job is to market insurance, that’s what you do. However, my answer gave the audience a sense of relief. If you can’t have an actual conversation with somebody about a subject, why even start?

What do you ‘talk’ about then? Well hopefully there is more to your organization than your products. There are people and customers to start with. One of the attendees said, “Oh, it’s more of a brand thing, than a product thing.” Yes, sort of. It’s a relationship thing. Life insurance is more than premiums and payments, it’s about health, lifestyle, retirement planning, etc.

Here are a few quick ideas:
- Create a health-focussed blog and target a specific segment of people, i.e. men or women in a certain age bracket, or nationality
- Sponsor a blog-platform to allow retirees to talk about their life experiences and retirement planning
- Allow your employees to talk about innovative things they’re doing in the workplace
- What community projects are you supporting?

One example I always talk about is MetLife. MetLife can’t blog about insurance, but they could launch a ‘MetLife Blimp Pilot Blog’. Think about it, there is always a tie-in to a cultural event, it’s constantly traveling (making the story local), the blimp offers educational opportunities/school visits, it hits an aviation niche and it reinforces the Snoopy brand.

The thing is there are hundreds of things you can talk about, and chances are they’re more interesting than your life insurance products :-)

Blimp photo from Brian Bastion, used under CC