Historically, social media campaigns in consumer sectors such as retail, media or technology are often more likely to become an overnight success and go rapidly viral. It’s not to say, however, that more restrictive and often regulated environments are devoid of such opportunities. Insurance, financial services, energy or even healthcare may not seem like an obvious ground for social media engagement but their relatively conservative position has brought about innovative approaches, paving the way for successful social media solutions.

Take insurance services: engaging younger consumers is arguably more effective, and offers the potential of decreasing marketing costs and improving customer experience. But any social media programme is only as good as its adopters’ strategy and execution, so it’s vital to carefully look into key considerations for such sectors before making any hasty decisions.

In insurance, trust is everything and the entire industry is driven by customers’ confidence in their advisors, agents and the brand. Consumers are habitually sceptical about insurance and financial services brands so they need reassurance, and to feel that big brands are prepared to listen, understand and engage with them. Equally important is reputational risk because consumers can share their negative experiences. But these conversations are happening regardless whether brands are participating in social media, so organisations that proactively listen and respond appropriately de-risk themselves (Source: McKinsey report, 2011).

So which companies are using social media effectively?

With companies often offering similar products or competing on size, creating an ‘emotional brand’ that socially engages people is an effective strategy.

Comparison website Compare the Market has successfully leveraged its Compare The Meerkat campaign in using clever advertising, humour and social media, many of which tend to stay ‘in character’ and rarely mention insurance. In the first three days of the campaign 75% of the monthly quotes target had been achieved, the year-on-year uplift in quotes was 45% and the Russian-speaking meerkat has attracted almost 807k ‘likes’ on Facebook to date and more than 52k followers hanging on to his tweet. Other insurers adopting the ‘character’ approach are Churchill Insurance and ING in the UK. Read more >>

(Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images)

The semi-final second-leg Champions League match between Barcelona and Chelsea broke the tweets-per-second record for a sporting event. Twitter said activity during the match peaked at a staggering 13,684 messages per second.

The Barcelona-Chelsea encounter on Tuesday 24 April eclipsed the previous record for a sporting event: the 12,233 tweets per second during the climax of February 2012′s Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

On both occasions, the drama on the field prompted the surge in tweeting off of it. As if Chelsea fans needed reminding, the team overturned a two goal deficit, an early bath for John Terry that left them playing with 10 men for almost an hour and a missed penalty from Messi to progress to the final against Bayern Munich on 19 May.

At the Super Bowl, dramatic events unfolding in the final prompted fans to flock to the site during the game which saw New York win 21-17 after scoring a touchdown with less a minute remaining.

The Super Bowl saw a total of 13.7 million tweets but a Twitter spokesman said the company didn’t calculate the total number of messages sent during Tuesday’s match.

Together with our sister agency Grappa, we have conducted a survey into the marketing effectiveness of Facebook campaigns among more than 50 retail and leisure centres across the UK. Among the findings, we established a metric that enables shopping centres and leisure schemes to determine the effectiveness of their Facebook marketing. The metric uses the square footage of the scheme to establish a median baseline for Fan numbers.

It enables any scheme to determine its optimal number of Fans based on a metric of 1 sq ft to 0.2% Fans. Therefore, a 100,000 sq feet scheme should expect to have 200 Fans. Read more >>