Social Media Report Card – Cigna
Darsana Vijay
November 9, 2016 • 5 min read
Updated on May 5, 2017
Social media is a great way for insurance providers to reach their prospective customers. Since insurance is a recurring investment, social media aids in consistent persuasion. The best part is that everything from reach to conversion is measurable.
Still skeptical about insurance brands being on social media? Then, take a look at the performance of Cigna on social media during the month of October 2016.
At a glance, Cigna has
- 33,277 Followers and a Follower growth rate of 6.6%
- 134 Tweets in October
- 387 Favorites, 230 Retweets and 35 Replies
Engagement
On average, Cigna published four Tweets every day. Most of these are proactive tweets.
The frequency with which they tweet is more than the average for Insurance brands in North America.
Out of the 134 Proactive Tweets, 5 were Ads. Of these, the Ad below was the most engaging:
What’s on your to-do-list? Don’t miss the most important thing – your health screenings. #KnowYourBenefits pic.twitter.com/RCtG60NreV
— Cigna (@Cigna) October 21, 2016
In general, all their ads focus on new offers and plans run by Cigna. All the other sponsored Tweets had a direct link to their website. These led to pages that gave consumers more information about various benefits and encouraged them to select Cigna.
The most engaging Tweet, advertised a global workplace wellness summit. This got 47 Likes and 9 Retweets. The engagement came mostly from the participants of the summit.
We’re honored to present the 4th annual Global Workplace Wellness Summit. #CignaFoundation https://t.co/ei2gOnHca6 pic.twitter.com/rCWMNym825
— Cigna (@Cigna) October 5, 2016
One of Cigna’s most engaging Tweets from September featured TV doctors from shows like House, Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy. This received 828 Likes and 256 Retweets. But such high levels of engagement comes at the cost of high production values etc. A great way to leverage such high one-time expenditure would be to create more durable content that can be reused later. For instance, stills with these influencers can be used later with different copy to combat dry spells in engagement.
Hashtags
Take a quick look at the hashtags that appear the most in conversations that involve the brand:
You’ll see that in conversations initiated by brands, the most used hashtags are ‘#teamcigna’ and ‘#knowyourbenefits’. The ‘#teamcigna’ hashtag was used by the brand to let their audience meet their various employees. This is a great way to showcase your company as a community. Moreover, the people associated with their employees on Twitter get to hear about the company. The ‘#knowyourbenefits’ series gave information about the various plans and the benefits that come under each.
The most user tweets included the hashtag ‘goknowcontrol’. This was the campaign that roped in TV personalities. There were a lot of tweets from the celebrities themselves, spreading word about the campaign as well as enthusiastic responses from fans. Based on the feasibility of doing such videos, Cigna should consider something similar on a regular basis or at least spread out content across a period of time.
Timing
The chart below shows the number of tweets and the engagement received on Cigna’s tweets during various hours:
According to the chart, tweets published between 9PM to 12AM gets the most engagement. However, given that a very small number of tweets were published during this time, it is safe to say that the brand’s most engaging Tweets are between 9AM and 12M.
- Cigna has a fan base of 614,317. They added over 1,387 new Fans during the period studied in this report.
- They published a total of 36 Posts in October.
- They received 1,268 Likes, 119 Comments and 186 Shares per Post.
- The brand participates in 46% of all conversations
To get a clearer picture of Cigna social media performance, let us take a closer look at their content.
Post Types
On average, video content was most engaging. See the split of engagement below:
Out of the 7 videos put out by the brand during this period, 4 were part of the #KnowYourBenefits campaign. By getting experts to weigh in on health issues, these videos have a high degree of credibility. The other videos focused on the events that the insurance company conducted.
The video above was the most engaging video content put out by the brand. It contains information that is relevant to their consumer base. It establishes the brand as a thought-leader in the field. Adding clearer calls to action will add to social media conversions. This would legitimate the expenditure involved in creating videos as well.
Top Posts
This Post got the most number of Likes and Shares:
Social media audiences expressed their approval of this charitable gesture as part of the #GoKnowControlTour. Cigna promises free health screenings and health coaching. Despite the lack of promotion, the Post got an estimated reach of over 15,000. The only other Post to enjoy a greater Reach was promoted:
Just like the most engaging Tweet, this too called attention to the global wellness summit. This was the only Post promoted by the brand.
Reach
If you look at the graph that shows the estimated reach that Cigna’s Facebook Posts receive, you will notice that there is a marked spike that coincides with the Promoted Post.
It makes sense for Cigna to promote more of their content, especially videos. Since they require quite a bit of expenditure, promotion can ensure that they get the reach they deserve.
Here’s the TL; DR version
- Cigna has a well-thought out content strategy. There is a good mix of different types of content.
- They need to leverage their stellar content better with promotion.
- At the point of content creation, think of creative ways in which content can be repurposed or decide on a strategy that distributes engaging content evenly.
