Student of Social Media

Airlines on the Twitter Radar

PART I

As a customer –oriented industry, airline carriers should both recognize and act upon the opportunity to use social media to create deeper and more progressive relationships with their increasingly connected and vocal customers.

Social media for many brands, enables them to interact with customers in the communities that they (the customers) feel most in control and comfortable within. In all cases, customers have chosen to use social media to interact with, or comment upon brands, entirely voluntarily, or with only minimal encouragement. This significantly increases the engagement value of brands participating, as it allows them to engage with customers who have “opted-in” by expressing an interest in their brand, or their category at the very least.

Twitter, in particular, is an efficient infrastructure that facilitates brands’ more personalized and direct exchange of real-time information. However, Twitter requires a level of transparency that some brands are unaccustomed to, but all customers require, which challenges the way business is traditionally done….especially for airlines.

Twitter, in its current manifestation, can help airlines to increase customer engagement, brand awareness, and revenue.  Specifically, by keeping a pulse on issues as they percolate and interacting with people on a more personal level, airlines can add value to their existing and new customer relationships, even in an environment that can sometimes appear to be very inefficient, due to its seeming one-to-one nature. In a recent interview with Simpliflying, JetBlue said its “ability to answer question[s], direct customers to resources or disseminate information means we have a greater ability to create an informed understanding customer base.”  As this paper will cover, many airlines use Twitter as a light CRM tool, but there is an increasingly lucrative opportunity, which @JetBlue is exploring through @JetBlueCheeps, to proactively direct business value through Twitter by selling-off inventory at a discounted rate, quickly filling seats, and advertising new routes.  Worth noting is a recent study by Compete, which found that Jetblue and United  experienced an increased Twitter conversion lift by heavily promoting low fares on Twitter (cheeps & twares respectively).

The following discussion will first cover the rationale for why airlines should be on Twitter; travelers are online; travelers are participating in social media; travelers will increasingly conduct more transactions online. Secondly, this discussion will delve into the derived norms of a sample of airline brands on Twitter; how particular brands are involved in four key stages of a brand’s social media engagement – listen, educate, act, progress. Third, the discussion will conclude with recommendations for brands using Twitter, a list of handles in the airline category, as well as a couple of predictions.

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