Qatar Airways takes globetrotting route with Tweet a Meet campaign. A deep dive into airlines and Twitter: Content, time, strategy and style. NB: This is a guest article by Jamie Riddell, CEO and co-founder of Digital Tomorrow Today. Airlines on Twitter are constantly looking for more. More followers means larger potential audience, more clicks, sales, engagement with their audience. Different airlines take different approaches to achieving this growth. British Airways has tried promoted tweets whilst KLM have surprised socially connected travellers.
But are these methods the only way for airlines to boost followers and results? Using BirdSong: Social Media Reconnaissance we looked at a number of airlines to share some other examples of what they are doing, and could do for growth. Of the airlines we surveyed, all except BMI and Qantas offered links from the homepage to Twitter.
This connection seems like a no-brainer – announcing your twitter presence is logical on your homepage – it works to drive visitors to your twitter stream and act as a recognition of your validity on twitter, helpful when someone else owns @Qantas. Why Airlines (and Airports) must shift to Social Customer Service. SimpliFlying has been talking about the inevitable evolution, if not revolution, in airline/airport customer service following the increase in social media usage by travelers. Today, we’re glad to say that the revolution is finally here. Customer service 2.0 is now a stark reality, and should soon be a pressing need for airlines and airports the world over.
Let’s begin by introducing a young lady from AirAsia previously featured in our Customer Service Top 10 who’s at the forefront of this immense change. She’s little, she’s a miss, and she’s red… care to guess who she is? She’s Lil’ Miss Red, and she’s Air Asia’s Customer Service “ambassador” as well as the core element of the AskAirAsia customer service website. Although it might seem as just another cost-cutting measure, the shift from a telephone-based to a social media and internet-based model will most likely be an inevitable one for most airlines (and even airports).
Eyjafjallajökull, of course! New Rules of Engagement. Social media listening in travel is not enough: So here are three ways to respond. Using social media to build customer satisfaction requires much more than just setting up a profile on the latest social network – it requires a high level of so-called social responsiveness. If I tell you something, the only way I can be sure you heard it is if you respond. Whether we’re sharing information or making a request, we need some type of confirmation to know the communication has been received.
It’s no different for people interacting with hotels online. Listening serves as a prerequisite for any program designed to improve customer satisfaction, but it cannot end there. How would you feel if, when you ask someone for a request, they simply listened to you – then went on with their day? The speed and quality of your response will determine the guest’s level of satisfaction with the service you provide. Hotels have to become more responsive. Daniel Edward Craig recently shared how to take customer feedback and use it to drive improvements in each area of your hotel. Potter again: Klout, Cathay Pacific and the perils of social media-led influencer marketing. NB: This is a guest article by Shubhodeep Pal, senior innovation officer at airline and airport strategy firm SimpliFlying.
Cathay Pacific and social influence measurement service Klout have a partnership, heralding the high profile arrival of so-called influencer marketing. But beware the pitfalls! The airline and Klout, an online service that measures social influence on a scale of one to 100, announced the exclusive deal wherein users of Klout’s iPhone app could gain access to Cathay’s branded Business and First Class Lounge at San Francisco International Airport simply by showing the lounge receptionist a score of 40 or higher on their iPhone. Note that all flyers who use the Klout app, regardless of whether they’re flying Cathay, can access the lounge provided they meet the minimum requirement. Time to recognize the cult Here’s the good news first: it’s cheering to know that airlines are finally waking up to the power of influencer marketing. Actually, they hope a bit more.
The most successful engagement strategy on Facebook is _____. Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the SimplyMeasured blog. SimplyMeasured is a social media analytics company. Fill In the Blank is a common content tactic that many big brands are utilizing to drive engagement (comments) with fans, on Facebook. If your brand is experimenting with this tactic, analyzing it against other content types is an effective way to measure performance and determine if FITB should be incorporated into your content strategy. Using JetBlue as an example of a successful FITB posting strategy, we’ll break down how you can test and measure it as part of your ongoing content analysis. JetBlue Baseline JetBlue is one brand that has effectively incorporated FITB into their content strategy.
Fill In The Blank Drives _______: We analyzed JetBlue’s Facebook content performance over the 6 week period mentioned above. We can see that Fill in the Blank has been quite successful at driving comments for JetBlue. What Does it Mean to You? Read the original post here. Hotel chains on facebook. Are Facebook and Travel a Good Match? | EyeforTravel. Analysis: Travel brands have a long way to go to realise Facebook’s full potential and so far there’s no clear winner, according to Compete. Facebook recently announced major but controversial changes aimed at increasing stickiness to maximise ad revenues. Effects of these changes were immediate. Growth in unique visitors (UVs) (blue line) slowed as the influx of new visitors barely offset those “ breaking up ” with Facebook.
Page views dropped 30 percent m-o-m (green line). Other KPIs such as Visits, Average Stay, Visits/Person and Pages/Visit also declined (not shown). The impacts may be short-lived as consumers adjust and, even with slower growth, Facebook still boasts over 800 million members worldwide, so its potential to reach vast numbers of internet users remains huge. Today, travel brands use Facebook to drive brand awareness and audience engagement and ultimately increase visits and bookings on their sites. KLM social seating initiative fun but potentially fraught. KLM’s latest plan to allow people to choose who they sit next to according to social media profiles sounds like fun in theory.
The idea is to link your social media profile to your check-in information and choose a seating partner presumably with similar likes and dislikes. But, it also leaves you wondering how far they’ve thought through the plan, which could become reality early next year. What has made KLM, already well-known for quirky social media campaigns, think this is something passengers really want as opposed to a service the airline believes they might want? One thing is to think a passenger might get on with another based on social media profiles, the reality could be quite different. On a basic level, a business traveller might not actually be interested in talking business on a flight, preferring instead to read the newspaper, listen to music or catch up on sleep.
You have to wonder how many people will be willing to take that chance. NB: Image via Shutterstock. Using semantic technology to create better consumer profiles in travel. NB: This is a guest article by Larry Smith, a partner at US-based Thematix. It took me about 15 years from when I started travelling for business and pleasure to appreciate the value of a professional travel agent. In 1979 as a junior MadMan I relied upon secretaries and expense accounts for guidance, while personal travel was collaboration between an advertised special, a travel agency storefront, and my girlfriend.
By 1996 my prospering Internet development company was flying people around the globe and Ann Marie, our independent travel agent, made several dozen bookings a week seem trivial. What’s more, she made personal travel an exciting purchase, something to anticipate enjoying for all 200+ of us when we needed to get away for a week or weekend. This was personal service with expertise and excellence. To a marketing technologist, uncovering the consumer behavior and purchase process is critical to creating the benefit in a unique user interface with data presented just so.
Now. [Infographic] How travel brands are using social media to achieve ROI. We’ve partnered with our good friends at Eyefortravel to bring you another interesting infographic that reveals a lot about how social media is significantly impacting the travel industry. (Thanks to eezeerdatalab for additional data.) While we’ll leave you to pore over the infographic to get the juicier details, there are a few interesting insights that do stand out and deserve to be highlighted.
Travel marketers surveyed revealed that using social media reduced PR costs by at least 24%.Most companies in the travel industry are spending over 25% of their marketing budget on social media.61% of companies surveyed will spend more money on social media efforts over the next quarter.Interestingly, social media is being seen as a viable way to drive customer loyalty given that almost 82% of frequent flyers use Facebook and place the most importance on great customer service. (Click to view larger image.) Did this infographic get you to finally buy into social media? Similar Posts:
Travel businesses pledge to spend more on social media and mobile in 2012. Two-thirds of travel companies will spend more of their precious marketing budgets on social media next year, while over half will also target mobile channels. The results of the annual Frommer’s Unlimited Digital Content Trends survey, run via Tnooz in late-September, also found nearly 80% of companies have plans to develop iPhone applications during 2012, with 75% aiming to have similar services for iPad devices by the end of year.
Meanwhile, half of the travel executives surveyed currently operate a site in one language, a third operate sites in up to five languages and a fifth have sites in more than five languages. The study found that a quarter are hoping to be running up to five language sites next year and 17% plan to have more than five language sites. Frommer’s believes there is a “maturing of the online marketplace as marketers look closer at the final stages of the purchase funnel and how they can convert more visitors into loyal customers”. Here are some of the key findings: Travel Share - Hotel & Tourism Social Media Optimization Tools.