How to use Twitter to Grow Your Airline's Sales – Miyuru's Guide
Can Twitter actually help an airline ? Perhaps this is a question that you recently pondered as an airline executive ?
On a personal level, I had registered for Twitter back in 2008 but never used it till 2009. It was probably FlightBlogger‘s extensive use of Twitter that persuaded me to check what could be done with this. I could find many faces that I knew and many new, high profile people and companies, inside Twitter. Colour me shocked – I certainly was, at how fast it could build relationships with, specially with potential customers.
What Actually Twitter is ?
Twitter, as often described and originally, is a micro-blogging service.
But it certainly can be better described as the CB radio of modern day.
Twitter allows you to post 140 character updates, called Tweets, as much as you want, and for free. When you “Follow” someone, their Tweets start to appear on your “Timeline” ( dashboard ). And when they follow you, your Tweets appear on their Timeline. jetBlue, probably the most popular airline on Twitter, recently was able to achieve a million followers – being second only to CNN and Ashton Kutcher. But since all Tweets are public, one does not essentially need to follow someone to view their Tweets. This certainly is an advantage for marketing your products on Twitter. There are also a multitude of ways to Tweet, which I’ll be covering to the end of this article. You also have the ability to delete a certain Tweet of yours that may seem as inappropriate.
Practical Tactics of Running a Successful Twitter Business
Just having a Twitter profile does not help your airline do business. Then how to ?
If you are innovating, Twitter can be very innovative, and not to mention very successful and productive, to you. But when running a Twitter feed for an airline, one thing has to be kept in mind.
You are dealing with your customers .
And they will probably talk to you on Twitter when they have a problem.
Hence, being customer oriented and being friendly, must be kept in focus as you run your business through your Twitter profile.
This is an excellent example why jetBlue and Southwest are among the highest admired brands on Twitter.
They are always being highly helpful to their customers, and potential customers, but in the same time ‘do their business right’.
But how ? Simple. There is a saying that when you are in Rome, act like a Roman. When you tweet, act like a Tweeter .
They do so by providing their customers with help and assistance, making you feel privileged and throwing in a good mix of product promotion in the middle. In simple words, Tweet them the way you would like to be tweeted.
Take the following three Tweets from @SouthwestAir as an example.
1.
@MatthewHLeach Hopefully soon! For now, use mobile.southwest.com and save it as a bookmark on your iPhone homepage…works for me!
This is in reply to when MatthewHLeach asks SouthwestAir when will there be an iPhone app for Southwest.
Notice the way how Southwest replies – they do not actually have an iPhone app, but they do have an alternative, and goes on to the extent to say that it actually works, making the customer feel assured.
2.
Flight to the Fight! Flight/hotel pkg to any SW Vacations property in Vegas includes tix to Mayweather v Marquez match: http://bit.ly/Ftf3G
This is product promotion, thrown in for good measure. They offer you a cheap flight and hotel package to any Southwest Vacations property in Las Vegas, but not limited to that, they will also give you tickets to watch the Mayweather vs Marquez match. The tweet ends with a web address ( shorten, of course ), which could be described as a call to action. They offer you a good deal, with an incentive, and inspires you to do it. But this tweet only comes in the middle of very many tweets offering assistance.
3.
You are celeb status now! Southwest royalty! RT @jonnyzavant: Woohoo! I’m now on the A-list with @SouthwestAir and I’m crazy excited.
jonnyzavant Tweets about how he got into A-list with Southwest and how he is excited about it, and Southwest ReTweets ( more info to the end of this article ) it. Doesn’t it feel nice to be ReTweeted by someone who has 559577 followers ( right now, and hundreds added as you read this ) ?
Christi Day ( @christi5321 ) is the person who is behind Southwest’s Twitter feed. They do not hide it, and use it to be more personal with their customers by stating as
Airplanes can’t type so @Christi5321 is responding/chatting with you!
.
Business Innovation
jetBlue, the most successful airline Tweeter as I’ve already mentioned, has been quite innovative with its Twitter feed and is reaping a big harvest from it.
Their newest innovation is jetBlue Cheeps . A kind of Twitter-exclusive-fares that sell like hot cakes.
They open a new set of Cheeps every Monday. Why not introduce similar to market some last minute fares and fill those vacant seats on your flight ?
Basics of Tweeting
@reply – @reply is the method of addressing a reply to someone. If you want to tell user AirlineIndustry that this article is great – you will be telling @AirlineIndustry Guide to Twitter is a great article.
ReTweet/RT – ReTweet, or better known in its short form as RT, is reposting a someone else’s tweet. When you find an interesting Tweet by someone, you can ReTweet it with a single click and if the message is shorter than 140 characters, you can also include a few words of your own
Eg:
Great article RT @AirlineIndustry Lost In Time – SriLankan
ReTweets are a factor that are highly important when running a business on Twitter because your message gets more popular as much as it is retweeted.
Short URLs
Each Tweet is limited to a precious 140 characters, hence best use of these characters is of utmost importance. Most tweets include a web address, and these are often long. To overcome this there are many URL shorteners. But keep in mind that because of the business models of most of these URL shorteners, some of them might go bankrupt at any time and all of your links might go dark. So if you have sufficient funds to buy an extra domain name (eg: jetBlue may use jb.cc or jb.me ), there are many free Open Source URL shortening programs that will enable you to shorten URLs on your own.
Methods to Tweet
There is a host of options to Tweet, ranging from desktop applications to mobile applications to dedicated corporate tweeting platforms.
1. Desktop Applications
Tweetie – A Twitter applications for Macs
Twhirl – Twhirl is a desktop client for Twitter, Facebook and other social networks and runs on Adobe AIR
2. Mobile Applications
Twitterific – for iPhone and is also one of the first desktop Twitter clients
TwitterFon – TwitterFon is a Twitter application for iPhone and iPod Touch
ÜberTwitter – Twitter application for BlackBerry, comes in both a free and premium version
Tweets60 – Tweets60 is a freeware Twitter app for Symbian S60
Tweetdeck for iPhone – the iPhone version of the popular TweetDeck application
TwitterBerry – Excellent Twitter app for BlackBerry
Twibble – Twibble is a Java J2ME application bringing Twitter to most generic mobile phones, also available is a desktop version
Dabr – an Open Source advanced Twitter mobile interface hosted online
3. Corporate Platforms
SocialOomph/ TweetLater – TweetLater enables you to schedule tweets.
HootSuite – Another of CoTweet’s kind with a bit different set of options.
Also worth to be noticed are services such as ping.fm which updates your status through a number of social network including Twitter and Facebook with a single click.
Twitter’s official web version and mobile version are available at www.twitter.com and m.twitter.com respectively.
In my personal opinion, a company does not need a seperate social media team to start a Twitter feed, but one intelligent individual can completely transform and bring success to any brand through Twitter.
So, what are you thinking of anymore ? Go and try to increase your airline’s sales through Twitter.
Already did ? Why not tell us your story ?
Follow us on Twitter: @AirlineIndustry
Miyuru is an 18 year old Sri Lankan student who runs this blog solely from his mobile and has an excellent knowledge on many aspects of airline operations ranging from network planning to marketing to social media. I am available for consultation and employment offers. Feel free to contact me on info@airlineindustryreview.com .
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