Today’s travellers are no longer content with just accepting whatever good or ill the airline dishes out to them. They are extremely tuned in to the power of social media, as citizens of a virtually connected world.
The bottom-line: Airline brands are moulded as much by management direction as by the goodwill of social advocates. If you’re not where your customers are, if you’re not connected to them and tuned in to their behavior, you’re going to lose a lot of business. ~ The State of Airlines Marketing
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Social Media Outlook for Airlines
To understand what happens behind-the-scenes at the best airlines on social media, SimpliFlying conducted an original survey with 29 of the most social-savvy airlines around the world.
Key Findings:
- Over 75% of airlines invest more than 90 man-hours per month on social media.Many airlines have mapped the value of social media performance to business goals, among which the top three are 1) brand engagement 2) customer service 3) revenue.
- The biggest challenge faced by airlines is the insufficient allocation of resources to social media.
- Over 70% of the airlines surveyed plan to increase their social media budget in the next year.
The State of Airlines Marketing
When it comes to social media case studies, airlines often prove to have some of the most interesting and impressive results.
Social media is generating a great deal of influence for airlines. The best airlines are blanketing an integrated approach across the company to get different silos involved in the social media communication efforts.
As social media marketer, one could actually learn a lot by observing how these top airlines on Facebook interact with their Fans.
Mashable published an Infographic on How Airlines Have Taken Flight With Social Media some time ago.
How Airlines Have Taken Flight with Social Media
Facebook Outlook for Budget Airlines in Asia
Here’s the study on some of the Top SEA Budget Airlines namely AirAsia, Jetstar Asia, FlyScoot and Tigerair (Tiger Airways, just changed their name recently).
To get access to the ‘right’ information we analyzed the brand voice, content ‘shareability’,’likeability’, and many other factors.
We’ll dive into the data in a minute, and here are some of the points included in the study:
How often is the page posting?
What are they posting?
What’s the total of “People talking about this”?
Facebook Information(at the time of writing)
| Info | AirAsia | JetStar Asia | FlyScoot | Tigerair |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engagement | Good | Moderate | Superb | Moderate |
| No. Likes | 1,928,215 | 120,171 | 287,736 | 210,828 |
| People talking about this | 17,618 | 945 | 3,350 | 2,998 |
| How often is the page posting per week? | 10-15 Posts | 4-6 Posts | 15-20 Posts | 2-5 Posts |
| What are they posting? | Promotion, Deals, Places of Interest | Contests, Sale Offers | Offline activities, Staff/Culture, Destinations Promo | Sales Offer |
3 takeaways from the Facebook page activity of Airline Industry
Visual content drives higher engagement rates
Most of the pictures where in “Highlight” mode (full width). Every element of the post message is essential in reflecting your brand voice. Reinforce brand by wearing similar colours theme.
High Fan engagement levels correlate strongly to fan growth rates
Questions Works. Posts that include a conversation or a question receive better engagement.
Facebook promotions often lead to accelerated fan growth
Generally, a post gets more shares when it’s about cheap promo flights and sale offer.
What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts about what works and what doesn’t. Share your suggestions in the comments section below!
The problem with airlines and other large company sites is that the comment feed from customers gets clogged up with complaints.
How they deal with these is very important or the use of social media can go against them.