In March, when the first list of “Airports Using Twitter” was posted, we certainly generated a lot of interest in the topic by airports and others in our industry. The current list of airports using social has now grown to 143, which represents a 26% increase from the previous post of the list. The list includes many of the Top 30 International airports by size, as listed by ACI (shown below in capitals).

The rankings are straight-forward: the ratio of the number of Twitter followers to total passengers using the airport. But we  recognized that it may be more relevant to categorize airports by their relative size, i.e. by total passenger count. By ranking airports within their own category, we feel that this may better represent the airport’s effort to engage with customers through Twitter social media programs. It is felt that if airports have a higher ratio (followers to total passengers (PAX), it suggests that those airports may be more engaged with their traveling customers. More on this topic to be discussed in another post.

The Top 10 Airports Using Twitter by Category

Top 10 Twitter Airports:  …

From our recent survey and analysis with many airports using social media to date, we are able to categorize the organizational adoption of social media in airports- in terms of how it is being adopted, which departments and for what purposes.

Some background into the situation is warranted as many airports have not begun the journey into using social media-we can suggest that they will fall into one of the following categories:

Skeptical -nothing tried because not convinced of benefits to any stakeholders.
Experimenting – brought in tools to begin to understand their use to a segment of use.
Practicing- have made some investment in tools and personnel and see the benefits so far.
Thriving- have made social media part of the fabric in terms of culture, objectives and are seeing impacts.

In previous posts, we suggested that the adoption of social media and it’s related technolgies be supporting various airport objectives. We can now take a look at what organizational changes may be required in terms of people, skills and methods.

We should consider the governance of social media as a communications issue and ensure that we don’t …

In our previous blog on social media metrics, we briefly touched on organizational issues as it applies to airports. First was, what changes may need to be considered in terms of people, skills, methods of deployment and KPI measurement. We want to ensure that initiatives of value are properly aligned with desired outcomes – if mishandled, they could  lead to mismanagement of messaging and perhaps alienate passengers or violate some federal aviation / communications regulations in your particular jurisdiction.

We would suggest that social media be focused on passenger usage primarily. If such, we should ask then “Who should own Social Media in the airport organization?” When we reviewed our Top 10 Airports Using Twitter and Top 10 Airports Using Facebook, we found many major international airports did not have a social media presence. This may demonstrate the dilemma currently facing these airport and their internal organization.

Traditionally, we see the following breakdown of social media usage;
Marketing  54%
Department creep  18% ( other departments who are dabbling unspecified)
Public Relations  14%

Few organizations utilize a centralized group for social media responsibility for the reason that it is a cross …

Before applying Social Media Marketing metrics and analytics to the  streams of social messaging types coming in and going out of airports, it is important to decide on the Top Level Strategic Objectives these metrics will support. In terms of ROI, Social Media can be mapped to business and marketing values as in classical methods – that is, measuring awareness, reach and frequency of messaging. Although these metrics are usually quantifiable, Social Media brings an exciting and new exponential upside to the mix.

We attempt to lay out in a series of short Blogs, the steps required to develop a meaningful, measureable program for implementing Social Media Marketing programs in airports complete with sample metrics and methods as a guide to gauge success.

Our series will bring into play marketing best practices and tools where applicable, in support of both airport Customer Services and airport Retail. We will also share data and concepts that are working with the airlines as well.

Post 1- Mapping Airport Goals to Social Media Models

If we make the assumption that there are only 3 real measurable goals in airports in terms of REAL ROI, we can get past the “promised land” approach of Social Media.
1)    Increase Revenue (s) …

At AirGate Solutions, we’ve just completed our latest update of Airports Using Twitter. In this, we’re tracking airports that use Twitter as a social media platform.

The current list has 115 airports, which includes the Top 30 international airports, as listed by ACI.What we found surprising is that of the 115 airports, many of them top international airports, 25 airports either do not use Twitter as a social media platform or we were unable to locate them.

In terms of an airport’s total number of Followers, we see that some large international airports fall into our Top 10 category. In other words, we would have expected that the bigger the airport, the more followers – not necessarily true.

The Top 10 Airports Using Twitter (Total Followers)

London Heathrow (LHR)
Manchester (MAN)
Richmond (RIC)
Boston (BOS)
London City (LCY)
London Gatwick (LGW)
Akron-Canton (CAK)
Los Angeles (LAX)
Orlando (MCO)
Phoenix (PHX)

We felt there was another to look at the results – that in terms of customer engagement. For this, we used a ratio of followers to total passengers using the airport. We felt that this …