Editor’s note: This is a guest post by UK-based Dirk Singer from The Rabbit Agency, which is the creative force behind BMI’s rise on Instagram.

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A year ago, the mobile photo social network Instagram had less than ten million users.  Yet it was growing faster than Facebook or Twitter were at comparable periods.

As a result, it attracted a fair amount of attention, and a few early adopter airline brands signed up, recognising the obvious link between travel and people taking and sharing pictures with their mobile phones. Fast-forward and the now Facebook-owned network has over fifty million users.   However, most airlines still don’t have a presence and many that do are using it sporadically and inconsistently.

We scanned through Instagram to look for 20 airline feeds so we could put together a comparative report.  In fact, even coming up with 20 airlines on Instagram wasn’t as straight-forward as we thought, as a number of major players are notable by their absence.

The infographic we’ve commissioned (see below) shows Air Asia leads in followers, bmibaby on activity and British Airways in likes.  It also throws up a few questions about how most airlines use Instagram and how they could use it more …

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.  From now on she will also increasingly become the Air Asia customer service agent as the airline has announced that it will close two of its customer service hotlines in a move towards what it calls its “on-going mission… to utilize technology and practice cost efficiency as well as promoting full automation and self service via the airline’s online channels”.

Although it might seem as just another cost-cutting measure, the …

KLM are currently the undisputed champions of using social media to drive engagement. They won our Best Airline in Social Media award last year, have one of the Best Facebook Timelines, allow you to sit next to your Facebook friend, and even dress up like one of their flight attendants! Their VP of eCommerce says that airline marketing is up for an overhaul, and they’re leading the way. But we all know they put a lot of time, people and money behind their efforts (see study).

So, if you had one tenth the resources that KLM has and no budget, what can you learn from them to drive insane engagement? Play destination hangman with your Facebook fans! It’s similar to what you played as a kid in school, just featuring your airline’s destinations. Simple!

We had recently shared that one of the best Facebook Engagement strategies is “Fill in the blank”. Destination hangman is like putting this strategy on steroids!

How does it work? Let’s see how KLM does it. It’s a simple three step process:

Put up a nice photo of one of your destinations on your Facebook wall
In the caption, ask people to guess …

A tale from Istanbul…
When I entered the offices of PEAK Games in Istanbul a couple of weeks back, here’s what I saw:

Instead of being greeted by a receptionist asking who I was there to meet, a huge Ogre-like creature was asking me to start playing. I dumped my laptop bag and immediately immersed myself into the game, in which the Ogre on the screen followed my motions and I had to keep him flying higher by collecting coins. A game so simple that a little kid would get it, and yet here I was, completely engrossed in it. Though I was at Peak’s offices for less than an hour, I probably played the game three to four times!

And I didn’t need to ask anyone what the company did. They obviously create very engaging games for people of all ages! And very good ones at that, given they’re one of the top gaming companies in the world.

Being part of such an immersive experience got me thinking – what can airlines do to immerse their passengers in a unique experience? On the ground and in the air?
Airlines with an …

Imagine walking into a plush bathroom with LED-lit rain-shower, which syncs with your mobile device’s Bluetooth so that you can listen to your favorite tunes through the surround sound speakers and not miss a phone call, while you take a shower. Imagine then stepping out and being attracted by the aroma of fresh Turkish Pide and kebabs on the grill. And as you help yourself to the lavish spread of delicacies and settle into a plush sofa, you are tempted by a pool table nestled in the middle a cozy library! Now, stop imagining.

This is not an imaginary seven star hotel, but the new Turkish Airlines International CIP Lounge in Istanbul that I’m talking about. And I lived every moment described above during my first visit there, as you can see from the photos shared below. You’ll also realize that these are amateur photos, taken by my point-and-shoot digital camera.
A complete transformation
I’ve been to Istanbul twice before, and both the times used the Turkish Airlines lounge, which is also open to Star Alliance Gold and Business Class travelers of other airlines in the alliance. It seemed large, yet congested and it was yet another “waiting hall” – just with nicer sofas …

JetBlue has established itself so firmly as a star in social media that it needs no introduction. Unsurprisingly, they were voted to the first position in the April round of SimpliFlying Heroes, receiving an overwhelming 82% of the votes. We reached out to Morgan Johnston, who heads JetBlue’s social efforts, and he most kindly obliged us with some tidbits about JetBlue’s social media efforts.

JetBlue’s first jump into social media was after the ice-storm of February 2007 when they needed to address their customers to talk to them about lessons learned from an operational failure. They made the decision to address customers directly through YouTube and learned very quickly that establishing a direct relationship with customers through these channels was appreciated – and also provided an invaluable resource to learn more.

 
On the road to greatness
When Twitter began to gain additional prominence in March, JetBlue recognised the opportunity of the real-time nature of the medium. Because users were posting their experiences as they happened, the airline could talk with them as they were travelling. This offered amazing customer …

“We live in an extremely dynamic environment… None of us on this [podcast] and potentially anyone listening knew what the hell Pinterest was a year ago”

With these words Vueling’s CEO, Alex Cruz, responded to a question on the Spanish airline’s future social marketing strategy during this month’s Simplifying Podcast that featured him as a guest.

 

In keeping with our usual format, the podcast is composed of a 10 min introductory section where we take a look at  the latest trends in aviation followed by a 25 min interview with our guest, Vueling’s CEO Alex Cruz.

In today’s introductory section we review the importance of response times in social media and the ongoing debate over in-flight Wi-Fi and its different business model. During the interview with Alex we analyzed the following subjects:

Critical factors behind Vueling’s success (11:30)
Spanish market : The collapse of Spanair, high speed railways and Iberia’s new low cost subsidiary (13:40)
Vueling’s Spanglish advertising and its cloud (22:00)
Strategy: Hybrid, but only if cost leader (24:42)
Vueling’s marketing channels (26:50)
Alex Cruz’s view on social media (28:40)
Social media ROI for Vueling (29:50)
Rapid fire round (35:00)

(After you fill out the short form below, …

A few weeks ago we published an article reviewing the new Facebook Timeline for brands and taking a look at how its new features could be used by airlines.  When that article was published 27 of the 30 days of the facebook adjustment period had already passed, and few airlines had made the switch.

Now that the adjustment period is over, we’ve decided to take a look at how airlines and airports have adjusted to the new layout and we’ve created this Top 10 deck featuring the Top 5 examples of Airline pages followed by the Top 5 Airport Pages.

During our research we were positively surprised by the quality of the work done by both airline and airport Facebook teams. However, sometimes we were disappointed to see how some companies appeared to be unaware of the change and had not adapted their Pages. Furthermore, especially on the airport side, we noticed that many companies had created beautiful cover images but had not filled their Timelines, leaving the very useful “milestone” feature almost unused.

Note: The airlines portion of this Top 10 was created adapting a guest post we wrote for Tnooz.

 …

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Arun Rajagopal, a social media manager who is based in Dubai and loves all things aviation. You can follow his #avgeek adventures on Twitter at @arun4 or on his blog.

If you are a travel brand into social media, identifying, connecting and building a relationship with your online brand loyalists and advocates must be an important element of your social media strategy.

Embracing your influencer customers and having a special relationship with them has manifold benefits. They move up from the brand loyalty to brand advocacy scale, give you repeat business, stick with you during good times and bad times, provide you valuable feedback on your products and services but also give you more word of mouth PR via earned media and help you in acquiring more customers through their social reach. It is also more cost effective to retain them than acquire new prospects. Their actions are also more measurable and accountable to the bottom line, from an ROI point of view.

However, many brands focus more on customer service, push marketing and community management on social media, and rarely give online influencer marketing and outreach the importance it deserves.

My experience with India’s …

I had the opportunity today to deliver a keynote on how airlines and travel brands are driving social media ROI at the Eyefortravel Travel Distribution Summit in London.

The theme was on driving ROI from social media efforts for travel companies – airlines, airports, hotels etc. And as with all my presentations, I’m posting the presentation here for your viewing pleasure. A video will be shared as soon I get it from the organizers, meanwhile, you can watch my previous presentations or enjoy the presentation below.

Feedback welcome, and if you’d like to engage us to help you with your social media strategy – just drop us a line.
DRIVING ROI FROM SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AIRLINES – THE PRESENTATION

Here’s what Live audience were saying…
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