The new kid on the social block
In the world of social media Google Plus is currently the youngest and least understood (albeit, fast rising in popularity) kid on the block. Over its relatively short life it has earned its fair share of both lovers and haters, generating an interesting debate on what it will become when it grows up, and whether it is worth investing in it.

When Google Plus was finally opened to businesses with the launch of its business pages there was a rush from companies all over the world to get a G+ page, but as our CEO Shashank Nigam warned in an article about the potential pitfalls for airlines using Google Plus, few of these companies seemed to have a clear idea of what to do with this new platform.
Let’s get some hard data
To get some clarity and hard data SimpliFlying did what it does best: walk the talk! We got ourselves a brand page on Google Plus and sent one of our team-members on a data-finding mission. While signs of progress on this particular social network is admittedly slow, after a week of relentless searching, we have come up with the first ever snapshot …

Over the last year, SimpliFlying went pretty big with infographics. Big both in terms of the issues we tackled and the buzz we generated. We scored especially huge hits with our social future of loyalty and resources dedicated to social media infographics, apart from the regular Monthly Airlines on Twitter Report published in partnership with Eezeerdatalab.

And now, we’re kicking off the New Year with a bang as we present a new infographic, in partnership with our friends at Eyefortravel, on a burning issue that airlines and travel marketers in general will be looking to tackle over the next twelve months. Two questions in particular are addressed in this infographic:

In what direction does the industry see social media evolving?
What business goals travelers are driving and if they’re calculating ROI

While we do seem to have a consensus on the answer to the first question – the future is certainly mobile – uncertainty remains about how to measure ROI on social media. (We’ve tackled this briefly in a previous infographic as well). The uncertainty looms large primarily because while there are divergent ways in which people do measure ROI, there is also a section that questions the need to …

I recently had the opportunity to write a feature article in the Airline Passenger Experience Magazine, led by none other than Jon Norris and Mary Kirby, of the Runway Girl fame.

The article explored in a detailed fashion the behavior of the frequent traveler of today, who is not only always connected, but always engaging too. And what airlines are currently doing to respond. It then goes on to forecast the upcoming trends and what airlines need to do to stay relevant.

You’ll find our social loyalty infographic integrated into the article, as well as some cutting edge case studies like Estonian Air’s new social loyalty program and Air New Zealand. This complements well the recent series of articles written by Shubhodeep recently on why LCCs should seriously think about loyalty programs.

Enjoy the read, and we’d love your comments!
The Future of loyalty  
View more documents from SimpliFlying

Our friends at Eezeer have analysed the Twitter habits of airlines as well as their fans/customers for the month of November and have produced the Monthly Twitter Report in continuation with their monthly coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.

At the close of the year, it’s worth pausing to consider how quickly the social landscape has evolved over the past year or so. Airlines have not only embraced Twitter but have also realised that there’s great value in using it to drive specific goals such as revenue, engagement and loyalty. Many innovative initiatives on Twitter have been captured in our Top 10 case-packs as well. It’s worth noting that as of November 2011 there were 198 airlines on Twitter with 90 actively tweeting. This, more than anything else, is a sign of changing times and even greater change to come.

A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

Even though most airlines have jumped on to the Twitter bandwagon, the majority of the tweets are produced by a minority of airlines. 30 airlines provide more than 83% of tweets sent out by airlines.
Delta Air Lines is still the runaway champion, having been consistently been a …

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. (Check out our previous infographic on how the future of loyalty programs will be powered by social media.)
Airlines are increasingly taking to performing customer service on social media as almost 86% of tweets to airlines are about customer service issues.
There’s an increasing investment in social media platforms to engage customers. About 191 airlines now have Twitter accounts …

A couple of days ago we released an exclusive infographic on how The Future of Loyalty Programs will be powered by Social Media. Given the excellent response it has received on Twitter as well as the blogosphere, we thought we’d go ahead and offer some more detailed insights into the current loyalty game and how social platforms are becoming increasingly important to it. Before we move on to the presentation, I’d like to share a few thoughts on the state of social media with respect to loyalty programs and even vice-versa.

Navigating an increasingly connected world
The internet has ensured that the times we live in are constantly changing. Everything about the world, even the beacons we hold sacred on the internet are restless, dynamic, shape-shifting. At the heart of all this change lies the virtual socialization of human society: more than ever before we are interacting with each other and with businesses online. And the most important part of this change is the growth in two-way conversations instead of one-way advertisements; the instant and spontaneous back and forth between a company and its customers rather than force-feeding pre-determined messages; most of all, the ability of social networks to amplify …

Did you know that over 80% of members of an airline loyalty program never earn enough miles to redeem a flight? And most of the other 20% fly so much that the last thing they want to do is to step on another plane! Do you see why some loyalty program managers are worried?

For airlines, the future of frequent flyer programs programs is now a pressing question, given the growth of social technologies. As such, many airlines are now rushing to find ways of driving social loyalty. Some of these have been covered in our slide-deck on the Top 10 Social Loyalty Initiatives by Airlines.

To dig deeper, we partnered with Cranfield University in the UK to conduct a study on how frequent travelers (who travel at least five times a year) use social media. And here are some highlights of what we found:

There are more airlines on Twitter than there are airlines with frequent flyer programs (191 vs 179)
Almost 90% of frequent flyers use Facebook regularly, and over 65% “Like” at least one airline on Facebook
To frequent fliers cheapest fare is the least significant loyalty factor among customer service, earning loyalty points and onboard experience
72% of frequent …

SimpliFlying is back with the  Monthly Twitter Report for airlines (in partnership with Eezeer) for August 2011 in continuation with our coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.
After close to 6 months of reporting monthly on how airlines are using Twitter, we can safely say that apart from Facebook, Twitter is the social media platform of choice for most airlines. The number of tweets sent and received has been rising in general for months in a row. Airlines have also become more forthcoming as well as responsive.
This month, while the usual suspects (Delta and JetBlue) are once again on the list of top engagers, Cebu Pacific absolutely storms into the list. Not only is it placed second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets, it also scores the highest in the Global Satisfaction Score with a score of 106.7. (For more details, see the infographic.)
A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

As we’ve mentioned, Cebu Pacific is second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets with more than 11,000 to its name. However, Delta Air Lines is once …

I’ve done a lot of speaking recently at Eyefortravel events – which are focused on travel and technology. They’ve put out a report on social media and mobile use in travel, based on a survey of their conference attendees. And based on the findings of that report, produced an infographic full of amazing statistics. And we’re proud to be the first to share it here on SimpliFlying.

Hope you enjoy this infographic as much as the one we had previously shared, about how travelers use mobile while during the journey.

Social technologies are gaining huge traction among airlines. There’s simply no denying it. A couple of months ago, we released an infographic that showed how airlines are dedicating resources to social media. Most major airlines, according to the infographic, already have social media teams in place – most are managing cross-departmental strategies. Some even have plans to expand their teams later this year. That infographic was deemed to be a truly important one as far as the topic of airlines in social media was concerned: it received over 100,000 views and was featured in a number of publications including twice on Mashable itself!
Make sense of the chaos
Now, to add to all the hullaballoo, it really doesn’t help that social technologies are not just adding newer features regularly, but new social technologies themselves are being launched a dime a dozen (any takers for Google+ in airlines?).

So if you’re an airline marketer and thinking really hard about which social technologies to adopt apart from the usual suspects, we have the perfect remedy for your troubles. In fact, even if you’ve figured out which social platforms to adopt, you might still be wondering how best to use them or …