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 …

Update: Voting is now closed. Morgan Johnston, from JetBlue, won this month’s award receiving an overwhelming 83% of the votes! Congratulations Morgan and the JetBlue team! Watch out for a profile of Morgan and JetBlue’s efforts on social media very soon!

————————

We’re back with the nominations for April’s round of SimpliFlying Heroes. Over a keenly contested set of three rounds, we’ve had three excellent winners for January, February and March. We’re sure this month’s nominations will be keenly contested as well! Here they are:

 
Julian Carr, Bmibaby
The British Airline Bmibaby’s recent initiatives, led by its MD Julian and The Rabbit Agency, hit Simpliflying’s headlines recently with an excellent visual initiative where it engaged Instagram communities by allowing some of their members to meet in person and take part in “photo walks” at various Bmibaby destinations. The campaign appears to be part of a larger off-airport engagement strategy that focuses on destination and location specific initiatives. Previously the airline organized city tours based on Gowalla check-ins and routes, as well as a Grand Tour of Europe initiative where participants were invited to check in trough …

By now, Estonian Air is quite a superstar on social media having done a number of innovative campaigns on Facebook followed up by the World’s First Social Loyalty Program. And when we chose them as one of the three big guns to vote for in the March round of SimpliFlying Heroes, Estonian Air trumped KLM and SAS despite stiff competition from them. We reached out to Tero Taskila, the CEO of Estonian Air and he was kind enough to oblige us with some juicy tidbits about the story of the airline’s rise as a social-media presence. Previously, he has done an exclusive podcast with us – check it out for some inside scoops on Estonian Air and its plans for this year.

 
The Growth Story
The forerunner of Estonian Air social media was an old-fashioned customer forum that gave official, but informal answers to airline-related questions. This was the first user-generated online content and gave Esstonian Air confidence when new forms arrived. They continued with a blog where they shared slightly longer articles of public interest. This became a channel to explain background of news, route development etc.

Estonian Air’s focus has always …

Update: Voting is now closed. Tero Taskila of Estonian Air won by a landslide. Look out for a full feature on his leadership at Estonian Air very soon!

———–

Two months into the year and we’ve already had a venerable roster of social-media stars from airlines fight it out for our monthly Heroes award. Last month’s SimpliFlying Hero – Mohd Hisham from Malaysia Airlines – had many wonderful tidbits about how his team at MAS functions and how they “do” social media at MAS. You can read it here if you haven’t done so already.

Let’s cut to the chase, then. We’re ready for another round of voting – and I’m assuming you’re all familiar with this year’s revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative. We’re nominating three distinguished people from three airlines that have gained a formidable reputation as social media stars. Voting is open to all – and will close in 7 days from now (ie, Tuesday 13th March, 12 pm Pacific Time). Winners, as usual, will get a Certificate of Appreciation from SimpliFlying, an extended profile on our site and a shot at a wildcard entry into this year’s SimpliFlying Social Media Awards.

This time around you’ll notice that SAS has …

Malaysia Airlines, for quite some time now, has been a star on social media. They’ve received a fair bit of coverage on SimpliFlying in the past year or two for the excellent work they’ve done, and were, notably, one of the finalists in the SimpliFlying Social Media Awards 2011 for their MHBuddy initiative. Not surprisingly, when we chose them as one of the three big guns to vote for in the February round of SimpliFlying Heroes, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) trumped Finnair and Delta despite stiff competition from them. We reached out to Hisham, who is Head of Social Media and Innovation and the star behind MAS’s social media efforts, and he was kind enough to oblige us with some juicy tidbits about the story of the airline’s rise as a major social-media presence.

As Hisham says, it’s hard to imagine not having a social media channel nowadays, but only a few years ago, when brands were still floundering on social media, Malaysia Airlines, after cosying up in social media, set some clear objectives: to stay in touch with their customers and to understand their preferences so that MAS …

Update: Voting is now closed. Mohd Hisham Saleh of Malaysia Airlines is the resounding winner with 44% of the total votes received! Look out for a profile of his work with MAS very soon! Meanwhile, heartiest congratulations to him: Well done!

—-

It’s been a truly exciting start to the year! Our revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative received over 3000 votes last month; we launched the new SimpliFlying Podcasts; we expanded the SimpliFlying team and now we begin the second month of the year with the promise of more good things to come! On that note, let’s continue building on what we started last month.

Each month we nominate three rockstars from the aviation industry who’ve led their airlines to dazzling heights on the social web through their innovations and cutting-edge initiatives. As usual, voting will automatically close in exactly 7 days from now (Monday 11.59 pm Pacific Time). The winner gets multiple goodies: an extended profile on SimpliFlying, a Certificate of Appreciation as well as the chance to gain a wildcard entry to this year’s SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence.

Without further ado, we present this month’s nominees:
Aku Varamäki, Finnair…

Note: Earlier this month, we announced a revamp of the SimpliFlying Heroes initiative, giving our readers a greater say in whom we choose by adopting a transparent voting system. In a keenly contested round that saw about 3000 votes pour in over the course of a week, Pooja Dua of SpiceJet emerged the winner, having received almost half of the total votes submitted! Read more about SpiceJet’s excellent social media initiative led by Pooja below.

Even though India is the world’s fastest-growing domestic market in aviation, it is not yet known for airlines that are superstars in engaging or offering customer service via social media. Or at least, until now. Last year, SpiceJet, a leading domestic low-cost carrier in India, launched the Bombardier Q400 in a market that’s traditionally sceptical and scared of flying turboprops (popularly classified as the “planes with fans outside”).  What’s more, they chose the untested waters of social media for propelling their route-launch and tasted tremendous success, achieving over 88% load-factor in the first two weeks itself. Moreover, they also earned countless new fans, followers and increasing engagement manifold on their social media channels. So how did they achieve this? We reached out to …

Last week, we announced that we’re revamping the SimpliFlying Heroes initiative and hereon we’d be crowning our Heroes after a free and fair voting process open to all. Now, after an exhilarating and arduous week of voting, the masses have spoken. Pooja Dua of SpiceJet has secured the highest number of votes in a keenly contested race that saw the two other stalwarts – Christian Kamhaug of SAS and Diego Quesada Grimaldo of COPA Airlines – take it down to the wire.

These are how the final results stacked up. Painfully close between Pooja and Diego, we must admit.



Congratulations Pooja!

What’s noteworthy is that the last week saw a record number of votes pouring in to the site in support of the various contestants and the final number stacks up to almost 3000 votes.That’s really, really huge. Thank you everyone for voting. Do watch out for next month’s nominees in the first week of February. Meanwhile, there’s good news for the two stalwarts who were pipped to the post: they’ll have one more chance in the coming months to win the crown and get a chance at a wildcard entry to this …

Update: Voting is now now closed. See the results here.

–

As you all know, SimpliFlying is not only devoted to bringing you the best in marketing initiatives by airlines (along with analysis and commentary on digital trends concerning airlines) but we also regularly honour and award the stalwarts behind airline social media initiatives. We call these visionaries SimpliFlying Heroes. Over the past couple of years we’ve profiled about 10 such people who’ve truly rocked the social sphere with their innovative campaigns and leadership.
A new Heroes initiative – led by you!
What started off as a space where we’d have to look for people doing great stuff, has evolved into an incredibly competitive arena where airlines are actively fighting the “war for social supremacy” online. No longer is social a fad. It’s not deeply entrenched in the online consciousness of every Digital Marketing Director. And in many cases, even that of the CEOs. As our monthly Top 10 case-packs indicate, almost every month there are multiple creative initiatives by airlines to drive one or more of their business goals online such as revenue, engagement and loyalty.

With SimpliFlying Heroes, Every month we will choose 3 outstanding folks …

What a fabulous journey it has been! To say that the 2nd SimpliFlying Annual Awards for Excellence in Social Media were a success, would perhaps be an understatement. Right from sowing the seeds online to reaping the rewards offline in Amsterdam on October 10, this year’s SimpliFlying Awards journey has been exhilarating and extremely rewarding.

Behind the Scenes
In more than a year of being with SimpliFlying in various capacities, helping get the Awards machine up and running has been by far the grandest enterprise I’ve been involved with. The first and most immediate challenge that faced us was to ensure that we received a fairy representative roster of nominations. In this we succeeded most handsomely, getting almost 70 nominations over 4 categories.

Then came the greater challenge: actually getting votes for the top nominees. In this endeavour, we pursued three diverse methods: first, we constantly promoted #SMAwards on the SimpliFlying Twitter channel that has close to 8,000 followers. By means of numerous retweets and mentions on Twitter, we reached a wide audience. Second, we used our SlideShare channel to promote the top nominees in each category by producing 4 …