The buzz is palpable! After a heady round of nominations (69 nominees in 10 days) we’re down to the fun bit – the real voting to shortlist the Top 3 who’ll be invited to Amsterdam on October 10th for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media. Amazingly, we received more than 5000 votes in the first 36 hours from more than 1400 cities across the world. Huge, huge numbers! And they’re growing astronomically each day!

To acquaint you better with the nominees in each category of the awards, we’ll be posting case-packs on our SlideShare channel for each of the 5 categories of awards detailing what makes each nominee so special and why they’re in the final list of nominees (the initial list had over 60 candidates!). The campaigns that clinched each airline its position of prestige will be illustrated in detail. We hope you enjoy going through them and revelling in the reflected brilliance of their innovativeness, cleverness and sheer chutzpah.

The first case-pack has 5 case-studies, each illumninating the campaigns of Top 5 nominees in the category “Best use of Social Media to drive Revenue”. As you’ll see, some, like Virgin America jumped …

After 12,000 votes in just over a week were received, the top 3 most voted airlines made their presentations to the panel of judges before the winners were decided, for the inaugural SimpliFlying Awards in Social Media Excellence for airlines.

These presentations were made at the SimpliFlying-Airline Business ‘Social media for the aviation industry‘ conference held in London on Oct 1, 2010. You can view all the Live activity from the conference here.
Categories and winners

Best Social Media Campaign - Lufthansa’s “innovative” MySkyStatus
Best Use of Social Media for Crisis Management - SAS Scandinavian Airlines - for communication during the #ashcloud chaos
Best Use of Social Media to drive Revenue - Malaysia Airlines’ 72 Hours Merdeka promotion
Simplyflying Hero of the Year - Aurelie Valtat, Eurocontrol’s online communications manager for her social media management of the ashcloud chaos to the aviation industry

View more presentations from Shashank Nigam

Moments from the conference
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Congratulations once again to all the winners, and thanks to the attendees and …

Last month, we received a record number of nominations for the SimpliFlying Heroes, and more than one for Karlis Smiltens. And rightly so, since airBaltic [Disclosure: SimpliFlying client] is described to “probably have a larger presence in social media than in the real world”. And for helping achieve this, Karlis is the SimpliFlying Hero for August 2010!
Social media strategies that deliver results
A majority of SimpliFlying’s readers first became familiar with airBaltic after the video interview with its CCO, Tero Taskila. One of the points Tero made in that interview was that airBaltic had achieved a 450% increase in sales in Finland, mostly through social media. And the man leading the execution then was Karlis.

Karlis is the Web Marketing Manager at airBaltic, and led by example in engaging customers outside native Latvia, mostly due to outstanding social media. Karlis and airBaltic chose to channel their social media into a facet which can often be difficult: Facebook.

The truth is, because Facebook was not developed for corporate marketing purposes (but for social), many organizations struggle finding a niche in which advertising can thrive. Karlis and AirBaltic, despite being rather new to the game, rose to this challenge with interesting …

Update: airBaltic has kindly agreed to fly in the winners of this contest to London for FREE, from anywhere on their network! All you have to do is fulfill the conditions below, and follow airBaltic on Twitter.

Social media is increasingly becoming a tool of strategic competitive advantage for airlines. Delta Airlines now sells tickets on Facebook. Virgin America uses Twitter to launch new routes and save on marketing. And airBaltic [Disclosure: SimpliFlying Client] probably has a bigger presence online than in the real world. So how can other airlines learn from the likes of these successful airlines to build their own social media strategies? We have the answer.
Airline Business and Flight Global, in association with SimpliFlying, are delighted to be launching the first social media conference dedicated to aviation and all things airline related. The conference will take place on 1st October 2010 in Central London and you can now Register here. The conference will also be featuring the 1st ever SimpliFlying-Airline Business Awards for Excellence in Social Media – and you can start by nominating your airline for the SimpliFlying Heroes …

I have received an enthusiastic response to my article written late last week, about why the social “we”b is about the real-world relationships, just as much as it is about online interaction. In that, I recollected how the best side-effect of Twitter has been the number of highly talented individuals I’ve been able to meet around the world.

I’ve got a bunch of emails, tweets and comments over the last couple of days asking me how this observation applies to airlines. Firstly, let me address why airlines need to have real-world interaction with their online “fans”.

Why is real-world interaction needed to complement social media engagement?
Online interaction is good, because it allows the airline to connect with a lot of people across geographies, and allows those people to connect among themselves too.

Where online engagement falls short is often the creation of a long-lasting emotional bond, which comes only through real-life meetings. Imagine a Facebook fan of an airline, who has never flown them before, but has always taken part in online contests or discussions. Wouldn’t the relationship be cemented only if he flies that …

Once in a while, I come across an innovative airline which is lead by executives who love to think out of the box. Last year, it was AirAsia that left me stunned. Now, it’s airBaltic. During my recent trip to Athens, Greece, I met up with Tero Taskila, the Chief Commercial Officer of the airline who was previously leading Strategy at Gulf Air. I had been looking forward to interacting with him for some time now, and upon meeting him face to face, I can only confirm that he seems to be a very intelligent executive who’s not afraid to try new things to bring profitability to his airline. For example, traditionally a point-to-point carier, and now a “hybrid”, Latvia’s national airline airBaltic launched an Internet shop in December 2009 – airBalticOutlet.com. Customers can purchase leading branded goods for lower prices, with delivery on board an airplane. The products include perfumery, cosmetics, accessories, sweets, and airBaltic and Latvian souvenirs. How’s that for innovation? …