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 of the airline industry on Google Plus.

The main finding were:

• There are now 70 airlines with brand pages on G+.
• The vast majority of the pages are in English – about 78.5%. But on average, pages in Spanish are “liked” more often.
• The airline with the highest number of “likes” (known as “+1″s) was Mexican low cost carrier Volaris with almost 3000, double that of the second most popular page.
• The most common type of content on G+ pages is brand-related.

If you are an airline executive eager to know more, please do contact us and we’ll offer you a customized consulting or training solution to suit your needs.

Download a larger version of this infographic here.

What are your thoughts about how airlines should use Google Plus? Where do you see Google Plus headed? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @simpliflying. Or, better still, join us on Google Plus.

• Airlines rush to get brand pages on Google+, but why? 7 questions to ask before you join a new social media platform
• [Infographic] Airlines on Twitter – April 2011 data reveals the need to focus on Customer Service
• Spain air traffic control strike: social media comes to the rescue, once again
• The essence of SimpliFlying, in an infographic. Introducing the coolest About Us page in the industry!
• Eezeer and SimpliFlying launch airline monthly twitter report – Delta leads Twitter use, and customer service is in!

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8^th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find another Top 10, this time focusing on the use airlines made of Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networks of the year.

6. Social media ROI: The second half of our roundup us opened by keynote presentation made by our CEO Shashank Nigam at the Social Media Travel Summit earlier this year. The keynote focuses on a much talked about and little understood topic, the ROI of social media.

5. In fifth place is one of our most popular infographics, focusing on the resources that airlines dedicate to social media.

4. Airline Facebook initiatives: Our Top 10 case-packs have been one of the most viewed resources on our website and in the fourth place of this roundup we find another one illustrating the best examples of Facebook contests run by airlines.

3. 6X Model of Airline Branding: In third place we present a long standing favorite of our readers, the Airline Branding Whitepaper. This much praised paper was written by our CEO Shashank Nigam back in 2008. Yes, light years away in social media time, and was also selected and re-published by Brandchannel.com in the summer of the same year. Three years later it is still extremely relevant and, as this roundup shows, one of the most visited pages of our website.

2. Future of loyalty programs is social: In the second place comes one of our best infographic to date, highlighting the social future of loyalty programs and the new tendencies of the connected frequent flyers.

1. A380s and sales problems: In the first position, we have an article that was the most read in 2011, even though it was actually written in August 2009. We are talking, of course, of our famous piece on the Singapore Airlines’ A380 Suites and the sales problems that followed their introduction.

That said, if you have read this far you clearly have an interest in us. Similarly, we too are interested in our readers. We’d love you to use the comment box below to tell us what you would like to see (or not see) on SimpliFlying in 2012.

Thanks for reading SimpliFlying! Have a great New Year and here’s wishing you a fantastic 2012!

• A revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative – Vote for the Jan 2012 Hero now!
• [Infographic] How travel marketers calculate ROI on social media and why the future is mobile
• Vote for the SimpliFlying Hero of February 2011 – Finnair vs Delta Air Lines vs Malaysia Airlines
• Best Airports in Social Media: Top 5 Airports nominated for the SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence 2011
• A Brand New SimpliFlying – from airline branding pioneers to leading customer engagement at airports and airlines

After all, those were the good old days when, if one passenger had a bad experience he would tell his friends and family who may or may not have told a slightly distorted version of the story to their friends and family members… and the story would pretty much have ended there.

However, in the age of Twitter, Facebook and instant 24/7 global communication, the story doesn’t quite end there anymore. Even one annoyed passenger out of a whole planeload has the power to share his experience not only with his friends and family but also with millions of complete strangers who may in turn share it with a million others.  And this time the story does NOT end there.

Moreover, according to recent research, 25% of social media users expect a response within an hour and 6% expect something within 10 mins!

Time to start thinking about social customer service!

Unfortunately, only a handful of airlines and airport seem to have noticed this change, and even fewer have realized that an annoyed passenger could easily be turned into an happy one, as well as a brand advocate, who rather than venting his anger at a million strangers will praise the airline’s excellent customer service response.

There are a number of reasons why offering customer service through social media is an attractive option for both customers and airlines:

1. Customers no longer have to go through the trouble of waiting on the phone (forget the irritating wait-tune) to reach customer-service executives.
2. Being an “open” forum mostly, complaints and resolutions can be seen publicly. This can help a) reassure customers that the airline is serious about customer service; b) help create brand-advocates who can spread the word among their networks about a great customer service experience.
3. The responsive, interactive and open nature of social media helps customers feel more comfortable with asking more questions and getting all their doubts cleared which might not always be possible through the phone. On the flip side, the airline can also understand better what exactly are the most common issues worrying customers and how their service can be improved.
4. Apart from the benefits social media undeniably provides, customers now expect most brands to respond to them on social media, which is an almost equally compelling reason for airlines to have social media customer service initiatives anyway.
5. The internet and social media are absolutely unmatched in providing speedy and latest information especially in times of crises.

In this Top 10 we have selected ten great examples (as well as 2 bonus ones) of companies that have gone out on a limb to offer customer service through social media, thereby making their customers very happy indeed. We hope you enjoy the case-studies.

• Southwest Airlines, the Most Remarkably Kind Flight Attendant and the Art of Customer Service
• Top 10 Airports on Social Media – case studies of the airports best at driving engagement
• The Best Airlines Driving Customer Service & Crisis Management Through Social Media: Top 5 SimpliFlying Awards nominees
• United Airlines brand may go for a spin as customer feedback line is terminated
• Five steps to Customer Service Excellence for United Airlines (with real-life case study)

There were four key themes I highlighted on how social media will impact airlines in the coming months:

1. The availability of in-flight wifi to 200 million people this year would change customer engagement models
2. Loyalty programs would evolve to include social loyalty, where virtual actions lead to virtual rewards, like badges, rather than just free flights
3. Revenue and distribution would adapt to the social graph to skip the GDS, like the Malaysia Airlines Facebook booking app, or Alaska Airline’s FlyingSocial
4. Customer service will evolve where people expect to do all actions through social media, that they now do over the phone with an airline. Hence our partnership with InterGlobe Technologies to launch a social media call center

Check out these trends and more, in the presentation embedded below (Flash required).

• Malaysia Airlines takes booking and check-in to Facebook. And now, you can sit next to your friend too!
• Socializing the airline booking process – Germanwings follows Alaska Airlines’ lead
• Is social loyalty the next phase of development for frequent flyer programs?
• Top 11 marketing and social media innovations by airlines in 2011
• Five (nearly) zero-cost solutions for low-cost carriers to reward loyal customers and drive loyalty

Given the success of our last couple of infographics, which garnered over 100,000 views, we wondered – why not create an infographic about SimpliFlying and our journey? And that was it. We gathered key statistics about the website from Google Analytics, collated our list of clients and consolidated all the progress we’ve made over the last couple of years in the eye-candy we’re presenting to you right here! Enjoy the visual

Special thanks to Shubhodeep Pal, who has a great eye for detail, and the design team for doing such a fantastic job with this.

• [Infographic] The first-ever insights into how airlines are using Google Plus
• Introducing the newly expanded SimpliFlying team, with special focus on community engagement and airport marketing
• American Airlines pays attention to on-board experience, in the latest Boeing 737 with Sky Interior
• A Brand New SimpliFlying – from airline branding pioneers to leading customer engagement at airports and airlines
• Top 10 Articles of 2011

Listen first, then engage…

An airline brand experience elicits more emotions in customers than most brand experiences do, based on the excitement generally associated with travel. As a result, customers tend to volunteer strong, detailed opinions about their air travel experiences, often broadcasting them throughout their entire virtual networks via social media. While this new era of engagement has created heightened customer expectations in many cases, it also provides savvy airlines with a unique opportunity to understand what drives their customers’ behavior more than ever before.

The key is to listen first and engage second, rather than continue the lazy habit of focusing strictly on traditional “push” customer communications. In other words, to goal should no longer be to create a brand image. Instead, the goal should be to influence your brand image while ultimately empowering customers to build your brand and drive your business.

Getting Over “Airrogance”

The passengers actually flying, or voluntarily engaging with airlines, contain within them the most valuable marketing information, as they know what value propositions impact their purchasing decisions. Social media has provided tools to unlock that information, and the airlines that have started to prioritize this emerging field as a strategic priority rather than a tactical afterthought have started to benefit immensely. In addition to building real relationships with their customers, which potentially breed true loyalty, this approach will help carriers shave billions of dollars off their marketing budgets, enabling them to target promotions specifically and strategically to induce high-value customer behaviors.

“Getting Over Airrogance: How airlines can live up to the new realities of customer engagement, in the age of social media,” lays out how airlines are currently falling short in terms of customer engagement, demonstrated through different channels: E-Commerce, Loyalty, Brand Marketing, Customer Service and CRM. It also offers several examples of best practices through these various channels that early adopters have started to employ.

Here is an overview of the whitepaper:

• The New Realities of Customer Engagement
  • Case Studies: KLM, American Airlines
• Rethinking the Airline Industry: Cutting Out the Airrogance
• Airrogance in E-Commerce
  • Case Study: Malaysia Airlines
• Airrogance in Loyalty Programs
  • Case Study: Virgin America
• Airrogance in Brand Marketing
  • Case Studies: jetBlue, SAS Scandinavian
• Airrogance in Customer Service
  • Case Studies: easyJet, AirAsia
• Airrogance in CRM – the future of customer engagement

• Learning from the best airlines on social media: SimpliFlying launches six airline case studies
• Top 10 Airports on Social Media – case studies of the airports best at driving engagement
• The Top 10 Twitter Initiatives by Airlines
• Airports in social media – driving results and the road ahead. Presentation from ACI Airport Exchange, Abu Dhabi
• [Infographic] How travel brands are using social media to achieve ROI

As many of you might be aware, I’ve been at Ft. Lauderdale in Florida today for a keynote presentation at the FTMA/Freddies Conference on the topic I love the most – airline branding and social media. I’ve just done the presentation and received a phenomenal response to it. And I’m sharing it with you here (with the videos included). I’d love to have your inputs too.

P.S: I’ll be Live Tweeting from the Freddie Awards about this year’s winners and you can follow me on Twitter here.

• Miss the Freddies? Now, there are the Mega Awards recognizing loyalty programs
• SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence for Airlines – Winners, photos and finalist presentations
• Keynote on airline branding at Aviation Outlook Middle East
• Best airlines, airports and hotels in social media – SimpliFlying Awards Live from Amsterdam
• The Top 10 Viral Videos by Airlines (plus bonus videos)

In my recent webinar on airline branding, I used the examples of JetBlue Airways to demonstrate how an airline can successfully adopt a holistic Web 2.0 branding strategy. A number of webinar participants wanted to learn more about it, so I got to the heart of the matter.

So that you could hear it from the horse’s mouth, I got in touch with Morgan Johnston, who leads the Twitter initiative at JetBlue Corporate Communications. This is the same Morgan who famously started “following” the popular blogger Jonathan Fields, who got freaked out and wrote a story about it.

Here is an email interview with Morgan, regarding JetBlue’s digital branding strategy and a good behind-the-scenes look at how JetBlue does it.

SimpliFlying: Who’s the driving force behind the technology initiatives at JetBlue, and how big is the team?

Morgan: Responsibility for our online initiatives span many groups, from our brand, sales, or web teams, to corporate communications, or customer service.  We each have different requirements and ideas that we bring forward to create an overall strategy.  Our eBay sale, for instance, was brought up by someone on our sales team, while our Twitter presence was an idea I worked on.  It’s easy to get tied into one goal and one drive for an online presence. Having the checks and balances of multiple departments, and outlooks keeps us moving forward in sync and broadly distributed.

SimpliFlying:  What does JetBlue see as the biggest merit of using new technologies?

Morgan: Certainly there are a number of advantages in engaging online.  We’re a company founded on the idea of innovation.  We were the first airline to provide live DirectTV and XM radio to every seat, we pioneered the idea of electronic ticketing, and last year we were the first US carrier to have free wireless email and messaging connectivity with BetaBlue. 

Bringing that same innovation to our online activities is a natural progression for us, and our customers respond favorably to that tech-forward thinking.  The more we can do to engage with our customers online with the same dedication our Crewmembers engage with them when they travel, the better we can understand the desires of our customers, and work to provide them with a level of service they’ve come to expect.

SimpliFlying: How is it decided which technology is to be used for which purpose?

Morgan: Ultimately, we look to the community for the best use of the tools.  When we first launched our Twitter account, we went through several iterations of our ‘voice’ there.  A standard marketing voice announcing new routes or fare sales just didn’t work in that environment of hyper-transparency and conversation.  When we opened ourselves up to the group and asked quite plainly, what THEY would like to see from us in that space, the response was overwhelming.  Twitter is made for conversation, and informing, not pitching or promoting.  In any of these online spaces, the informal ‘rules’ of the community may seem counter-intuitive to the promise of the tool, but those rules are what dictate the dynamic.  It’s important to work within those boundaries.

SimpliFlying: What are the challenges in “selling” new initiatives internally, given most senior people tend to be averse to such experiments?

Morgan: Leadership at JetBlue has always been open, and encouraging of innovation.  When I first moved to the corporate communications team in February of 2007, my very first suggestion was to have our founder and then CEO David Neeleman address our customers directly via YouTube in the wake of a massive ice-storm that hit the Northeast.  I shouldn’t have been at all surprised at how readily everyone all the way up to David himself agreed that this was an idea worth exploring – even when it came from ‘the new guy.’

SimpliFlying:  How much can you “control” the brand, in the new world of consumer generated media?

Morgan: Can you control your brand in the new world of consumer generated media?  I think the best way to positively affect the perception of your brand, is to make sure your product is top notch.  To that, our Crewmembers on our planes, and in the stations are our front lines in a number of ways.  Augmenting that by making ourselves available to customers in places they are comfortable means a great deal to them, and to us.  We’ve always relied on word of mouth to spread our brand.  Online tools just further enable that existing drive.

SimpliFlying: First a CEO blog, then Live blogging, then Twitter, Flickr, eBay….what’s next? Online communities like Facebook?

Morgan: We won’t join a community in any ‘official capacity’ simply because it exists.  The responsibility to maintain the relationships built in online communities is too great and the tendency could easily become one of, set-up a presence and let it go, hoping a community will spring up around the straw man. 

We’ll certainly continue to monitor all the spaces we can, and will work to engage with individuals when we see an opportunity. But we’ll continue to look at communities on a case by case basis to understand the degree we should or could be involved.

So, what did you think of JetBlue’s digital branding strategy? Is it something easily duplicatable in other airlines? What are some other things JetBlue can do to engage its customers online? Let’s discuss.

• So you work for an airline? Here are Eleven steps to lead the social media branding initiative, and become a rockstar!
• Five ways airlines can tame Twitter – Jesse Engle of CoTweet shares his expertise
• Virgin America’s online community – bull’s eye, or a flop?
• Getting up, close and personal with the customer – three airline case studies
• Virgin Atlantic’s Vtravelled gets into social gaming – Interview with Lysette Gauna

In December last year, as major retailers in the US worried about “Black Friday” not arriving and cash registers not ringing, Amazon.com announced that it had its best year ever. Here’s the story and here are the numbers: Amazon reported that the buying was strongest on December 15 when they received 6.3 million orders, which according to the Dow Jones translates to a “record 72.9 items a second.” And this is not the first time Amazon has bucked the recessionary trend.

Amazon’s brand matters

The reason for Amazon’s success? It’s the Amazon brand that has done the work here. Had Amazon not established strong brand loyalty in good times, the customers wouldn’t have stood by it in bad times.  More importantly, everything about Amazon is based around customer experience, and everything is marketed to the customer well.

So what can airlines learn from the Amazon brand, to beat the recession? Here are three key lessons.

1. Build a distinct airline brand

If Amazon hadn’t established its brand as the first (and often last) stop for online shopping  —i.e., as the place to go for a huge segment of the online shopping population because of its value and consistency of shopping experience, it wouldn’t have reported rising sales when the overall online retail sales declined 2.3%. The key to it’s success? Distinctiveness.

Distinctiveness, or positioning as introduced by Reis & Reis, is what distinguishes a brand from another. For airlines these days, it’s something of supreme importance,  which cannot be ignored as flying becomes more of a commodity. Distinctiveness adds personality to a brand that resonates with its customer. Legacy carriers with a distinct brands? Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atantic and Emirates. Budget carriers with distinct brands? I’d rank JetBlue Airways, Virgin America, Kulula.com in South Africa and Indigo airlines in India among the top.

2. Everything is about customer experience

As a recent article at MarketingDoctor mentioned, everything at Amazon is built around the customer experience. The article states that “They follow up with emails on almost each shopping experience.  They guarantee what they sell and closely monitor vendors who sell through them.  They personalize the experience using consumer feedback, but they don’t hard-sell or over-sell based on this feedback, since they know that the successful online shopping experience is never coercive.  Most of all, they’ve done an excellent job of staking out their brand’s territory from the beginning and then sticking to it.”

I have often emphasized that airlines are in the travel services industry, not the transport and logistics industry. And once airline executives change their mindsets to this, they will start to value customer service much more. Again, airlines that successfully take care of its customers are often the most loved. JetBlue “following” its passengers on Twitter, KLM creating an online community for its frequent fliers and Indigo follwing up each booking with a personalized message has left deep impact on the customers.

3. Marketing is integral to the business

There aren’t any accidents in marketing.  Amazon isn’t the beneficiary of luck in this downturn either.  It’s the beneficiary of its own excellent branding strategy and a business model that has marketing built into its very core.

Airlines have often outsourced marketing, or have payed less importance to it as compared to operations and network. But the best airlines have integrated marketing in their global business operations. The best example? I’d say Emirates. Their advertisements on trains in Sydney, on malls in Toronto and on stadiums in the UK exude a consistency with the in-flight experience rarely associated with airlines.

—–

What do you think? What are some other things Amazon.com has done right, that airlines can learn from? Is there anything you disagree with? Let’s hear it in the comments section.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to keep the airline brands flying high in bad weather?

• Building a strong Indigo Airlines brand, and outlook for 2009
• What makes Indigo Airlines one of the best budget carriers in India?
• What makes COPA Airlines one of the most profitable airline brands in the world? Interviews with two senior execs
• Hot topic: Will Ryanair charging for toilets work for its brand?
• Little things that make an airline brand stand out. Good job, Indigo!

 Recently, I was honored to have been interviewed on the very popular Airplane Geeks podcast. The topic was airline branding (what else!) and I had a lot of fun with Courtney and Max - the two certifiable aviation geeks who host the show. You can listen to the whole hour long show by clicking on the “play” button below, or just download my interview from the show here.

Good news for SimpliFlying, and some thanks

Recently, SimpliFlying has been mentioned on a number of websites. Specifically, Popagandhi, 30,000 feet and Bangalore Aviation. Thanks a lot Adrianna, Max and Devesh.

Compliments and feedback have been flooding in after my recent webinar on airline branding. I’d like to specifically thank Jeff Ogden, from Hospitality Interactive Marketing, New York, for inviting me to lead the seminar series and organizing it so professionally. It’s been my best remote-working experience till date.

Thanks for everything guys, and cheers to a great 2009 ahead!

• Airlines 2.0: Using technology for branding through the recession – webinar slides
• Exclusive webinar on airline marketing & branding: Registration now open
• SimpliFlying is “aviation website of the week” (and more accolades)
• Ancillary revenues and airline branding webinar slides (with video!)
• Keynote on airline branding at Aviation Outlook Middle East