Today, a number of airline accounts were hacked. First, NYC Aviation pointed out that United Airlines was sending out malicious tweets. Later, I received a Direct Message from Brussels Airlines, with exactly the same message, with the URL taking users to a sexual enhancement website.

Staying true to the real-time nature of social media, within minutes, the news of hacking was doing rounds all over the internet. Of course, it’s only to be expected, when United Airlines sends an abnormal Tweet to it’s 56,000 followers. Though United later removed the specific Tweet, the damage was done.

Reversing the brand damage to the airlines, in 3 steps
This is a situation that any airline jumping on the social media bandwagon can face. So, what’s the best way to deal with it? Here are three simple steps.

Be quick. Delete the malicious tweets from your updates (obvious!), but do it quickly. United Airlines took 1 hr 6 mins before their public tweet was …

Now that you’ve had a chance to digest the imperatives of a social media policy from my article last week entitled “Five Imperatives For Your Airline’s Social Media Policy“, we decided to write a follow up post with additional considerations for inclusion. Again, these are must-have elements that make your social media policy very user-friendly. Objectives – Talk about the objective of using social media, so employees have a background as to why the company is participating.Disclosures — Educate employees about the FTC guidelines (pdf) about endorsements and testimonials, which is explained well in this article.  Basically, they are required to disclose the company’s connection with the product or service. Use common sense — You can explain that further in your company’s language, but it’s a good one to include. Give and take – Much of social media is about give and take, meaning that you “give” value, and “take” help or value back.  Don’t forget to work both sides of the equation. Personal versus work time — Define what is acceptable to do during work hours.  Updating …

I’ve been a guest writer for Mashable.com for a few months now, and my latest article was about how airlines can drive revenue from social media. Those of you who’ve attended my keynote presentation (view slides) on the topic know that I classify this as the holy grail for airlines – something not many have been able to achieve, and there are no “numbers” released from airlines on their social media efforts either.This article seeks inspiration from the likes of Dell, who made $6.4million for selling on Twitter, and applies the lessons to airlines.  Here’s a quick summary of the article and you can read the full version over at Mashable. Clear distressed inventory using real-time mediums like Twitter, e.g. JetBlue Cheeps and United TwaresIntegrate independent social media reviews in the booking path – to boost conversion Integrate with social media travel tools like TripIt – Leverage on the loads of travel information publicly available, like travel plans, to send specific deals to peopleCreate private online communities – exclusive “velvet-rope” clubs of your most …

So you’ve got a sizeable social media presence for your airline over the past year. And now, the employees are starting to participate too. But there’s a constant tug of war, between Legal, Corp. Comms and Marketing – on how employees should and shouldn’t participate in social media. The solution? An airline-wide social media policy. What is a social media policy, you ask?  Basically, it addresses the concerns that many airlines have when getting started in social media… What if an employee says something they shouldn’t?  How do we respond to passenger complaints and compliments?  How can we possibly control what our employees are doing online?  If you’ve been up and running on social media for a few months, it’s time you formalize your thoughts in this area, and ensure everyone at the airline is on the same page.  Here are five key imperatives for your social media policy:   1. Explain the Scope in User-Friendly Terms When you say “social media policy” to many of your employees, they may think “that doesn’t apply to me because I’m not in Marketing.”  So, it’s important for your policy to explain what types of activities it covers, possibly including their personal Facebook …

I was at the “HP Future is…” and was inspired to do an article on what the future of air travel would look like in a year. Instead of doing a “Top 10 article” I decided to do a video of what taking a flight in Dec 2010 would be like, with the advent of social media and new technologies, which airline brands can use. On this hypothetical flight, I managed to fly Business Class at a price cheaper than Economy class, on an airline that does low-cost Long haul! I ordered food on Twitter, streamed happenings from the flight Live back home via Wifi and “rented” a power point to plug in my Mac. I was even notified by SMS that my bags are lost and that got a free cab voucher from them for pick-up. All in all, a great improvement over the last one year Enjoy the video! For me, the future is… now. Airline executives need to embrace new technologies NOW in order to take control of …

Dear SimpliFliers,

As many of you know (from my about page/LinkedIn/Twitter), I’m in Athens, Greece right now at the IATA Commercial Strategy Symposium 2009. It began with me leading a sold-out pre-conference hands-on workshop for airline executives on social media. Today and tomorrow I will be Chairing the e-Marketing and IT tracks.

And I also do a keynote, focusing on trigger points within the customer lifecycle on social media that can be leveraged for driving profits by an airline. And as always, I’d like to share my slides with all of you on the day of the keynote itself. They’re right below (If you can’t see them, click here)

In this presentation, I share examples of how travelers are openly sharing their travel information online, and how airlines can use this for their advantage – for driving revenue and loyalty. One very good example of this is Lufthansa’s MySkyStatus.com (read my thoughts), where you can update your real-time position while traveling, on Facebook and Twitter. I’d love to have your feedback on the presentation!…

My worst nightmare as a speaker comes true
In my second last speaking engagement of the year, I came face to face with a speaker’s worst nightmare. No, it wasn’t the Mumbai traffic or a lack of audience. But the fact that my peers – fellow speakers at the World Brand Congress – were so good with their acts that they used up all of my examples.

Yes, you got that right. Each and every single airline branding case study I wanted to highlight in my keynote were taken up by impeccable speakers like Dr David Rogers of Columbia University, and Judy Turner. It totally didn’t help my case that I was speaking on the second day of the star-studded conference held at the Taj Lands End earlier this month.

On the day of the presentation, I woke up at 5am, and started to totally re-do my presentation. Inspired by the overwhelming presence of Bollywood stars in the area that I was staying in, I decided to create a Bollywood-themed presentation on branding – secretly hoping that no speaker before me does that!

Just when I thought things were going well, the hotel’s internet goes down – for the day! Thankfully, I had …

In the past few weeks, I’ve interacted with senior executives leading Marketing/Digital Marketing at a number of legacy airlines. Most of these have hardly made baby steps into social media branding. The biggest hurdle they seem to face is not achieving success in their new initiatives, but proving themselves internally.

And that’s only natural, since most monolithic organizations have more naysayers than doers. And the doers seldom have more clout than the naysayers. So, how to overcome this challenge?

Look within – start from the inside
My suggestion to these executives was to look at the upcoming marketing plans/campaigns. Something that’s already been budgeted for, and would be rolled out in the next three months. Then, work with the marketing team to “social media-fy” that plan. Basically, you’d want to add wings to the campaign through social media. And make sure there’s a way to measure the results (even if qualitative) so that you can measure the before-and-after effect of social media on the initiatives.

This allows you to achieve a few things:

You prove that social media adds value
There’s no need for substantial additional budget to run the SM activities
Working from …

When it comes to social media branding, Southwest Airlines has been the trendsetter for quite some time, and is looked upon by competition and even other industries. From their very successful blog, “Nuts about Southwest” to its over 700,000 followers on Twitter – they’ve got their act together. And behind these efforts is a very hardworking team led by Paula Berg. I had the pleasure of meeting Paula at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, where she delivered a keynote on Southwest’s social media branding strategy and I led a session for airlines/airports in social media.
What makes Southwest Airlines so successful on social media?
In this interview by SimpliFlying.com, Paula, who’s the Manager of Emerging Media at Southwest Airlines, reveals what makes Southwest Airlines successful on social media. From her journey as a one-lady show, to the sizeable social media team she now manages, Paula shares how challenges were overcome, disasters averted and successes rewarded. It’s the Southwest culture in full show. She shares her thoughts on the importance of “white-knuckle moments” as well as how to overcome them.

Watch the interview with Paula (6:03 mins) to hear her explain:

Why social media is a perfect fit for …

I was sent this video at 1am last night, by Stuart Barwood. Even though I was in bed, I began watching it in bed on my iTouch. Not only did I watch it completely, I couldn’t sleep for quite some time afterwards. I couldn’t help but share it with my friends, clients and well-wishers who work with airlines. Because if there is something can help someone catalyze the social media branding efforts in his airline, it’s this video.

At one point in the video, the screen flashes, “In the near future, we will not find products or services, they will find us“. A simple sentence that can have significant implications on how airlines do marketing. Add on to this the fact pointed out by Morris Sim, CEO of Circos Brand Karma, at the recent WebInTravel event in Singapore, that statistics from Alexa that showed that about 1 in 20 visitors to travel websites in APAC were at Facebook right before. Social networks like Facebook could be so helpful to our business if we know how to make use of them. The time has come to act. Enjoy the video….