As the sun set over Farnborough 2010, it became clear that Boeing emerged a clear winner. Not just by beating all expectations in getting new orders, but also by shaking off the dust in terms of excellent social media work to engage the community. Farnborough was the epitome of work that Todd Blecher and his team has put in over the last year.

Todd is Boeing’s Communications Director and has spearheaded the organization’s ascent into a new level of statusphere, where better engagement through blogging, use of Twitter and ‘the personal touch’ are a major factor. And for this, Todd is the SimpliFlying Hero for July 2010.
Boeing’s social media engagement at Farnborough
Boeing’s social media efforts were stellar at the Farnborough 2010 – especially for an organization its size and complexity. As industry analyst Ludo Van observed,
Boeing’s onsite videos were very professional and to the point. They produced 32 reports for the show (most of them on site) while maintaining a very high level of quality and interesting content. With their new website and Farnborough microsite, I think Boeing has really taken the lead in online presence and …

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 …

SimpliFlying has earned its reputation over the years by offering thought provoking insights into the world of airline branding. And nothing has been as instrumental affecting airline brands as social media.

As airlines become more active in this sphere, we attempt to answer a crucial question: Has social media truly benefited any airline? If so, how? To answer this question, we put together a series of case studies. In this set of six case studies, top executives from airlines such as Qantas, Volaris, airBaltic, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and of course, Southwest, talk about how their social media strategies are pushing their airlines into the next era.

Recently, Facebook announced that its user base now exceeds 500m. Twitter, on the other hand is still lagging in numbers, but the growth rate of users easily outstrips that of Facebook. As our case studies will show, both of these platforms offer their unique advantages in terms of customer engagement and information sharing. However, more importantly, each requires its own unique strategy.

The heady growth of social media has brought its own advantages and ills. While platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and wikis offer unprecedented levels of engagement and information sharing with customers, there are perils …

Any branding initiative that doesn’t bring in a return-on-effort is not worth doing. Because then it becomes a hindrance. “Oh, I need to upload the photos onto the Facebook album” shouldn’t end up in deferment of important business-driving efforts. But then again, if uploading photos on Facebook is linked to the business objectives itself, then it’s a different conversation altogether.

At the Online Marketing for Travel Summit in Miami, I am shared my ideas on how travel firms (not just airlines) can drive conversion in online and social marketing. These are the slides from that presentation, with three specific ideas.

Converting Youtube lookers to bookers, using the Annotation tool in YouTube videos
Driving conversion by adding third party reviews in the booking engine
Using Flip.to for driving loyalty by getting people to share their travel plans

Enjoy the presentation! I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts on this, and how you drive conversion in your organization. Let’s discuss in the comments section, and on Twitter (@simpliflying)…

Remember the video I did about the future of flight if airlines adopted the technologies available today to enhance the flight experience? Inspired from that, I wrote an article on FlightGlobal’s ShowDaily at the Hamburg Interiors Show last week, which zoomed in on scenarios assuming airlines would adopt the latest free social media technologies today. And the result was quite enjoyable (from the reviews I’ve heard).

Hence, I’d like to share with you the full article here. You can click on the image to read in a larger font size, or view the text-only version here.

On this hypothetical flight,

After booking the flight, my Facebook and Twitter friends planned my trip, thanks to a tool called Flip.to
I pre-ordered food on Twitter
Pre-selected “family zone” on the flight, where people of similar interests would be sitting
I managed to get the wifi free, by filling up a survey on the landing page, when I turned on my browser
“Rented” a power point to plug in my Mac.
Was offered an iPad, but couldn’t rent it, as they were all booked in advance

So, what do …

This is a guest post by Miyuru, who is a teen aviation entrepreneur and analyst. He specializes in airline marketing, ancillary revenue and network development. He is also the blogger behind Airline Industry Review which he runs solely using his mobile phone. You can download his free eBook, The Ancillary Art, here .

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Both you and I know of airlines that have achieved success through social media. We also know of some who have failed to impress. I personally know some airlines who are not entering social media because of the fear it will be a waste of time and money.

How to achieve success through social media? What is the secret?
The success is in understanding social media. Why do people use social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and
MySpace ? The simple answer is, to connect. They want to meet new friends, to find out who likes them, to see how
can they become more popular, to see what is happening in the world. And they have millions of people on these social networks to select from.

So why should they pay attention to you if all you do …

For the first time on the web (and in English!), in this exclusive interview with SimpliFlying, we hear directly from the horse’s mouth. Aurelie Valtat was the person leading Eurocontrol’s much talked-about ashcloud response, and personally helped out thousands of stranded passengers using social media.

On April 14, 2010, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano [i still can't pronounce the name!] resulted in chaos — more than 100,000 flight cancellations between April 15 and 21 — affecting millions of travelers, and the fallout cost the airline industry $1.7 billion. The silver lining was social media – and how airlines and authorities reached out to stranded passengers to help them out. And Eurocontrol led from the front. Eurocontrol’s efforts were much admired on this blog, and on other leading websites like Mashable.

In my conversation with Aurelie, she spoke at length about how she handled the tasks, challenges encountered and lessons learnt. Below is a summary of the exclusive video interview (Click here if you’re unable …

Alaska Airlines is known for being nimble when it comes to customer service, and well loved, because it is smaller than most US airlines. When they got started with social media, there were one of the first to do things right, and had a great vision too, as I highlighted in my interviews and articles last year. However, it seems that things have stagnated. It may not be the case, but that’s what it seems like from the outside.

A reader passionately shared his ideas with me, which culminated in this guest post. Thomas Evans is a Marketing and Social Media professional in Seattle, Washington; and a loyal Alaska Airlines fan. And here’s what he feels about Alaska Airlines’ social media execution.
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Meeting the basics…
Currently, if I had to describe Alaska’s use of social media I would describe it simply as, decent. They have an online presence, but they are not providing a ‘north of expected’ experience for the consumers.  Sure, they have a Facebook page (in my opinion, one that is need of a major makeover). And yes, they have a Twitter account that is managed and updated regularly. But they could be doing so much more.  …

Note: This article and slideshow, created by me, was first published on Mashable.com.

Hundreds of thousands of travelers scrambled to find alternative modes of transportation, last minute hotel bookings and even home-stays when the Icelandic volcano disrupted air travel around Europe over the last seven days. The official figure for airlines’ losses stands at $1.7 billion in just six days, with U.K.-based airlines British Airways and Virgin Atlantic likely to suffer the most.

Though it sounds like all doom and gloom, the silver lining of this crisis is that a lot of travelers looked to social media for help, and airlines and other authorities actually rose to the challenge. Here are some examples of winning information and customer service strategies that were implemented via social media.
Deep dive into social media for airlines
As I highlighted in-depth in my previous article, EuroControl was very impressive as they rushed to update passengers about the latest information about flights through a variety of online and offline mediums.

In just seven days, there were over 55,000 mentions of #ashtag, and the usage was so …

Virgin America created a splash today, by launching its first international destination, Toronto, on Twitter! They did not spend a cent on traditional advertising for this launch, and I personally think this is one of the smarter uses of social media I’ve seen by an airline in recent times.

The sweetener is that the first 500 people to book tickets using their Twitter ID would be able to redeem a 50% discount (still valid as of 2pm EDT, 20 Feb). If they’re not “following” the airline on Twitter, they will auto-follow. Even the official press release re-directed recipients to the Twitter URL.
“The first 500 Twitter followers who receive the airline’s expansion Tweet can score a 50 percent discount on flights to Toronto for travel June 23-November 17, 2010.*  Virgin America is the only airline based in Silicon Valley, and its inventive use of technology, social media and design has made it a favorite among tech-forward flyers.  For more: www.twitter.com/virginamerica”.
The press release was followed by a single Tweet. And that’s it. That’s a very simple route-launch for you.

What …