In a blog post at Gadling (no relation to me..) entitled “Airlines and social media: dialogue waiting to happen”, Tom Johansmeyer discusses the current situation regarding airlines’ use of social media, which in general has not been stellar.
He echoes many of the sentiments I wrote about last week but adds that these new channels are just another way for customers to complain about how miserable their experience with a specific airline is.
In general, the conclusion is, that airlines have not been as proactive in participating in social media beyond the “deal tweet” and occasional service update as one might have expected.
We would agree that any business participating in social media should not see this as yet another marketing channel. Of course, it has strong marketing potential but it’s fully a two-way communications (and in our case mutli-dimensional) channel and the business has to be on top of what’s written in blogs, Facebook, tweets and other social media outlets and respond as quickly as possible.
Social media is nothing like traditional media outlets (e.g. radio, TV, etc.) – it is live, real-time communication that requires active and dedicated participation. If a business is not fully committed to this kind of interaction, social media might hurt more then it helps.
Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.
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