#FollowFriday: You’re Following An Airline On Twitter? How Come?

Over beer last night here in Brooklyn, my friend and I were discussing the social media strategy for his new book, which comes out soon.

I mentioned that I’m following a squirrel from Tehran, on Twitter. When I got home, I wondered why I’m following that squirrel, and why I’m not following, for example, the characters from Mad Men.

How come I’m following, say, flight attendant Heather Poole, but I’m not following, say, American Airlines. Does American Airlines Tweet? They do. But why would anyone follow?

You’d follow an airline on Twitter, best I can tell, for any of the following reasons:

– You love the airline
– You hate the airline
– You want to know if a plane is delayed
– You work at the airline
– You want to work at the airline
– You’re the writer they hired to write the tweets
– You think they might offer discounts and special fares
– You’re Chris Brogan and you’re studying airlines that Tweet

Squint:

airlinesontwitter

Even on an illegible pie chart, it’s not hard to guess which airline carrier has the most followers on Twitter…

@jetblue = 1,223,459
@southwestair = 644,533
@unitedairlines = 34,307
@virginamerica = 31,644
@aairwaves = 13,684
@alaskaair = 12,240
@deltaairlines = 11,916
@spiritairlines = 8,179
@flyhawaiian = 4,374
@continental = 3,779
@usairways = 2,580
@aloha_airlines = 807
@frontierstorm = 804

JetBlue’s Terminal 5 at JFK:

Recently, Brian Solis of FutureWorks posted a bright analysis on his blog that illuminates JetBlue’s social media dominance. (Brian also points out how remarkable it is that Aloha Airlines maintains more than 800 followers on Twitter, many of whom are actively engaged, even though Aloha folded in 2008.)

To understand more why more than a million people would follow any airline, I turned to Shashank Nigam , who dives deeper into the elements of JetBlue’s digital success.

Shashank’s analysis is all about “voice.’ It’s easy to guess JetBlue is #1 because we all know that, compared with American Airlines, JetBlue has a voice and American, well, doesn’t. Shashank cites a sample tweet (and reply) from a JetBlue follower after her trip through JetBlue’s new JFK hub:

— Shit, sorry, I gotta go. I just got asked a question on this conference call I’m on…


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One response to “#FollowFriday: You’re Following An Airline On Twitter? How Come?”

  1. Kyoko Biedermann Avatar

    Interesting post, thanks for posting. It was great to read on this rainy night!

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