With A Little Help From My Friends

I had a delightful chat yesterday with Southwest Airlines' irrepressible specialist and spokesperson in charge of social media, Christi Day. In case you do not already know, Southwest is one of the few airlines (along with JetBlue and Virgin America) to have capitalised on the Twitter phenomenon. Southwest has over half a million followers and anything between four and six thousand new followers sign up every day. Christi told me that Southwest's customers are very receptive to this form of communication.

So why, may I humbly ask, does easyJet boast a total number of Twitter followers of around 1300? That represents 0.003% of annual passengers carried - a drop in the ocean. Don't get me wrong; the person in easyJet managing social media is certainly doing a great job, but it's hard to believe that US and European customers are so different in terms of how they would like to communicate with their airlines. The difference in the numbers does suggest that making social media work does not happen automatically and, listening to Christi, Southwest Airlines have dedicated the right amount of resources to make it work. Christi believes that it's all part of the new rhythm of life and that within five years, using social media like Facebook and Twitter will be second nature for all us. The message for airlines? Get cracking and jump on that bandwagon while you can. Having a social media strategy is fast becoming a competitive necessity.