Airlines and Twitter
The majority of the business world now incorporates twitter into its social media plan. Airlines are no different. How individual airlines use their twitter accounts is different.
The most obvious use for twitter when it comes to airlines is sharing complaints and compliments with the airline. Customers can easily tweet about their experience by using the hashtag of the respective airline. For you twitter newbies out there, a hashtag is simply the # symbol. The hashtag is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. This categorizes the tweets and allows for easy search and browsing.
However, after a quick hashtag search for an airline, you will see they are inundated with negative comments. Thus, using this method for getting attention with a complaint will probably not get you very far.
A much better use of twitter is when the airline needs to get information out to you in a hurry. Recent major storms come to mind. Most airlines were quick to put out advisories via twitter to help their customers stay in touch with the quick-changing weather situation. I have seen many situations in years past where teams have had to deal with snow storms and other issues. I would highly suggest coaches or staff members be connected to their airline via twitter when embarking on a team trip.
Other airlines, such as JetBlue, use twitter to promote great deals on last minute flights. Of course, these type of deals will probably not help much when it comes to planning group travel, but you never know when it might help with a trip of another kind. In addition, most airlines also offer tips and advice regarding their "frequent flyer" programs.
So get out there and start following the airlines!
US AIRLINE TWITTER HANDLES
@AlaskaAir
@AmericanAir
@AAdvantage
@Delta
@HawaiianAir
@JetBlue (for questions)
@JetBlueCheeps (deals on last minute flights)
@SouthwestAir
@UnitedAirlines
@USAirways
@VirginAmerica
