The Yin and Yang of Social Media was the theme of my luncheon keynote presentation at the 2012 Receptive Services Association of America Summit conference held February 7, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. Many thanks go to Best Western International for their sponsorship of the event.

For most, few topics are as confusing as social media, so I decided to incorporate an even more baffling subject - Taoist metaphysics...

Receptive Operators are the organizations responsible for bridging the gap between tour operators located throughout the world and the travel suppliers and destination management organizations serving as hosts to international travelers visiting the United States.

With the renewed focus on inbound tourism by the Obama Administration and the United States Travel & Tourism Brand USA initiative, receptive operators in the US can expect to be increasingly busy over the coming years.

Below is a copy of the presentation. It may be downloaded by selecting the Slideshare link.

It occurred to me that many complementary forces are at play in social media, and like Yin and Yang, one force cannot exist without being described in relation to its opposing force.

Since I was speaking in the home of New Orleans Voodoo, it seemed appropriate to discuss social media given the impassioned hyperbole professed by self-proclaimed “Experts, Gurus, Ninjas and/or Jedi” of social media as a panacea for virtually anything and the serious social scientists struggling to statistically prove causation.

The result was somewhat a good news & bad news story, with the moral being:

1. A primary focus should be on business objectives and operational excellence
2. To succeed at social media, management resources must subscribe to the Golden Rule
3. There are simply too many social media platforms and channels to manage, so participation must be be highly prioritized

Several hat tips are due to Edelman, Altimeter Group & Brian Solis for some great stats and content to help frame the issues.

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1. What a Skull Fracture Can Teach Us About Social Media
2. What Las Vegas Casino Hotel Does Social Media Best?
3. Say Anything… Fast Times at Social Media High School

The Yin and Yang of Social Media

The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8^th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find another Top 10, this time focusing on the use airlines made of Twitter, one of the fastest growing social networks of the year.

6. Social media ROI: The second half of our roundup us opened by keynote presentation made by our CEO Shashank Nigam at the Social Media Travel Summit earlier this year. The keynote focuses on a much talked about and little understood topic, the ROI of social media.

5. In fifth place is one of our most popular infographics, focusing on the resources that airlines dedicate to social media.

4. Airline Facebook initiatives: Our Top 10 case-packs have been one of the most viewed resources on our website and in the fourth place of this roundup we find another one illustrating the best examples of Facebook contests run by airlines.

3. 6X Model of Airline Branding: In third place we present a long standing favorite of our readers, the Airline Branding Whitepaper. This much praised paper was written by our CEO Shashank Nigam back in 2008. Yes, light years away in social media time, and was also selected and re-published by Brandchannel.com in the summer of the same year. Three years later it is still extremely relevant and, as this roundup shows, one of the most visited pages of our website.

2. Future of loyalty programs is social: In the second place comes one of our best infographic to date, highlighting the social future of loyalty programs and the new tendencies of the connected frequent flyers.

1. A380s and sales problems: In the first position, we have an article that was the most read in 2011, even though it was actually written in August 2009. We are talking, of course, of our famous piece on the Singapore Airlines’ A380 Suites and the sales problems that followed their introduction.

That said, if you have read this far you clearly have an interest in us. Similarly, we too are interested in our readers. We’d love you to use the comment box below to tell us what you would like to see (or not see) on SimpliFlying in 2012.

Thanks for reading SimpliFlying! Have a great New Year and here’s wishing you a fantastic 2012!

• A revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative – Vote for the Jan 2012 Hero now!
• [Infographic] How travel marketers calculate ROI on social media and why the future is mobile
• Best Airports in Social Media: Top 5 Airports nominated for the SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence 2011
• A Brand New SimpliFlying – from airline branding pioneers to leading customer engagement at airports and airlines
• [Infographic] The future of loyalty programs will be powered by social media

Our friends at Eezeer have analysed the Twitter habits of airlines as well as their fans/customers for the month of November and have produced the Monthly Twitter Report in continuation with their monthly coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.

At the close of the year, it’s worth pausing to consider how quickly the social landscape has evolved over the past year or so. Airlines have not only embraced Twitter but have also realised that there’s great value in using it to drive specific goals such as revenue, engagement and loyalty. Many innovative initiatives on Twitter have been captured in our Top 10 case-packs as well. It’s worth noting that as of November 2011 there were 198 airlines on Twitter with 90 actively tweeting. This, more than anything else, is a sign of changing times and even greater change to come.

A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

1. Even though most airlines have jumped on to the Twitter bandwagon, the majority of the tweets are produced by a minority of airlines. 30 airlines provide more than 83% of tweets sent out by airlines.
2. Delta Air Lines is still the runaway champion, having been consistently been a Listening and Talking champion (in terms of tweets received and sent). Air Asia and Southwest make a belated, but expected entry to the list. However, American Airlines makes a surprise appearance on the Talking Champions list.
3. Airlines are definitely using Twitter more intensively with each passing day. Over the past 6 months, the number of outgoing tweets increased by around 38%.
4. As the weather begins to turn unpredictable, it’s that time of the year again when people feel hassled while flying. This was quite evident as “baggage handling” was a trending topic as the number of tweets related to it  increased by about 28% in the last month.
5. Over 1.2 million tweets have been exchanged between airlines and their customers on Twitter in the past six months. That’s a heck of a lot!

It’ll certainly be interesting to come back to this report at the end of the next year and see how things have progressed!

For more insights, check out the infographic below and let us know what you thought about it. Is there something ?that resonates with you? Or maybe it doesn’t? Comment or tweet us @simpliflying and let us know. You can view more airline infographics here.

(Click here to download a larger image)

Note: The airlines on Twitter report is produced by eezeerdatalab.

• Airlines on Twitter Monthly Report for July 2011 reveals that more airlines have Twitter accounts than loyalty programs
• Airlines on Twitter in June 2011: Delta Airlines is the breakaway “listening and talking champion”
• Airlines on Twitter Monthly Report for August 2011: Cebu Pacific joins the big league and scores high!
• Eezeer and SimpliFlying launch airline monthly twitter report – Delta leads Twitter use, and customer service is in!
• [Infographic] Airlines on Twitter – April 2011 data reveals the need to focus on Customer Service

If you still need proof of whether social media matters or not, you only have to look at the turnout for this year’s votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence. By the time voting closed after 2 weeks of stiff competition, more than 30,000 votes had been submitted from over 4500 cities. And this was after having shortlisted the Top Nominees from close to 60 nominations. The finalists for each category have been announced and they’ll face off in Amsterdam on October 10.

The innovations begin

When airlines initially began their adventure on the socialscape, it was all about about feeling their way about on the social platforms of their choice. The primary focus at the outset was first, discovering how to drive traffic and building a fan-base, followed by the more important aim of utilizing the platform for customer engagement and provide them a real-time medium of information-dissemination and customer service. Slowly, however, they realized that social platforms could also aid them in driving revenue. Flash sales, deals and contests became popular to attract more customers. However, the real innovations were still some time away.

A changing landscape

That time, it seems, has finally come. Airlines, more than ever before have realised that the social web can be utilized to change and influence the booking behaviour of patrons by incorporating their preferences, habits and social circles into the booking cycle. Slowly, we’re beginning to see the true emergence of the New Traveler Life Cycle which can be split into 5 parts: dreaming, validating, booking, travelling and sharing. Airlines have begun to recognize that the booking portion of the cycle alone might not be sufficient to draw customers to themselves. Hence, they’ve begun to incorporate the other portions, in various combinations, to their travel cycle. Our latest case-pack illustrates how airlines are effectively doing this.

Some key points about Travel Distribution emerging from this case-pack are:

1. Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are slowly losing ground as airlines increasingly attract customers to book through their own portals. eg. Delta’s Facebook booking engine is a neat “push strategy” to get customers to book without moving away from their favourite social network.
2. Immersive apps that aid in the dreaming, planning and booking process will not only be addictive travel planning tools but also great brand-builders by wowing patrons. eg. Virgin America’s chrome app.
3. Mobile (and tablet) apps are set to go huge. Whether it is managing bookings or redeeming frequent flyer miles or even checking in without a paper boarding pass, mobile apps will rule the next wave of social airline strategies. eg. British Airways’ cool iPhone app and Lufthansa’s iPad app.
4. Incorporating customers’ social graphs into the booking cycle could pay rich dividends by unleashing a “social multiplier effect”. Knowing which friends are in cities you could fly to (Alaska Air) and choosing seats alongside friends (Malaysia Airlines) are just some of the ways in which booking behaviour of customers can be influenced.
5. Flyers will always be deal hunters looking for the best (in other words, cheapest) fares. LAN Airlines’ Fall Sale, JetBlue Cheeps and Melbourne Airport’s cheap Twitter fares are prime examples. Also, even though the jury is still out on this one, Groupon type sales will continue to be effective in the short-term at least (ie, until they can be sustained).

Without further ado, here’s our case-pack on the Top 10 Travel Distribution Initiatives by Airlines. Enjoy!

You can find more of our Top 10 case-packs here.

• Mobile 2.0 – The Top 10 Mobile Apps by Airlines
• The Best Airlines in Social Media: the Top 7 nominees for the SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence 2011
• Best Airports in Social Media: Top 5 Airports nominated for the SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence 2011
• [Infographic] How mobile is re-shaping travel distribution (gasp!)
• The Best Airlines, Airports and Hotels in social media – finalists for SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media

SimpliFlying is back with the  Monthly Twitter Report for airlines (in partnership with Eezeer) for August 2011 in continuation with our coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.

After close to 6 months of reporting monthly on how airlines are using Twitter, we can safely say that apart from Facebook, Twitter is the social media platform of choice for most airlines. The number of tweets sent and received has been rising in general for months in a row. Airlines have also become more forthcoming as well as responsive.

This month, while the usual suspects (Delta and JetBlue) are once again on the list of top engagers, Cebu Pacific absolutely storms into the list. Not only is it placed second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets, it also scores the highest in the Global Satisfaction Score with a score of 106.7. (For more details, see the infographic.)

A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

1. As we’ve mentioned, Cebu Pacific is second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets with more than 11,000 to its name. However, Delta Air Lines is once again literally burning the competition. To put things in perspective, it received almost 28,000 tweets. That is 2.5x of the no. 2 airline and 3.5x of the third on the list: JetBlue.
2. Even though airlines have been, in general, using Twitter more than before there was a slightly surprising drop in the number of public tweets this month. Compared to March 2011, the number of tweets in August were up by 37% compared to 51% for July. All the more surprising since we’ve had a rather busy month on the internet (see below). (This does not change the fact, however, that Twitter is being used more actively in general.)
3. Delta Air Lines still sends and receives the most number of tweets, which has been the trend since the first report. I’m tempted to add in a *yawn* here. Because really, they’ve been quite brilliant in handling social media and have literally pioneered the new media active customer engagement model!
4. Just over 40% of all airlines accounts on Twitter tweet actively. In effect, in August 2011, 105 airlines were not tweeting actively even though they have Twitter accounts.
5. In the UK, British Airways (somewhat expectedly) is the most followed airline, with over 260,000 people following the airline’s tweets.
6. Hurricane Irene and the earthquake on the East Coast let loose a flurry of conversations on Twitter, especially among airlines. More than 5000 tweets about Hurricane Irene were published over 4 days. Interestingly, 21.6% of those tweets involved a mention of Delta Air Lines! To learn more about how airlines responded to the earthquake and hurricane, see our special case-pack here.

For more insights, check out the infographic and let us know what you thought about it. Is there something you agree with? Disagree? Are there any figures that you’d like to see in next month’s infographic? Comment or tweet us @simpliflying and let us know. You can also view our previous Monthly Twitter Reports for July here, June here and May here. More airline infographics can be viewed here.

The airlines on Twitter report is produced by eezeerdatalab in association with SimpliFlying.

• Airlines on Twitter Monthly Report for July 2011 reveals that more airlines have Twitter accounts than loyalty programs
• Airlines on Twitter in June 2011: Delta Airlines is the breakaway “listening and talking champion”
• Eezeer and SimpliFlying launch airline monthly twitter report – Delta leads Twitter use, and customer service is in!
• [Infographic] Airlines on Twitter – April 2011 data reveals the need to focus on Customer Service
• Airlines on Twitter in May 2011: AirAsia and TAM Brazil hot on the heels of Delta Airlines