I know its been a while since I’ve updated this thing but, have no fear, I am back and hope to share some more marketing and social media goodness with you. In this post we will take a look at a couple companies in the same industry utilizing social media to effectively differentiate themselves from the rest. The industry is airline and the companies are JetBlue and Southwest. Jetblue was really the first mover in the industry to fully adopt social media and set the standards for best practices. I chose Southwest because I follow them on a few social networks and think they do a great job as well.
JetBlue’s early social media success came as a result of a public relations catastrophe that left thousands of people stranded on Valentines Day back in 2007. This was back when social media was still in its infancy but JetBlue saw the value early and jumped on this opportunity to turn things around. They market themselves as “bringing humanity to air travel” and social media is a great medium to act this out. JetBlue is extremely transparent with their social communications which is a
large reason they are successful. They have created human like elements to a brand via social media that people trust and interact with. I have personally interacted with this brand (see image) on a couple occasions. In the one pictured, they actually reached out to me simply because I mentioned them in my post. Communicating them was like communicating with another person, as it should be. They took their initiative of “bringing humanity to air travel” and supported it with their social media usage. They also joke around and are playful with their postings, similar to that of a normal Twitter user. You can actually see both the brands interacting with each other sometimes as if they were friends.
Now to discuss Southwest. Although JetBlue does great on all social networks, personally, I think their strongest presence is on Twitter from and engagement standpoint. Don’t get me wrong, they have a TON of Facebook likes as well but from my perspective, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, 
Southwest does a little better on Facebook. They have significantly more likes than JetBlue and they really utilize Facebook to push out everything. From new commercials to travel deals. They constantly promote $69 travel deals on Facebook which have me looking to where I can get away to for a weekend. They pride themselves on delivering the most value to their consumers and often times having the lowest fares. Whenever they have sales or just extra, low cost flights, they aggregate them onto a landing page full of links to purchase the flights and post it on Facebook. It looks a little something like this (see image) and I know every time I see this, I click on the link and explore.
Here is a couple companies in a historically boring industry spicing things up and leveraging social media to their advantage. Not only are they great examples within their industry, they are great examples for all companies to follow. They keep customers engaged through their social channels in different ways with different networks but they have realized how powerful of a tool social media can be.
AJ Garron 