Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Why Social Media?
Social Marketing has revolutionized business. The ability to reach, communicate, and build relationships with customers has never been more accessible (at little or no cost) than it is today. Far from a “flash in the pan” gimmick, social media marketing using tools such as Twitter and Facebook are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future or until the next generation of marketing emerges. The company that engages in intentional social media marketing is vastly extending its reach and its potential client base.
Today consumers research and engage businesses online long before they click “Order” on a product or darken the door of a business. A 2009 study by Pew Research showed that people with higher income and/or education levels were the most likely to research online –87% of college graduates and 88% of those earning more than $75,000.1 This demographic is very much in line with the income and educational levels of those likely to involve themselves in flight training and other aviation related products and services. Specifically in regards to social media, the same Pew study demonstrated that nearly half of Americans use social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.2 Additionally , a recent Nielson survey reported in Entreprenuer magazine found that almost of quarter of consumer’s online time is spent on social networks.3
If our goal is to raise visibility and awareness of our products and services, then it follows that social media should not be neglected. Simply put, if we want to be where the customers are and then we should be in the social media marketplace.
Are you ready to engage?
1. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=136747
2. Ibid, mediapost.com #1
3. “Baking, Listening & Selling” Entrepreneur Magazine, February 2011, page 61
Booking Flights on Facebook?
Delta is in the Social Media Game
You can now book a flight on Facebook on Delta Airlines Facebook page and tell your friends about it without ever leaving Facebook.
When you are on Delta Airlines Facebook page you click the “Book a Flight” Button, then click the get started button. Immediately Delta asks for permission to access your information on your Facebook page including your Friends, user ID, networks, gender, and profile picture. If you don’t allow it the process stops as far as I can tell.
I guess the assumption is that you must give up your data if you want to play the booking game through Facebook. So to figure this out, I let them have my information.
From there it is a fairly easy process and not much different than booking on their main site. You have the option to share the flight with your friends. I have not booked a flight on Facebook to see what happens next. If anyone reading this has used this application I would like to hear your thoughts.
I can see this being used for personal travel but not so much for business. I am not totally sure what the real value proposition to booking through Facebook is at this point, with the exception of the ‘Sharing” of my flight information, and maybe for the Faceobook junkies who cant leave the site it does something?
I wonder what Delta does with my information they now have access to? Will they use it to help me solve travel problems or use it to target me for advertising messages?
Delta at the time of this posting has about 38,500 Fans on their page. Lots of comments: some positive and and a lot of negative about service issues.
It is hard to tell if Delta uses Facebook to actually communicate to the market.
Delta has also gotten more active in the use of Twitter and now has a staff to respond to Tweets. When I go to their Twitter acccount they have 78.000 followers, they follow 730 people and it looks like they don’t respond daily as there are lapses in their tweets on their corporate account. They do have a Twitter account “deltaassist‘ that focuses on resolving customer issues. This account has 2300 followers.
The airlines are waking up to the use Social Media tools. What will be interesting to watch is how they use the technology. Will they enhance the customer experience, listen and react to the market of travelers needs, or will it just be another way to get more money from the traveler with no value added?
Could Business Aviation and the Air Charter Industry use these same tools to reach the market in a postive and social way?
An Article titled Six Ways the Travel Industry can use Social Media is a good read if you have the time.
Group Buying Integrated
“Group Buying” was an idea that first surfaced during the “dot com” boom and ultimately failed to build any momentum. The idea is again gaining popularity in the era of social media where scalability can be introduced as aggregation cost diminish on applications such as Facebook and Twitter.
Ditch the gatekeeper, axe the marketers, lose the spam.
My first reaction is to find the most unsavory business transactions today and eliminate all the unnecessary middle men and their costs, gateways, noise pollution, and inefficiencies.
Why can’t there be one cell phone store where I can buy anything for any mobile device? Why do I have to pay to use my credit card and pay to not use my credit card? Why am I still treated like a terrorist precisely when I am doing everything that I can to avoid terrorists?
There are some glimmers on the horizon.
Applications such as SocialBuy, Groupon, and Living Social, use their social media platforms that offer vouchers for steep discounts on a variety of goods, once a minimum threshold of consumers is reached. People have an economic incentive to promote products in their social network (on Facebook and Twitter) in order to reach those thresholds more rapidly and consistently.
Product Networks?
Suppose the group buying experience could aggregate packages of products. Strategic products would then be aggregated as ”A Network of Products” that together increase net value. Yes, you heard me…a ‘combination of products’ with Twitter followers. A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.
This is not so strange.
Apple’s enduring success is very much a model of commercial social aggregation. Nobody can compete with an iPhone without also offering iTunes, iMovie, iPad, and all the social trappings of the iStore. Perhaps Google, with its social commercial network can compete resulting in a duopoly. Group buying can empower the smaller players and bust monopolies in an infinite array of combinations.
Why not air travel?
The door-to-door travel time and social cost to fly between two small cities, say, 500 miles apart using commercial airlines is greater than just driving. There is no other alternative, sans high-speed rail, and the economic result is that the two cities remain small with very little new commerce or diffusion of new ideas that air travel benefits a region. People just don’t travel much between, say, Omaha NE and Cheyenne, WY.
Yet, small city pairs within 500 miles have strong extended family roots, migration patterns, and social network density. It would be relatively easy to offer Group Buying on a 20-25 seat private airplane for less than the cost of driving; and in 1/10 the time!
The travel package could include ground transportation, shopping coupons, and maybe even a A zip car, a movie ticket, Segway rental, and a dinner coupon could be aggregated into an entertainment / shopping package.
Every small city economic development agency in the country should be in this business of building social networks and matching them with product networks between other small city pairs…
Forbes is Wheels Up and Flying
Thanks to Forbes.com and Managing Editor Carl Lavin for giving business and private aviation a voice on their site.
Two weeks ago, Forbes.com started a new blog site called Wheels Up to give a forum for conversations to those of us in the business of business aviation and to private aviators as well.
I was fortunate to be asked to contribute posts along with others including Plane Conversations and CFMCharter friends Clint White , Susan Friedenberg and new friends Jeffrey Reich, and Jeremy R.C. Cox.
Other contributors so far include passionate private aviators Pierre de Fermor, Michelle C. Torres-Grant, and Carl Lavin weighing in from Forbes.com perspective.
This is great for our industry to get the opportunity to share our stories and engage in conversations with the Forbes readers about the value proposition of business and private aviation. Maybe we will no longer be the best kept secret?
The social media conscious people in our industry need to support Forbes efforts by promoting this new site with Tweets, Facebook and Linked In sharing of the posts, and most importantly, by engaging in the conversation through comments on the site. As we generate traffic and interest, and bring the conversation to the traveling public, we will all benefit.
From looking at the site daily it appears that we are getting some good traction and this is just the beginning.
Happy Fathers Day to all of you who are Dads. Being a father is the most important job we have!
Have a great rest of the weekend. 
We’re Listening: Facebook or Face to Face or Both?
Way back on October 16, Allen Howell wondered if Social Media would replace or simply complement face-to-face meetings. The topice has generated a tremendous response which continues even now, months later. Here’s what you had to say:
Social Media as a Precursor to Face to Face
Chris Stompolos, Principal and Producer at Rolling Boulder Films, LLC
“Business will always, and still does come down to people knowing people, trusting people, collaborating with people. I think social networking platforms has made things considerably easier to break the ice, but when it comes to closing the deal, its always so much of a nicer way to do business sitting across from someone. Bottom line really: You want to do business with people you trust and like.”
Gary Copher, Regional Leader at Primerica Financial Services
“I may be able to start the relationship building process on a social media site, but rest assured, a client is not going to sign over their multi million dollar investment portfolio to me based on a few Facebook chats, no matter how much they like me. … I find social media to be a valuable tool in the networking process.”
Khoushik K, Business Development Executive at UnitForce Technologies
“Social or Professional networking sites help you to extend your reach & eliminates the geographical barriers. …it cannot replace the trust & comfort that is intrinsically built in case of a Face-to-Face meet because humans are tuned to trust / believe a person he/she has met in-person.”
Bright Ibeawuchi, Director at Business Aviation Network
“Social networks in their current state will not replace face to face communications. Not even the most sophisticated video conference system can match the tactical feel of a handshake and eye to eye contact.”
Nazmi Sankary, Regional Marketing Manager at Hadid International Services
“I believe that social media has affected our life patterns a lot but it can’t replace face to face contact at all specially for who prefers to read others by looking at thier eyes!”
Social Media as a Complement to Face to Face
Rusty Keighron, Insurance Practice Leader at Docstar
“FB also enhances FTF communication. Just returned from a trade show where there were folks I needed to see who are FB friends but weren’t in the exhibit hall. By sending them FB reminders that I was there, I was able to see them and make a FTF contact that would otherwise have been left to chance (or not have happened at all).”
Anthony Kirlew, Social Meadia Marketing Strategist, Author, Speaker
“The role of Social Media as a marketing tool is to increase the company’s outreach and brand awareness. It is a complement to an online marketing strategy, but its goal is to make a connection with the intention of moving to an offline engagement where business can be conducted.”
Pawel Rzeczkowski, Experienced Finance Professional
“Social networking will not replace the need for personal contact but it will augment it resulting in lower business travel frequency. Once the contact is established you will need less face to face contact to sustain the relationship. But at the same time you will be able to manage more contacts. Not sure if it will be net a gain or loss or wash on travel.”
Charlie Davenport, Senior Recruiter at Dampier Recruiting Associates
“Social media lets us know when the person landed, when they got off the plane, when they were approaching the baggage claim, when they left the rest room, when they first saw their bag, when they first realized it wasn’t their bag, when the got done lol’ing, and on and on.. but as noted in the article linked to this discussion, social media will never replace the face to face.”
Mercedes Soria, Development Channel Manager at Deloitte
“Completely agree, social media has replaced much face-to-face communication but it is not the end-all of face-to-face meetings. People are still people and 80% of communication is body language which gets lost in social media types of communication. … Social media has its place specially for brand awareness, marketing but it needs to be proceeded by well thought planning efforts. It is just one more tool out there for Marketing (yourself or your business) and it should be treated as such.”
Facebook or Face to Face? Or Both?
In the new age of social media as a means of communications is there still a need for face-to-face communications? Will Facebook replace face to face contact? I don’t believe it will in the world of business.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard professor and author of the new business book SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good recently posted a blog about travel and the need to do business face-to-face. She has coined a new term: MBFA – Management By Flying Around – a takeoff on the catch phrase “ Management By Walking Around” coined by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman business best seller of the 1980’s “In Search of Excellence”.
In her blog, Kanter says, “ Showing up is still the number one key to success. In a world where anyone can have superficial contact with anyone anytime, face-time is the new status symbol. You can watch it on YouTube, but being there gets the juices flowing.” Her blog defends the need to get in front of people. Interestingly, though, in defending the need to travel she states, “ So why undergo the torture of domestic flights where legs must fit under the seat in front or you or in the overhead bin? Why go at all? Because showing up in person still matters.”
When it comes to airline travel it seems to be an accepted truth that the trip will be torture. Most of us seem to agree that travel is needed to build business and commerce but dread the not so positive part of it – getting there.
Travel does not have to be torture. The journey itself can actually be fun, relaxing and productive. I am glad to be in the segment of the air travel industry that provides a friendlier solution. Are we more expensive than the airline solution? In some cases, yes, but not in all cases. Are we torture? Never.