JUAN BAUTISTA GARCÍA ALCÁZAR

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION, BRAND AWARENESS & SOCIAL MEDIA

Iberia and Social networks

Session 8

Anne-Camille Bianchi-Mirasole

Master in Digital Marketing

Iberia: The context

12th, November 2009: Iberia and British Airways (BA) merge together, creating a leading airline in a European context, but also the world’s third-largest airline by revenue after Lufthansa and Air France-KLM.

Both airline companies are also facing "exceptionally difficult circumstances” and want to counter unprecedented losses

Iberia reported a pre-tax loss of €30.4m (£27.1m) in the three months to September, compared with a €30.4m profit in the same period last year.

BA has also suffered heavy losses during its best trading months, recently posting a record pre-tax deficit of £292m for the six months to 30 September.

Social networks : the trends

According to comScore, 25% of UK ad impression are in social networks

Social networks have an important weight in the purchase process for the Generation Y…

… for that reason, 59% of the Business Executives Plan include social networks

Social networks : the trends

As we can notice in the graph in UK as well in Spain, the social networking site users is very important since it represents 70,7% and 78,4% of the population older than 15 years old.

Social networks : the trends

In Spain, the 5 top social networks are:Facebook, Tuenti, Hi5, Twitter and MySpace

In UK, the 5 top social networks are:Facebook, Bebo, Windows Live, MySpace and Twitter.

The competition and the social networks

We can distinguish several Iberia’s competitors groups: the world largest airline by revenue, the Spanish regular flights companies and the low cost companies.

The low-costs companies (EasyJet, Vueling and Ryanair) and the Spanish regular flights companies (Air Europa and Spanair) have a minimalist social networks strategy since they are only present on Facebook and Twitter.

As for Air France-KLM, it proposes a blog called “Bluenity”

The blog is a platform to meet other travelers, organize itineraries together, share fees or just share information, travel tips, …There is also a photo competition organized to win Air France-KLM plane ticketsThe website is available in english and french.

BA already existing blog

British Airways has a blog called MetroTwin related to tourism in New York and London, which are the two main destinations of the airline company.The website is a tripadvisor in which the members can share informations together related to the two cities.

The proposal

As Iberia is now ranked in the world largest airline company and has merged, its social networks strategy has to adapted to these factors.

For that reason, instead of limiting to a presence in Twitter and Facebook, Iberia should create a blog related to travelling topics within the destinations it flights to.

The blog should be made in partnership with BA’s blog (linking the pages together) and respect the same line as well as follow the Air France-KLM example: platform to meet others travelers, organize itineraries together, share information, travel tips, drawing of lots, …

The blog will insure the branding strategy aspect.

The proposal: which social networks?

As we have seen in the first part, in UK and Spain, there are different top social networks.

Facebook and Twitter are widely used in both countries.

MySpace and Bebo, even if they figure in the top, there are declining social networks, so it is not convenient to use them.

So, we can distinguish 4 social networks to use: Facebook, Twitter, Tuenti and Hi5.

I would also suggest to include Youtube in the strategy as online video viewers are increasing since 2007 and is expected to be higher in the next 3 years.Besides, as we can notice in the graph, in UK, 87% of internet users spend significant time each month viewing online video.

The proposal: what to do on social networks?

To upload updated contents

For the launching of a new product/service

To collect informations regarding clients and prospects’ expectations

To collect potential ideas for new products/services and organize votes of these

suggestions.

Engage clients/prospects

Ex: Dell, IdeaStrom

Contacts: as they permit an unlimited amount of followers (except Twitter), we can select prospects, best clients or opinion makers and send them an invitation to join Iberia page.

Posts frequency: Regularly as least, once a day.

The proposal: Twitter, special case

Use Twitter account as a mini blog.

Put Iberia’s logo as profile picture.

Unsatisfied persons use to speak to 6 while a satisfied one use to speak to only 3 persons. For that reason, it is very important to be careful of what clients and prospects think about Iberia to anticipate issues and limit their consequences.

twitterel.com/keywords : permits to find persons use one or several keywords and follow them.

Go to the top thematic list of important bloggers to identify the opinion makers in your field and find them through Twitter search engine.

Be very careful to make the 140-character-message attractive to induce readers to click on it and read it. Indeed, Twitter users normally receive dozens of messages each day!

A good way to increase the follower number is to make an interactive competition.

Put a Twitter, Facebook, Tuenti and Hi5 logo on Iberia websites to encourage Iberia websites’ visitors to go to the Iberia social networks accounts

The proposal: Twitter

Other interesting tools to use:

http://twtpoll.com/ : to make express pollshttp://twitterperch.com/ to be informed regarding a keyword or a topichttp://twitzu.com/ to launch events and buzz on Twitterhttp://www.paratweet.com/ to manage events and conferanceshttp://twtqpon.com/ to make cupons on Promo Twitterhttp://tweeteffect.com/ to know which Tweets have made win or loose followers

TweetAdder: to automate the follow, spot persons depending on keywords, program Tweets, stop following persons who don’t follow you, send a message to new/old/ followers, …

How to measure the results?

Social networks effects can’t be measured by typical metrics.

Example of metrics to use:

• Number of visits• Number of active members• Number of positive and negative feedback• Number of comments/referrals• Traffic /sales evolution• Passengers’ loyalty to the brand