Blogging

Why Southwest Airlines has a Better Blog Than Your Company and What to Do About It

Corporations in the realm of social media have been met with both skepticism and open arms because their approaches have varied from press release posting boards (they called them blogs) to truly engaging community empowerment initiatives. One of the companies that I have come across that has really gotten a firm grasp on the world of social media is Southwest Airlines. They are using a variety of social channels to reach their audiences and over the next week or so, I’d like to take a quick look at what exactly sets them apart in each.

Over the past couple of weeks, it is pretty likely that you have seen the news of the FAA fining Southwest Airlines because the company flew airplanes early last year which had missed mandatory inspections. You can read the news at a variety of sources, but what I think is really rather impressive is how Southwest has harnessed the power of social media to really position itself in a manner that allows it to broadcast its message easily and directly to its customers.

Why haven’t we seen a huge internet uprising against Southwest’s inspection fumble? Because Southwest has launched its own PR battle before any misinformation even had a chance to permeate the web. They have done this by having one of the best corporate social media engagement plans I have ever seen. In case you have not seen it, check out the Southwest corporate blog called Nuts About Southwest and take a look at the content they are posting. Simply having a blog is not really anything special: many companies have a corporate ‘blog’ and some of them really do a pretty good job creating either a team blog or a CEO blog, etc.

But Southwest’s is just beyond the basics. Plain and simply, their blog is everything a blog should be and this is what they are doing to harness their community as a source of feedback and as a mass media outlet:

Structure:

• Design: It is simple, clean and uncluttered. They have a large graphic at the top to tie the blog name “Nuts about Southwest” back to the in-flight experience with a bag of peanuts. Their logo is present, but not obtrusively so. The only thing I dislike about the header is that they use two font sizes in the title, but that is just because I am a bit of a typography nerd. But overall, they only have seven modules in their sidebar which makes the site appear very inviting and simple.

• Digestability: Their posts are reasonable length and have consistent formatting and text colors.

• Memorability: Easy, accessible URL. The site for this blog is http://www.blogsouthwest.com/ I really do not know if there is a simpler URL to remember for a blog by Southwest, and that makes it really easy for people who may not use RSS readers to navigate to the site and spread the word to friends.

Portability:

• Syndication: This site is super accessible for anywhere. In the sidebar, there are two buttons for subscribing to either the RSS or ATOM feeds for the site which are simple, straight-forward, and easy to find.

• Sharability: At the bottom of every post is the ShareThis button, allowing you to email any post or share it via any of 17 different social sites from Digg to Live Spaces. This is very important because I hate having to use an external tool to send content from a site. The easier it is for visitors to spread your content, the more likely they are to do it.

• Simplicity: User-friendly post URLs. Each post has a unique URL and many sites will have it be some obscure string of alphanumerics, but this blog uses %date%title format for creating individual URLs which are relatively easy to read and makes it easy for people to see the title of the post wherever they see the URL.

Content:

• Variety: This is a team blog which brings Southwest employees from all over the company to the table in order to open a dialog.

• Timeliness: There was a post on the Southwest blog explaining the airline’s commitment to safety on the same day the story of the FAA fines broke. Immediate response and accurate information are key in making bog content relevant. Since the news about the fines, their blog has had multiple updates with various peaces of information relating to their safety policies, actions taken regarding the inspection mishap, and linking to the CEO’s media appearances.

• Relevance: They are not blogging about high-level financial data, the intricacies of in-flight navigation equipment or promoting themselves as the best airline in the world. Instead they are focusing on things that the average flyer might find interesting and helpful. It provides some insight to behind-the-scenes aspects of the company and surely some of the posts are part of a broad public-image campaign, but each of them is succinct, well-written, and impacts consumers in some way.

Engagement:

• Openness: Southwest has left the comments open on the blog and encourages people to leave their thoughts and feedback. This is really pretty amazing for a big company that they trust their community member enough to allow them to freely express themselves on a branded site, unfettered. This is a vital part of developing an actual sense of openess with a corporate blog. Google has a great blog, but their comments are closed so despite having the most widely read corporate blog in the world, they have no on-site community to back it up.

• Responsiveness: It would not do much good to open up reader comments and let everyone run rampant unless you actually plan to read them and engage the community. In many blog posts, representatives from Southwest post responses to questions, comments and concerns. Without this kind of company response, visitors would never even bother to comment becasue they would know it to be a futile effort.

• Transparency: It is made very clear when Southwest representatives post in the comments by placing their job titles in the signature of the comment. This is one of the most important parts of community involvement: if it were discovered or suspected that staffers were posing as members of the blog’s community, the backlash would be irreparable. If you have to lie to your community, then it is time for a re-evaluation of your entire operation.

• Acknowledgment: Southwest has recognized that they do not blog in a void and they depend on other sites for a symbiotic trade of traffic. As such, they have included a “Link Luv” blogroll which links not only to other travel sites, but even the blogs from other airlines. Nothing says self-confidence by making it easy for people to look at your competitors’ web properties; you have to be pretty confident that they will come back.

These are just general characteristics that I feel take a corporate blog from a press release posting board to a truly engaging dialog with a community. What are some other examples of great corporate blogs, their attributes, or other general features I’ve left off?

Over the next week or so, I’ll also take a closer look at how Southwest is using a wide approach to social media by deploying in other mediums including YouTube, twitter and facebook. Any other suggestions?

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