United Airlines: The Art of the “Tweet” Chat — Live from BlogWell

Coverage of this session by Huawei Enterprise USA‘s Kathy Catoe. Connect with her by following her on Twitter at @kfcatoe.

3:53 — SocialMedia.org’s Kurt Vanderah introduces United Airlines‘ Manager of Social Media Programs, Lora O’Riordan.

3:54 – Lora: The art of the “Tweet” Chat.  United and Continental Airlines decided to get married.  We started the social media sites over from scratch, partially because of  inability to merge the two accounts.  These two airlines have lots of fans that are brand loyal.

3:57 — Lora: Decided to launch the new brand, the New United.  Tweetchats are a way to engage the followers.  We created a monthly calendar, and a hashtag #UnitedPlaneChat.  First chat was with twin pilots, one from United and one from Continental.

3:59 –  Lora: During our first TweetChat there was so much engagement, we had to extend the time and had three Twitter “Fail Whales.”

4:00 –  Lora: The Twitter volunteer team attends all the events and they sit with the participants.  Community relations, PR and Marketing also participate.  We have a hub director and the chat is up on the screen.  It is a monthly event.

4:01 — Lora: Wifi is coming on flights, just want you to know!

4:02 — Lora: We measured to determine if Tweetchats builds followers.  First chat gained 2,000 new followers in one hour.  We measured unique chatters and saw how many tweets we captured.  Lots of questions were asked with the hashtag #UnitedPlaneChat.  We also watched the growth of participation.

4:04 — Lora: Now there is a two year waiting list of the New United internal departments that want to participate in the Tweetchat.  It shows that United wants to chat.  We want people to ask us questions — direct, open, and honest communication is the backbone of the company.  Tweetchat gives us insight to provide more in-depth answers on other social media channels as well.

4:06 — Lora: The Tweetchats provide direct feedback to the internal teams.  We can create new internal conversations as a result of the chats.

4:06 — Lora: Is channel 9 going to be part of the new airline? Channel 9 is the communication between the tower and the air traffic controllers.  This was important to the social community so they made sure to include it in the New United.

4:07 – Lora: Aircraft schedulers participated in a  Tweetchat to talk about why certain airplanes show up at certain airports — how we schedule them, why we do, etc.

4:09 – Lora: Tweetchats are wildly popular – the sky is the limit.  It can go beyond Twitter to other social platforms.

4:10 — Lora: The public needs to know what is happening from us, the airplane industry.  We want to make sure that they have accurate information.

Q&A:

Q: How are you advertising the chats?

A: Lora:  We promote it on Twitter at different times of the day.

Q: How have you built your Tweetchats into your crisis management plan?

A: Giving out information and appropriate information is very important during a crisis.  We have never discussed including Tweetchats as part of plan, but will consider it going forward.  We must take airline regulations into account for emergency situation (FAA).

Q: How can you demonstrate ROI with this program?

A: Lora: The Tweetchats lead to more customer understanding and the ROI we are looking for is how many people are following us and are coming back to engage with us.  We will be looking at their influence going forward.

Q: How many people are tweeting from the @united account?

A: Lora:  Most we have ever had are six as SME’s.

Q: Do you currently track with Google Analytics to see if participants buy flights?

A: Lora:  We still have two websites, so we can’t track right now, but when we integrate systems we will be able to track.

Q: Do you have a written guidance on how to respond to questions that are challenges?

A: Lora: Marketing and PR Managers follow the conversation and try to take conversation offline.  They try to see what they can do to help diffuse the situation.