Business Insight Zone

American Airlines‘ halting approach to social media is the theme of this post, and I hope you won’t mind if I say “American Airlines” a couple of extra times, because I want to make super-duper sure that they have a good reason to see this if they happen to search on their company name via Google or Technorati.

My inspiration: a Twitter account under the American Airlines name started following me this morning. As I write this, it’s following a whopping total of three people, and it’s posted just the one tweet:

My hope is that they’re serious and that they’ll really get on the ball with Twitter — like other forward-thinking companies have done — and that this isn’t a red herring like the recent abortive ExxonMobil account was.

But my fear is that American’s efforts on Twitter will be as half-baked as their recent blogging efforts were. (I discussed that mini-debacle in a post back in June.)

So in the spirit of helping them do things better, I humbly note some of the easy first steps they can take to make their Twitter foray a success.

Easy tools!

Now, a big ol’ company like American Airlines should already use these tools as a matter of course, even if they don’t have a social-media strategy per se. It takes a couple of minutes, tops, to set up automated search feeds (Google Alerts, Technorati Search, Twitter Search), and then you can get the results pushed to you as they come in. It’s a passive, no-budget way of analyzing what’s said about you online, especially in the highly interactive social media, where consumer opinions fly thick and fast — but where you’re free to engage your customers openly and honestly.

If you want to get all professional about your social-media metrics — which, again, American Airlines should — you could go whole hog and explore the services of Radian6 and its peers.

Free advice!

On top of that, the social-media field is populated by super-smart, extraordinarily helpful expert practitioners who have this nutty — but benevolent — habit of giving away awesome advice for free. For a case in point, look no further than this post that Chris Brogan published yesterday:

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

American could use nothing but what Chris says in that one post and they’d be well on their way. But even better, Jeremiah Owyang has also written extensively on this subject, as have Dawn Foster and Tara Hunt. These aren’t hobbyists we’re talking about; they’re stone-cold professionals giving away loads of free value to any company, large or small, that’s willing to pay attention.

Corporate peers!

As if all that weren’t enough, there are a number of companies that are already using Twitter effectively, and that American can use as models to follow. (Call me crazy, but JetBlue’s Twitter stream might be a good place to start.)

The posts from Jeremiah and Chris offer a great starter list of corporations, but a couple of hours’ worth of poking around on Twitter would reveal volumes more, bont in terms of “How-To” and “How-Not-To.”

Dive in!

Twitter is quick. While you don’t have to answer every tweet aimed your way, and you certainly don’t have to answer them immediately, you don’t do yourself any favors by letting others define YOU with their conversation when you could be defining yourself as a friendly, concerned party genuinely dedicated to listening and interacting.

So, to anyone from American Airlines who reads this: I hope you at least consider these suggestions and genuinely take part in the conversations happening on Twitter. You have much to gain — and nothing to lose — by doing so.

Oh, and when you do chime in, it will give me the chance to sing your praises for trying, rather than wondering aloud whether you’re serious about engaging your audience.

Good luck!

. . .

And what do you know — at the moment I pushed the “publish” button, they responded to my tweet! We may be onto something!

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Related posts:

• American Airlines: How NOT to do it.
• Memo to American Airlines: Watch your language!

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