Social media diary 26/09/2008 – British Airways
Today we’re kicking off a regular post updating you every Friday on the latest news on how brands and businesses are using social media: our weekly brands and social media diary. We kick-off this week with British Airways.
British Airways launches online community
This week saw the pre-launch of a British Airways online community: Metrotwin. The site is invite-only at the moment, but you can add yourself to the list on the homepage and contact them through Twitter @Metrotwin.
The idea of the site is to take the concept of ‘town twinning’ to the very local level, providing recommendations on restaurants, events, shops, bars and other things in neighbourhoods across both cities. The benefit for BA is obvious, as Chris Davies, their Digital Marketing Manager states:
We fly more people between London and New York than anyone else. Creating a community website about the best of what’s on offer in the two cities we know best is a credible and useful tool.
From the press-releases and coverage so far the site is designed to help people navigate the range of recommendations and reviews on the web to help members of the community find the best things quickly. The site lets users review and rate recommendations, create their own profile and find ‘twins’. They can also follow other members’ recommendations. The features seem designed to foster a community that combines expert and user reviews and uses co-creation to source the best recommendations in both cities.
The benefits for BA are clear. In an increasingly challenging market, airlines need to retain their most profitable customers. And the business travel route between London and New York must be one of the most profitable routes out there. There is a clear gap in the market online for detailed peer-review sites specifically aimed at people making business trips to these cities. So if they get it right, I suspect this site will work.
So what can we learn from this?
The air industry is facing difficult times, the increasing price of oil and the Open Skies agreement are both hitting transatlantic carriers – increasing costs and increasing competition. What BA are doing here is something that all brands could learn from during difficult times. Their aim is to increase customer retention and their approach is to make their engagement with them sustainable. Rather than them being customers who buy individual experiences with BA (single flights), they want to create an ongoing experience.
At FreshNetworks we are working with a number of clients in the travel industry at the moment, and the aim in each of these is to create and provide a service that truly extends the experience beyond just individual trips. When designing and building online communities, it is important to work on what both the brand wants from the community, but also why a member would take part and what they want to do there. With Metrotwin, BA are providing a real service to their customers, and this should be central to any social media strategy a brand follows.
Read all our Social Media Diary entries
Some more reading
UrbanBytes » Blog Archive » Brands and social media diary - 26/09/2008:
[...] add yourself to the list on the homepage and contact them through Twitter @Metrotwin. the idea of Go to Source >>Continue reading this [...]
26 September 2008, 2:10 pmLeon Benjamin:
I think the focus of Metrotwin will continue to be around utility. The current industry meme that asks if recommendation (the wisdom of crowds) can make search engines redundant suggests its too early to tell. But Metrotwin’s innovative content partner model is one of its major strengths and therefore stands a good chance of success. One of BA’s biggest learnings is devising a politically and commercially acceptable legal framework in which to operate a UGC platform. In many respects, Chris Davies’ biggest achievement is that he’ll have made it much easier for other people to experiment with social media inside and outside BA.
28 September 2008, 10:14 pmHow quickly will UK companies use social media to market themselves? « These Digital Times:
[...] being a UK company, it is entirely US focused. That is, until now. The FreshNetworks blog in a posting datingthe 26 September reported that BA has now launched MetroTwin, an online community that allows people [...]
8 October 2008, 10:06 pmA list of companies using social media to market themselves in the UK « These Digital Times:
[...] Credit: Matt Rhodes, 2 Credit: RealFreshTV, 3 Credit: Peter [...]
9 October 2008, 9:16 pmFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » FreshNetworks social media diary 31/10/2008 - Air France-KLM:
[...] I’m not sure that this is the ‘first’ airline social network (see the launch of BA’s MetroTwin), but the proposition certainly is an interesting one. When we are working with clients at [...]
7 November 2008, 1:11 pmThree reasons to relaunch a list of companies using social media to market themselves in the UK « These Digital Times:
[...] Credit: Matt Rhodes, 2 Credit: RealFreshTV, 3 Credit: Peter Kim, 4 Credit: Chi-Chi Ekweozor, 5 Credit: Matt [...]
10 November 2008, 9:30 pmA list of companies using social media to market themselves in the UK - take two « These Digital Times:
[...] Credit: Matt Rhodes, 2 Credit: RealFreshTV, 3 Credit: Peter Kim, 4 Credit: Chi-Chi Ekweozor, 5 Credit: Matt [...]
10 November 2008, 9:32 pmFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » FreshNetworks social media diary 21/11/2008 - Sydney:
[...] covered a lot of travel initiatives recently in the Social Media Diary – from BA’s Metrotwin, to Amex’s community for travel managers and Air France-KLM’s Bluenity. Travel is [...]
21 November 2008, 5:08 pmFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » First Direct have lots of names in their Little Black Book:
[...] First Direct, an online bank in the UK, launched an online community, Little Black Book. Like British Airway’s Metrotwin, the First Direct online community is designed for customers to share recommendations and tips. [...]
15 December 2008, 11:35 amFreshNetworks Blog » Blog Archive » Examples of online communities in the travel industry:
[...] airlines have launched online community sites in the last year. We have already written about BA’s MetroTwin and the Air France-KLM Bluenity sites. Qantas launced it’s own online community at the end of [...]
11 March 2009, 11:37 am