Ash-stuck in a digital world

Now that the dust from the Icelandic volcano has mostly settled there has been some interesting comment about the successful use of social media during the airspace disruptions last month. It’s worth looking at some of those successes and considering how they can act as guidelines for good social media strategy.

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As a foreigner living in Scandinavia it was interesting to see how Norway would be affected by the crisis. It didn’t seem so bad. No warships were dramatically sent in to rescue stranded citizens, flight cancellations were tolerated, the prime minister famously continued to run the country with his iPad while on the slow boat from New York, and Norwegians even coined a cool new word (askefast) to describe being-stuck-somewhere-because-of-volcanic-ash.

This coolness extended to the solid public images of local airlines and how well they exploited the immediate and global nature of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. This was a very human story. As I waited for my husband to make his air-only return from Canada (no ferry or hitchhiking options for him) it was fascinating to observe how people were able to connect online.

Existing sites like roadshare.com and couchsurfing.org sprang to life. Online conversations became real-life events, like the spontaneous TedVolcano event in London. The Twitter tags #ashtag, #getmehome and #putmeup quickly spread and helped many find alternative routes home. As websites lagged behind in updating flight information, social media filled a gap for many travellers.

Let’s think about the crisis from three perspectives.

1. The Airlines

Only a handful of airlines did a good job of managing the crisis through social media channels. When they did, it really worked.

SAS (26,000 Facebook fans) added three extra staff to handle their Facebook page and a full, dynamic dialogue could be watched, with much positive feedback. Passengers were able to get almost-instant responses to questions about specific flights. SAS created a real-time flight list, linked to from Facebook and Twitter. Information chief for SAS Knut Morten Johannsen told NRK that they planned to use social media channels from the start of the crisis. It’s obvious why: it’s cheap, fast, reduces pressure on the call centre and it’s accessible from anywhere.

Norwegian.no (43,000 fans) and Dutch KLM (49,000 fans) operated their Facebook pages in the same vein, listing quick Q&As, links to real-time flight info and (a useful detail) a list of opening times for the Facebook service. One comment from the KLM page: «Wow, these comments make me want to fly KLM just for the heck of it. More airlines need customer service like this.”

In marked contrast, the British and Irish budget carriers EasyJet and Ryanair preferred to have no interaction with their users. Ryanair (a surprising 40,000 fans) perhaps didn’t realize that people were leaving (mostly negative) messages on their page, prompting me to wonder if they should bother having one. This could of course all be part of Ryanair’s perceived negative-marketing-is-good-marketing policy.

In the words of one lost traveller: “Dear Ryanair, now that I officially like you, please let me fly to Frankfurt on Friday plz”.

2. Governmental agencies

Most relevant government agencies struggled to provide useful timely information to stranded passengers. But one agency stands out as a beacon of best practice in social media. Eurocontrol is the intergovernmental European agency for airspace safety. Intergovernmental means it is made up of 38 member states, yet it has managed to maintain a forceful presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube and especially on Twitter.

In an excellent interview, Eurocontrol’s online communications manager reveals that she was, astonishingly, the sole person running all these channels, interfacing in real-time with a myriad of technical issues, internal communications and public requests. The agency has been using Twitter since December 2009 and its primary audience is the aviation industry but after the ash cloud started to spread questions started coming in from the public and within a few days Eurocontrol was winning accolades in the media for its constant two-way conversation.

The only elements they would consider preparing better for the next crisis would be to have more multimedia content ready to go and to collaborate more closely with airlines on retweeting strategies and spreading information.

And stuck in the middle…

…2. the unfortunate traveller

There are important issues to consider from the traveller’s perspective. Just how easy was it to take advantage of the useful sources of information on Twitter and Facebook?

The Cons

1. Access to the internet is more difficult if you’re stuck in an airport or youth hostel, waiting 30 minutes to have 3 minutes online.
2. Not everyone carries around an iPhone or other mobile-enabled device. I could argue that there is even an online elite evident in this situation.
3. If you’re not sitting at your own home or work pc you might use a different path to your familiar spaces online.
4. Once online, is it that easy or intuitive to find a useful site like volcanohelp.eu?
5. If you’re looking for up-to-the-minute information on a flight,you may not automatically think to first check Twitter or Facebook. They haven’t reached the reach occupied by traditional media.

The more obvious Pros

1. One update on a person’s Facebook page is worth 30 phone calls to worried family and friends.
2. Asking a question on an airline’s Twitter or Facebook page saves an hour on the phone and eases pressure on the airline’s call centre resources.
3. Conversing directly with passengers on these channels creates a real-time FAQ and quickly spreads important information.

Pity the poor traveller stuck flying Ryanair with a dead cell phone, no internet access and spotty access to a payphone.

To conclude…

How do we measure the success of social media in this situation? We can look at the increases in numbers of fans and followers – from 350 to 7,500 in the case of Eurocontrol. But these numbers are tiny if you consider that around 100,000 flights were cancelled. That’s an awful lot of people, many of whom didn’t, or couldn’t, get near Twitter or Facebook.

In addition, how do we evaluate the success of a Facebook airline page that has 40,000 fans.

In addition, how do we evaluate the success of a Facebook airline page that has 40,000 fans? Compare this to Starbucks (7 million), Vodafone UK (185,000) or any number of pages that start with the words “Can this onion ring get more fans than ….”. Perhaps users join a group only to leave a negative comment, as in the Ryanair case? Do users join a group only to leave a negative comment, as in the Ryanair case?

Some key lessons gathered from Eurocontrol and others are :

• Be present on social media before a crisis starts and integrate it into full communications strategy
• Keep it simple
• Act like a person
• Don’t try to sell anything
• Stay focused
• In a European context, the ability to handle multilingual enquiries is an important issue

Anyone can benefit from these rules to implement a social media strategy to reach the right audience in times of crisis or otherwise.

The ash cloud is still lingering – this week Irish airspace was closed for a time – but there can also be a silver lining.