Riding the Blogosphere Like a Wild Horse

Meredith Bagnulo, PRSA Colorado Board Member, provides a recap of the recent luncheon with Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines.

As a PR practitioner in today’s digital world, you can’t turn around without seeing another webinar or article on Social Media 101, but oftentimes the best way to learn is by example and that’s exactly what myself and over 100 of my colleagues did last week at the PRSA Colorado luncheon.

Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media at Southwest Airlines, explained to a captive audience how the company’s Nuts About Southwest blog grew like wildfire and became a virtual pitching machine. In 2007 and 2008, “Nuts” was named Best Blog by PR News and has been recognized in major publications ranging from Wired Magazine to The Wall Street Journal. When the company launched version 2.0 of its blog in May 2008, with new features such as a Flickr feed, polls and podcasts, visits jumped 25 percent.

Berg credits the blog’s success to a few key factors:

• They selected people to blog who were passionate about their jobs and sharing their stories
• They had a variety of employees throughout the company participate such as flight attendants, pilots, sales agents, etc.
• They didn’t delete negative comments posted to the blog

She also mentioned how the blog has in some ways become a virtual focus group. For example, when Southwest CEO Gary Kelly posted “Open Season on Assigned Seating”, it received over 700 comments and caused the airline to reconsider changing its policy on open seating.  She also shared examples of ways they have used the blog to counter negative media attention and to highlight the airline’s unique culture and the talent of its employees like the Rapping Flight Attendant [see below] which has had over a million views on YouTube.

Beyond the blog, they have also set up Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts which each draw over 100 new people a day.  She discussed how social media has been integrated into their crisis communications strategy and underscored that during a crisis is not the time to start doing social media, as was the case with U.S. Airways who set up their own Twitter page immediately on the heels of the crash of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River.

In the PR industry, there has always been a big focus on ROI and fortunately most social media tools are easily measurable.  Berg and her team monitor the blogosphere primarily using Google Reader on a daily basis and other measurement tools like Radian6, however she also tries to bring the numbers to life offering insight and perspective beyond the statistics. When asked about the ROI of their efforts at Southwest, Berg posed the question “What is the cost of not participating?”

Along with a few good laughs, Paula left us with these four key factors for effective social media communications:

1) Establish social media channels before a crisis

2) Don’t be afraid to join the conversation

3) Act fast

4) Build a strong team

So how does one keep up with all of these social media tools and information?  Paula admitted that early on she didn’t get much sleep, but she made a good point – “if you let them, these social media tools can own you.”  As PR practitioners it’s important that we find a balance and don’t become too overwhelmed by this new approach to PR.  We are all learning different ways to use social media to engage and influence, but I believe what we are witnessing is just the tip of the iceberg.

Meredith Bagnulo, PRSA Colorado Board Member