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Which Airline Is Soaring Above The Competition With Killer Content?

The worst case scenario for any marketer in a highly competitive industry is to have their brand’s messaging drowned out by competitors. The airline industry is one such highly-competitive market.

According to the 2014 edition of Tailwinds, PWC’s annual report on the airline industry, competition among airlines is on the rise, and “set to face more aggressive competition in the coming year.”

In today’s hyper-connected world, consumers are empowered in their decision-making process; 9 out of 10 U.S. consumers use an online search to make purchasing decisions. Any savvy marketer’s goal is to have their message resonate with their ideal consumer so that their brand becomes the consumer’s preferred brand of choice.

One of the ways that marketers can understand how well their brand’s voice is being heard amongst the noise of competitors is by measuring their brand’s share of interaction across their active marketing channels.

Why Should You Be Measuring Share of Interaction?

Measuring a brand’s share of interaction on a particular channel allows marketers to quickly gain insight into how well their brand’s messaging is standing out on a channel over a period of time. When marketers are able to maintain a dominant share of interaction on a particular channel it means that they are relevant — and we all know that Relevance = Conversion = Revenue.

Marketers with a significant share of interaction are also able to establish their brand as a thought leader and authority in their space, which is essential in building community.

The Share of Interaction graph below represents the number of press mentions from the last 90 days for American Airlines, Airtran, Delta, Southwest, and US Airways.

As you can see, Southwest airlines (green) has had drastically more press mentions than the other airlines over the last 90 days. We can also see which press mentions were most impactful for Southwest by clicking into the graph.

For Southwest, their top press mention over this time period was an article in USA Today that had over 80,000 interactions (likes, shares, comments, etc) on social media.

Monitoring Airline Audience Engagement On Facebook

Brands like airlines are utilizing the power of the Facebook as way to connect with their audience, share information, respond to customer feedback, and build customer loyalty by actively engaging with their audience.

Below is a Share of Interaction graph that represents the share of People Talking About these airlines on Facebook in the last 90 days. People Talking About is attributed to when Facebook users “create story” with the brand, such as tagging the brand in a post that they write, commenting on a post, tagging the brand in a photo, etc.

We can see in the graph that the airlines that are compared are pretty even with the number people talking about them on Facebook.

Airlines Take To Twitter To Share Real-Time News

Twitter is a great social channel for brands to communicate real-time information with their customers. According to The Wall Street Journal, Twitter is “proving to be an effective medium” for airline carriers, with over 250 airlines active on the platform.

Airlines can really use the speed and real-time delivery of information on Twitter to update customers on time-sensitive information like flight delays or gate changes.

Below we can see the share of retweets that each airline has had over the last 90 days.

With the greatest share of retweets, Southwest Airlines (orange) and American Airlines (teal) are doing the best job at posting tweets that are resonating with their audience. Delta (purple) is close behind, while United Airlines and US Airways lagging behind.

Southwest’s most engaging tweet from this time period was retweeted over 491 times and highlighted the new designs on their planes’ exteriors

Don’t Leave Your Content Strategy Up In The Air!

Measuring share of interaction is a simple but effective way for marketers to get a better understanding of whether or not their content is resonating with their audiences and how much of the conversation they own. Today’s travel consumer is empowered and doing her own research online before communicating with an airline, so savvy marketers are ensuring that they are the voice that the consumer is hearing.

For more information on the subject, check out this explanation from our engineering team on how share of information graphs can be best used by marketers.