Are you the social media manager of an airline, looking to reach more customers? An intern tasked with the exciting opportunity of curating an Instagram post? Or looking to learn how to reach a wide audience with a fun TikTok video? In today’s internet landscape, there are so many social media platforms that can connect companies with potential customers, but to reach the right audience, marketing teams must understand how to utilize each social media app.
This article provides an essential social media guide for airlines, so that airline marketing teams can expand their customer base by posting content and using airline-specific SEO. The most popular social media apps include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Marketing on each platform sometimes demands a different strategy to fit the platform’s personality and the different reasons customers use each app. We’ll describe how to best utilize each platform in this essential social media guide for airlines!
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How to Use Different Platforms for Airline Social Media
Different social media platforms connect companies with different customer bases, which is why it’s so important to conduct marketing campaigns that span multiple different platforms. Creating and maintaining a social media profile is free and once a social media team posts content, reaching an audience is almost instantaneous. However, the breadth of the audience depends on what type of social media content is posted. Is it a longer Facebook post? An aesthetic Instagram picture? A quick and quirky tweet? Or a short TikTok video that showcases your airline brand personality?
Although marketing teams may post the same content on different platforms, transforming the post to fit a particular social media platform can help reach a wide range of potential customers on that social media. What’s great to know is that even some social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have built-in resources specifically for growing business within each app! In this essential social media guide for airlines, we’ll detail just how each popular social media site can help airline social media teams capture a wide audience and gain new customers, depending on platform personality and the age demographics that are most likely to use each platform.
Facebook is the classic social media platform that everyone uses, regardless of age group. In fact, Facebook has one of the largest user bases with a high age range of users, so marketing on Facebook is very likely to capture the large audience that airline social media teams are looking for. Using Facebook for promoting your airline has many advantages, such as linking the booking portal from your profile page, posting content like pictures and videos, and engaging with your customer base as part of a community. Facebook content can span different media, and it allows your potential customers to learn more about your airline.
Since the most common user on Facebook is between 18-64 years old, Facebook is a terrific source for reaching potential customers who are most likely to travel, and thus your airline’s social media team can create effective ad campaigns that can interest these Facebook users in booking a flight to visit their family or to get to their next dream vacation! Ad campaigns can determine where a user might book a flight and airline social media teams can showcase flights that are available to specific destinations.
Compared to Facebook, Instagram is more popular with users aged 18-29 and users who are more interested in aesthetic content. In this essential social media guide for airlines, we stress that your airline strategy marketing should consider posting pretty images and videos, paired with some description, that represent all kinds of destinations that your airline can bring customers to, as well as pictures that illustrate your consistent brand identity. A picture of one of your airline’s planes flying over a tropical island would certainly draw potential customers to book their tickets through your airline so they could enjoy some of that saltwater air!
Instagram users wildly use this platform to display visually appealing content that is curated to fit a particular vibe, and as an airline social media manager, you can tap into this artsy platform to fit the potential customers’ needs. Filters are encouraged and hashtags are necessary! Filters help create a consistent look to brand content, and hashtags help optimize your airline’s SEO to reach more potential customers. Users can like and comment on your content, providing an excellent way to directly connect with your audience. Instagram users are also more likely to search for a company on Instagram to look at reviews, brand identity, and what the company offers, so airline social media teams should look to Instagram as a great resource for reaching this audience!
While you can post images and videos to market your airline like with Facebook and Instagram, Twitter provides a unique opportunity to post something short and quirky. Tweets often go viral in the 18-29 age group. In 2022, more and more companies are open to allowing their Twitter accounts to be sarcastic and silly! Some brand Twitter accounts roast people who try to roast them first, which allows the thread to go viral and reach a wider audience than would’ve been possible without the fiery exchange happening in the first place. Twitter users enjoy reading these tweets that might be considered abrasive, and sometimes they even share the tweets to other platforms, which further extends the reach of the company. Participating in a heated exchange just might allow you to tap into that larger customer base that you’re looking for!
TikTok
Ah, TikTok. The fastest-growing social media platform is taking the 2020s by storm. Popular with adults under 30, TikTok is outpacing Google as the biggest new search engine! This platform allows users to search specific hashtags and connect with content creators who have knowledge of what the user is searching for. With the ability to post a video that is up to 3 minutes long, content creators have the opportunity to make a fun and interesting video that has the potential to reach upwards of tens of millions of views! The videos on TikTok allow creators to be genuine in their sharing of experiences and reviews of products.
Airline social media marketing teams could make and post funny videos to reach a large customer base while using the trending sounds and filters of the week to relate to the user base. Brand mascots, such as the Duolingo Owl, Duo, are popular among TikTok users, as brand personas add to a memorable experience on TikTok. The Osaka Airport in Japan has an airplane mascot as well! Your airline could introduce a brand mascot to make TikToks for attracting potential customers. Your TikTok videos should include hashtags in the descriptions to maximize the chance of users finding your content with ease as well!
Social Media and Airline Strategy Marketing
Now that we’ve reviewed the popular social media platforms for advertising in this essential social media guide for airlines, let’s talk about airline strategy marketing on each of these platforms. Users of each platform expect specific types of content from each platform. While Facebook offers the ability to include a lot of information in one post and around your airline’s profile, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok require shorter-form and more curated content.
We emphasize that any airline strategy marketing team requires knowing the user base and the expectations of each social media platform. It’s important to maintain a strong aesthetic brand identity on Instagram and post stories, pictures, and Reels often, as users expect to engage with visually appealing content. However, social media marketing teams have the opportunity to be witty with a quick tweet and engage followers and potential customers with a cunning exchange or a marketing poll that could take the place of traditional marketing surveys.
Lastly, TikTok provides a unique opportunity for airlines to produce content that may not seem like traditional marketing and advertisements, since traditional marketing methods are relatively ineffective on Gen Z. Instead, your content must seem more like a conversation or an opportunity rather than an advertisement for a product. This essential social media guide for airlines highlights that understanding the language of each social media platform will allow your airline’s social media presence to be accessible and interesting to a wider audience of potential customers!
Social Media Airline Presence
Now you know how to best use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok for your airline strategy marketing needs! However, knowing what type of content to post on each platform is just half of the equation. Maintaining your social media airline presence is the rest of it, and you can do so by establishing your airline personality and tone through each of the platforms. In this essential social media guide for airlines, we emphasize creating a memorable airline personality, perhaps through quirky tweets or a company mascot on TikTok, and being consistent in posting content so that your airline can stay fresh on your audience’s minds. Maintaining a company’s online persona and creating engaging posts often is key to building a strong social media airline presence.
Explore the Possibilities of Each Social Media Platform
In this essential social media guide for airlines, we explained how building brand identity and maintaining an airline social media presence can grow your customer base by understanding how to best utilize each of the popular social media platforms. We hope that this inspires you to reach more potential customers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok!
FAQ:
- How can airlines use Facebook?
- What type of content performs best on Instagram?
- How can airlines use Twitter for marketing?
- What age group uses TikTok the most?
- Which social media platforms are best for airlines?
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