In fact, freelancers or employees who have handled social media as part of their position are now being relieved by full time employees or social media consultants — but the transition is taking time.

Only 9% of surveyed organizations have full-time positions dedicated to managing social media responsibilities, while 90% include those as part of someone’s overall responsibilities, according to a survey by King Fish Media, HubSpot and Junta42.

Why would social media be deserving of a full time employee?  The reasons are numerous.

Full time social media consultants can deal with customer complaints, expand social media horizons — but most importantly, boost sales.

When it comes to expanding social media to reach more people, Ashley DiVeronica proved her worth at TransMedia Group.  ”The biggest factor in creating my position as a full-time job – which is now a full-time department – came down to engagement,” she tells MarketingVOX. “I proved my case by taking two different clients, one with constant communication versus an account with little and sparse communication. The difference in followers/fans, retweets, questions, responses, and so on were staggering between the two. The more active each account was, the more the fan base and interaction rate would climb.”

This increased fan base and consumer interaction means increased sales and brings incredible value to companies engaged in social media.

The goal of any marketing campaign is to increase sales for a company — and the basis of their success or failure.  The correlation between social media marketing and sales is undeniable.  Bringing social media up to a level requiring full time engagement is essential to its success.  It’s the only way to fully utilize the potential found within.

So maybe its time to create a full time social media position and reap the rewards of increased sales and increased consumer interaction.  In the ever changing game of marketing, its the only way to remain successful.

Similarly, an online marketing strategy cannot be built on Twitter or Facebook alone because they — like a hammer — are just tools. Without a content strategy, those tools don’t mean much.

For many, whether a small start up or a big brand their first venture into social media is the decision to create a Facebook page. They upload the company logo, post a few office photos, and write a status update from time to time.

Most of these same companies would not undertake any other marketing on a whim, but carefully craft their campaigns to target specific markets and plan their marketing strategies to the smallest detail. No company would want their marketing activities to be based on luck alone.

Creating and managing a page in such a cavalier manner, in hopes of becoming a hit on Facebook, is as likely to be effective as say standing at the side of the freeway and yelling to rush hour traffic about your products over the drone of passing cars. No one wants to listen, and if they did, they couldn’t hear you anyway.

In creating and managing an effective social media campaign you should identify your target audience and the platforms they already use. Demographic information is available for most of the major social networks, so there is really no reason not to target your social media activities to your audience.

If you plan how your grow your online following steadily by engaging with the right people, on the right platform, with the right content, you are more likely to get predictable results. Your social media strategy must detail your marketing aims and objectives. If you don’t have a social media strategy, how will you know when you have achieved your goals?

The first step of creating an effective social media strategy is to take an inventory of your organization’s content. It’s as simple as what you produce, or could be producing, on a regular basis. Things like:

• The obvious: Company announcements, press releases, marketing materials, company information.
• Events: Any special events that either your organization is putting on or that is related to your organization, that you can “live tweet”.
• News of the day: Comment on news of the day that is relevant to your organization or your mission.
• Your experts: Who are your organization’s experts and what they have to say about your mission, recent events, or news and world events.
• Human interest: Don’t overlook content about employees weddings, birth announcements, anniversaries, and other accomplishments. Your employees stories puts a human face on your company or organization.

Once you have considered and decided upon your content the next step is to decide what platform would be most effective for your company or organization. Click here to read our previous post in which we provide specific examples of how some companies and individuals are doing just that.

As your organization looks to delve into the world of social media take a good look at your overall content strategy. Without a solid message, the medium doesn’t really matter.

Which is great news for marketing strategist.  You can reach great numbers of people at low or no cost.  According to an eConsultancy study of 1,400 U.S. consumers, 42% said they prefer to receive ads for sales and specials via e-mail compared to just 3% who said the same for social-networking sites and 1% who preferred Twitter.

In an earlier post this week we talked about the potential for e-mail — but  its use alone only provides a one-way conversation from businesses to consumers.  When integrated with other social networks the potential for impact grows exponentially.

Nielsen revealed last week that email’s share of time declined 28%, putting it in third place, while social networking, the leader climbed 43%.  Despite these trends the reality is that email is stronger than ever before.

Savvy marketers are beginning to see that if they leverage all of their channels effectively, they can increase their overall sales and company exposure, and in the process establish a deeper bond with the customers and influencers.

Thanks to some new innovations — many companies are now building end-to-end “social CRM” tools that will help marketers manage their relationships by connecting their email-marketing and social-networking sites.

One example of this new wave of integration comes from the popular email newsletter platform, Mail Chimp.  They are in the process of integrating Facebook like buttons to campaigns.

So if it’s a question as to whether a business should use email, or social networking sites the answer is clear.  Its not one or the other, but rather both.

That open communication window is an important aspect of e-mail marketing — but it is limited in its scope.

Brian Solis, digital analyst, sociologist writes in a recent blog post:

“I’ve labeled email as the world’s largest untapped social network and even though many services attempted to socialize the inbox over the years, email, for the large part, remains regressive.”

The potential for e-mail is there, but its use alone only provides a one-way conversation from businesses to consumers.  When coalesced with other social networks, the potential for impact grows exponentially.

Total e-mail/social integration has become one of the best ways for a company to reach out and extend it’s network.  Including links to social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, allow recipients of the e-mail to begin a far more personal one-on-one relationship with a company.  As they click “like” or choose to “retweet” content, exposure jumps another level to their friends and friends friends and all their followers.

It turns out that many businesses are beginning to experiment with this type of integration.  eROI recently released a new report, “The Current State of Social, Mobile, and Email Integration,” which found that 66% of marketers included links to social profiles in their email campaigns.

Facebook leads the way for being most integrated, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn and several others.

At the end of the day, a social integration campaign is worthless without good content.

The mere presence of a company on Facebook or Twitter will not make them successful, unless their message is deemed worthy by its friends and followers to be passed along to others.

E-mail integration alone cannot save a poorly crafted marketing campaign, but if done right, can mean great reward in the long run.

A new study by Duke University and the American Marketing Association shows that businesses not only intend to increase their social media spending — they intend to double it.

According to the CMO survey, social media is expected to be 10% of all marketing budgets within one year and nearly 18% in five years.  That is up from the February 2010 level of 5.6%.

The different marketing sectors seem to be on par with social media spending, according to the study.  The B2B and B2C sectors of both products and services show steady growth across 5 years.  The largest spending increase in social media belongs to the B2C services companies — up 4%.  Over the next twelve months, the B2B services companies will nearly double spending from 6.5% to 11%.

The adjustment is already taking place for business all across the country.  The CMO survey also reports that hiring priorities have changed for the marketing department.  Surveyed for the top three most important skills, marketers chose Internet marketing, innovation/growth, and customer relationship management.

Companies aren’t just increasing the bankroll for social media, they are putting the people in place to take full advantage of the paradigm shift happening right now.  Companies that don’t adapt to this ever changing world will be left in the dust.

It appears, according to this MediaPost piece, that this political ad rule of thumb is set to rise:

This year’s political ad spending could be up between 5% and 10% from 2008 levels, spurred by the Supreme Court’s recent favorable ruling on corporate political spending. Although as much as 75% of political ad dollars are spent on local TV, more of it in the future will be diffused to online, mobile and other new media.

The slow, secular shift away from measured media to marketing services, TV’s gradual disintermediation by Internet-connected media, and the movement toward more a la carte, on-demand video are among the wild cards. All will play havoc with once predictable advertiser spending, even in election years, analysts say.

This shift tracks with the poll results we’re seeing that show media consumption among voters is increasingly fragmented.

While broadcast is still king — its rein is much more tenuous than it was even a year or two ago.  Voters are increasingly getting their news online, and our ability to hyper-target these voters makes online advertising an increasingly wise and effective investment.

A new report from 360i shows that most brands are coming up short in their attempts to utilize Twitter as a marketing tool.  But let’s be clear — it’s the brand’s use (or abuse) of the medium, rather than the medium itself, that is holding them back.

According to 360i, after a six month study, Twitter users barely know or care about brand presence on Twitter.  When brands tweet and try to communicate with their followers, it’s mostly a one-way conversation.  The study finds that only 1% of consumers who mention a brand in a tweet are in a conversation with that brand. The large majority of users’ tweets are on a personal level.  They tweet about seemingly mundane details of their lives, such as meals, plans, and get-togethers.  360i reports that 94% of tweets are personal, with 85% being original content that is not re-tweeted.  Instead of truly engaging and trying to become of this personal conversation, most brands have resorted using Twitter as a type of press release service.

“There is still a misperception that if brands show up, people will listen to them, kind of like Facebook a few years ago,” 360i Senior-VP Sarah Hofstetter told Advertising Age. “Twitter can be used as a promotional RSS feed, but that’s not going to establish a relationship with anybody.”

Modern communications isn’t simply about “eyeballs” anymore — it’s about engagement.  And those brands that choose to use Twitter as a press release service are simply living in the past.

On the other hands, those brands that are engaging best are seeing the true benefits of this communications tool.

What’s the best way for them to engage?  We’re fond of comparing Twitter to an “online cocktail reception.”

Why?  Have you ever walked into a cocktail party where you don’t know anybody and everybody seems to be already be engaged in familiar conversation?

What do you do?  Do you walk up to a stranger and start reciting your company’s latest press release?  Of course not.  You usually break into a conversation by making some small talk. Maybe you mention the weather, or the type of drink you’re consuming, or something about the drapes in the restaurant — let’s face it, small talk can be mundane.

But my point is that there are all these conversations going on, and you use some mundane, sometimes personal, detail to strike up conversation. Then that personal conversation may lead to a discussion of business, then an exchange of business cards, then perhaps a business deal.

So it goes with Twitter. Most “tweets” are people talking about what they’re watching on TV, or the kind of work day they had, or what food they’re cooking for dinner, or what they’re doing on their vacation. Those tweets can lead to conversations with other people who have the same interests. Sometimes — just like the cocktail party — that can lead to business.

So is Twitter merely a networking tool? Yes, but it’s much more.

• Frank Eliason was a customer service manager at Comcast who, in 2008, started Comcast’s first Twitter account: @comcastcares. A few years later, Frank was managing a full team of customer service “tweeters” and he tells us that (as of January 21, 2010) his team serviced a total of 160,000 people via social networking sites — more than 50,000 of them on Twitter. That’s just since February 2008. Frank’s team monitors Twitter to find out who is talking (or complaining) about Comcast and reaches out to them to help solve their problems. They also receive a good number of service requests by people who now know they will receive quick replies from Frank’s team via Twitter.

• Similar to Comcast, major brands monitor Twitter to find out who is a) Tweeting about their brands, b) Saying good things about their brands, and c) Who is complaining or “trashing” their brands. For example, according to a recent Forbes article (Daniel Adler, “Twenty-One Twitter Tips,” Forbes, July 31, 2009), there were 3.37 million mentions of “Starbucks” through May 2009. Starbucks follows those mentions like a hawk — using it as a real-time focus group.

• In Illinois, we have a fast food chain called “Culver’s” that has great burgers and custard. The local Culver’s franchise in my town has its own Twitter account (@culvers177) and provides daily tweets of their “flavor of the day.” Many times, these tweets are tempting enough to lure me and my family for dinner (or dessert.)

• In Los Angeles, the nightclub crowd is familiar with the “Kogi BBQ” mobile trucks that park outside the clubs late at night and sell Mexican tacos stuffed with Korean-style meat. The company has 52,000 Twitter followers and uses Twitter to send out alerts on the locations of its four mobile trucks. How successful is this marketing effort? The trucks regularly draw crowds in the hundreds — and they have been featured in publications ranging from the Los Angeles Times to the Wall Street Journal.

• K9Cuisine.com is an online purveyor of premium and organic dog food. They have a Twitter account managed by the company founder and president, Anthony Holloway (@k9cuisine). Anthony uses Twitter as a customer service tool — but also as a way to help answer questions and provide tips and advice to pet owners. Although they don’t overtly use it as a sales tool, Anthony tells us that Twitter is the third-largest source of traffic to the company Web site — very warm leads that could lead to hot sales.

So, you see, different organizations are using Twitter in different ways to communicate with their unique audiences.

The new report from 360i report may seem negative on Twitter on the surface.  But further reading shows that it’s the message, not the medium, that makes the difference between success and failure.

Most small businesses return to traditional advertising, such as the newspaper, Yellow Pages, and radio. But some businesses have forsaken these advertising staples all together, and created successful marketing campaigns online — for far less money.

Facebook and Twitter present a unique opportunity for small business owners. There are currently more than 1 million small business profiles on Facebook which reach out to millions of customers everyday.

Businesses with fewer than five employees “see Facebook and others as a way to reach targeted consumers” while saving marketing expenditures during a rough economy, says Darren Waddell, vice president of marketing at MerchantCircle.

According to the MerchantCircle report, “More than half of the nearly 10,000 respondents to the survey say they plan to create or maintain a social-networking presence in the next three months.”

Some businesses have found a degree of success with their online exposure.

John Swartz writes in USA Today, “Online sales at Southern Jewlz have doubled in six months since recent college grad Randa Yezak, 23, started using Twitter and e-commerce software. Her 2-year-old business also has 8,000 fans on Facebook.”

As with any success stories, we must add the tag “results are not typical.” HipChat, a group chat and messaging service for companies, reports that more than 90% of the 2,000 small businesses it works with use social media, but few have seen a business benefit.

Fact is, Facebook and Twitter offer a way to effectively communicate with consumers interested specifically in your product or services. Small businesses are the only way to steer our economy back on track, and a majority of them are now using social networking to do so.

Will you join them?

Foursquare is a social networking platform that allows its users to “check-in” to virtually everything from restaurants to airports via their smart phone and 3G connection. Users can add tips and reviews, or even caution their friends away from an undesirable experience. When you check in, it is linked to Facebook and Twitter, so your friends can see where you are and possibly join you if in the area.

The ability to see your friends recent check-ins opens up a whole new realm of social networking. This new wave of “exploration networking” is allowing businesses to get valuable exposure to consumers who are on the go. Companies are even able to promote specials, coupons, or other marketing strategies directly to Foursquare users.

Click here to see how Foursquare worked for the Charleston Fine Art Dealers Association’s Palette and Palate Stroll, and how it helped create a successful PR campaign.

Should Foursquare join Facebook and Twitter as part of your companies social media communications strategy? We think so.

As more and more users depend on this style of social network to virtually interact with businesses around their area, the potential for promotion and exposure is priceless. So put your business on the map and reap the rewards of the Foursquare revolution.

A recent study by PR firm Burson-Marsteller shows that 97% of grassroots movements are using at least one social media platform.

Why wouldn’t they?

The old days of TV ads, radio commercials, and billboards are dead.  Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube have the best way to generate buzz among like-minded friends and followers.  Facebook is about to eclipse 500 million users. Twitter and Youtube are not far behind, and most followers have instant access in their pocket via the smart phone revolution.  The best part: It’s all free.

Twitter leads the way in stirring the political pot.  Its efficient 140 characters allows a line from a piece of legislation and a call to action such as, “CALL YOUR REP NOW!”  And when time is of the essence, updates are instant and able to mobilize followers quickly to the action.

Social media is the backbone of today’s grassroots campaigns and essential to future political success.  Come November, we will see who is able to generate the larger swell.  In this election and those in the future, Twitter followers may be as good as exit polls when it comes to calling a winner.

If you are like me — managing numerous networks and tracking boundless loads of content — it becomes a big daily routine that can easily get out of control.

The following article, Unclutter Your B2B Social Media Sources provides some great advice on tracking content to share with your networks.  I actually use many of these sources — and this article offers suggestions on how to use them without getting too cluttered.

One important thing to remember is that home-grown content is very important to a successful social media program.  Relying too much on outside content is a mistake — so don’t get trigger happy and start firing away (re-posting) everything you see.

You want to be a trusted source — so make sure you read what you are sharing and make sure it is relevant for your network.

What other tools do you use to track relevant content to share with your networks?

We are skeptical here at Merc Strategy Group about the death of email.  Actually, email still rules — providing the most powerful and biggest social networking tool.

But like any technology we grow tired of it and look for something new and different.  If anything, email is adapting to the world of Facebook and Twitter in innovative and productive ways.

A recent article from Brian Solis, Think Outside the Inbox highlights a new innovative and productive direction for email — but not killing email.

Solis says, “email remains as the world’s largest untapped social network, with Gmail and Google Buzz offering a glimpse of the integration that looms on the horizon.”

I agree that we are not tapping into emails social networking potential as well as we could but the question remains — how do we better integrate email and the multitude of other social media tools?

In Solis’s article he highlights the company Threadbox — which is focused on how to make email productive once again while introducing alternatives for collaboration and communication.

Basically, Threadbox turns emails into threads that are organized live online in a secure collaborative network helping to better manage your daily workflow.

So, it appears that Threadbox wants to essentially become the centralized hub.  Solis nicely describes it as “Facebook for workflow, where you can create social networks around people and programs.”

What do you think of this new way for managing workflow and real-time messaging?

Will you give Threadbox a try or just stick to regular email.

Are all of your Facebook status updates products of rigorous review processes by your communications, legal and policy departments?

Does the above result in social networks in which you’re only posting one or two times per week?

Then maybe social media isn’t for you (or your company.)  Or, more to the point, maybe your organization needs a communications climate change.

If you think the above examples are overly-exagerrated, think again.  Unfortunately, we’ve run across several organizations in recent weeks where those examples held true.  And yet these organizations were left scratching their heads as to why their online communications programs weren’t bearing fruit.

In their minds, they needed to invest more money in bells and whistles.  New apps.  Fresh widgets.

Wrong.

It’s not about the widgets.  It’s about the content.

We’re living in the age of real-time, folks.  While that may sound scary, it’s reality.  Are you ready to adapt?

It may only have been a few years ago that you had the luxury of spending an entire afternoon running your press releases through a groupthink approval process before hitting the send button on your fax machine.

But times have changed.  We have to be able to react within seconds, not hours.

And different communications platforms require different discussions.  People on Twitter and Facebook don’t simply want focus group-tested talking points.  They want a discussion.  They want a conversation.

So, what we normally tell organizations is this: either change your communications climate, or stop embarrassing yourself with a failed social media experiment.

Otherwise, you’re throwing good money after bad, and tarnishing your brand in the process.

Are you read for the climate change?

What American brand is brewing up the best social media?

If you said Starbucks — then you guessed right.

Starbucks close to 7.5 million Facebook friends makes it the highest-ranking brand on social media.

Click here to check out the full article and report.

– From Betty White’s recent Saturday Night Live Monologue

Betty White’s line (above) got a lot of laughs during her recent SNL monologue.  Of course, she owed her very appearance to a Facebook campaign that garnered thousands of supporters pushing for her to host the Saturday night sketch comedy show.

That’s not to say we don’t think she really believed what she said.  There certainly are a lot of people out there who don’t “get” Facebook.

But just because Betty doesn’t get it — doesn’t mean that all senior citizens feel the same way.

In fact, new survey results from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) shed some light on the social media habits of American seniors.

Mashable reports:

The AARP spent some time last month interviewing 1,360 adults over the phone. They found that more than a quarter (27%) of Americans age 50 and older use social networks. Facebook is the most popular — in fact, 23% of all survey respondents said they preferred it to sites such as MySpace,  LinkedIn and Twitter.

When it comes to general web surfing, 49% of respondents between the ages of 50 and 64 and 40% of all adults age 50 and older, said they consider themselves extremely or very comfortable using the Internet. In other words, we’re very close to seeing the majority of senior citizens embracing the web as a content medium and communication tool.

As for discovery of social services, however, it seems the young folks are to blame for spreading word of Facebook to more venerable generations. Around 47% of AARP’s respondents had heard of social networking from a family member other than their spouse, and of those, 70% were tipped off by a child or grandchild.

The overwhelming majority of these boomers are using the social web — at least to some degree — to keep in touch with family members. Almost three quarters of AARP’s survey group said they’re connected online to relatives other than children and grandchildren, 62% are connected to their children, and 36% are connected to grandchildren, as well.

So, in short, don’t believe the social media naysayers who claim that it’s “just for kids.”  Because it just isn’t true.

These online tools are becoming part of our modern communications fabric.  Actually, they are fast becoming THE modern communications fabric.

Does your company, organization, or campaign have a content strategy to engage with these diverse audiences?

Instead of trying to push you to the store to buy LEGO’s and risk turning people off with a sharply commercial edge — they used a creative social media campaign that has successfully strengthened their brand.

LEGO’s brand relations director states in this online article that after their successful LEGO Click campaign using social media — they plan to fully integrate social media into their marketing mix.

The campaign was mostly digital and social in nature with viewers helping to spread their brand.  Click here to read the full article and check out some of the key performance metrics achieved by this campaign.

Facebook is big — 400 million big.

Twitter is growing everyday.

But combined they’re still not nearly as big as E-mail — the most powerful and biggest social networking tool.

We’ve talked in detail about how Facebook, Twitter, E-mail and other media tools should all be considered in your overall content and communications strategy.

But as the popularity of Facebook and Twitter rise — are companies forgetting about the importance of E-mail as a social networking tool?

To learn more about the importance of E-mail as a social networking tool — download a copy of our free booklet, The Press Release is Dead: Using New Communications Tools to Build your Business, Non-Profit or Campaign.

There is a great example of E-mail as a powerful social networking tool in a recent Wired article, “Steve Jobs Reinvents the CEO With E-mail Campaign.”

In recent weeks — Jobs has been personally responding to consumer e-mails and strategically picking the right people that are going to help spread his word verbatim.

So…with just one e-mail Jobs is able to speak to the entire world.

The article notes that Jobs and Apple have had their fair share of bad PR in recent years — and because Apple is not in a position to communicate with tools such as Twitter and Facebook, Jobs’ e-mails are proving an effective means to address an enormous community of consumers.

Click here to read the full article.

Last week, my wife and I had the pleasure of spending the weekend in New Orleans to celebrate our anniversary.  On Saturday, we were fortunate enough to happen upon the Preservation Hall jazz club, which is, in my honest opinion, a national treasure.

As the Hall’s Web site explains, the venue was founded in 1961, “created as a sanctuary, to protect and honor New Orleans Jazz which had lost much of its popularity to modern jazz and rock n roll.”

First, allow me to paint a quick picture of the venue:  it was a small room, cramped, and without air conditioning (in 95 degree heat/heavy humidity).

A six person band appeared, wearing white dress shirts, black pants and black ties.  There was a tuba, trombone, trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, drummer and piano.

It was an amazing experience.  For forty-five minutes, we were treated not only to incredible music — we were treated to an American history lesson.

Totally unplugged.  No microphone.  No sound system.  It was all about the music.

I got to thinking about modern communications.  All too often, organizations, campaigns and corporations focus more on the equivalent of their “sound systems” — you know … the tech, the apps, the widgets, the shiny new objects.

They should be focusing more on their music.  As we’ve said here before, message should come first — tech second.

Too many folks worry about what they’re Facebook strategy, or Twitter strategy, or LinkedIn strategy should be — and don’t spend enough time plotting out their content strategy.

Your content is your music.  Unplug.  Focus on your music first.

That’s the key to a great performance.

Combining technology with strategy — not a new idea for us here at Merc Strategy Group.

That’s why I was not surprised by the recent Adweek article, “Digital Dips Toes Into PR Water.”

Earned media in the social media sphere and traditional PR earned media have been living separate lives — but that is all about to change.

This article from Adweek highlights some big changes in the world of earned media — as web and digital shops are starting to add PR pros to their line-ups.

One example from the article notes that digital firm, Razorfish has recruited a new director of social media from a leading PR firm. They have now built a team of 10, many with PR backgrounds, focused on social strategy and execution with blogger outreach and community management services.

The PR practice has already tried to claim their position as the leaders in social media — but a new trend to digital shops is bumping heads with PR agencies.

The PR folks feel that social media is less about technology than it is about people talking to people — a PR expertise.

But according to Adweek , “web shops are uniquely positioned to pull together the content and communications sides of social media — dipping into the waters of the exclusive world of public relation firms.”

In my opinion — this Adweek article hits the nail on the spot when they state that for web shops, “the build is only step one, with the focus shifting on supplying fresh content and managing the communities.”

And this is were our firm steps in and specializes —as we recognize the need for fresh content to build a powerful and strategic online communications program.  We like to think of ourselves as the link between technology and strategy.

What road do you think PR for social media should take?

There are some organizations that “walk the walk” with their social media programs.  And then there are those that merely go through the motions.

It’s easy to tell them apart.

Take Southwest Airlines, for example.  They clearly have taken the social media plunge in a big way.

They don’t just treat their Twitter account as if it’s a glorified news feed.  Yes, they promote their company.  But they also engage.  They serve.  They respond.

Their social media program isn’t a social media program at all.  It’s an extension of their company.

I began flying Southwest last year — partly as a protest against the other, larger airlines that tack on extra fees and have employees who treat their customers like, well, dirty.   In short, I was sick of being nickeled-and-dimed, scolded and talked down to by the other airlines.  I chose Southwest for the friendly service, the clean planes, the easy system of earning free flights … among other reasons.

This past weekend, my wife and I took a trip to New Orleans for a weekend getaway.  Our flight out of Chicago was delayed — by three hours.  As we sat on the tarmac, I grew impatient.  And so I posted to my Twitter account a complaint about the lack of drink service after a two hour delay.  I received a prompt reply from @southwestair apologizing, with the promise to see what they could do about the drink service.

A few minutes later, the crew came around with water (granted, not the Rum and Coke I wanted….but drinks nonetheless.)  Was the drink service a result of my tweet?  Perhaps.  But I was made to feel like my complaint was being listened (and responded) to.

Today, I received an email from Southwest apologizing for the delay, explaining that it was due to weather, but offering me a free voucher for a future flight:

Thank you for your patience while you waited for your May 21 flight from Chicago Midway to be “cleared” for departure.  Though we may not be able to control springtime weather or the rate in which Air Traffic Control releases flights, we do have some say in the way we show our appreciation of your valued patronage.  In this regard, I am sending a LUV Voucher that we invite you to apply toward your next Southwest reservation—I hope this gesture will be accepted as our acknowledgement of the overall frustrations created by this situation.

Wow.

They didn’t pass the buck.  They turned a challenge into an opportunity.  And now here I am writing this post and telling you (potential Southwest customers) my story.

That’s the social web at work.

That’s how you walk the walk.

That’s how it’s supposed to be done.

Well done, Southwest.  You’ve strengthened my customer loyalty.