Social Media Can Influence High-Stakes Business

In a battle against Southwest Airlines this year for control of two gates at Dallas Love Field airport, Virgin America launched a social media blitz using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, plus an Internet petition to local government officials. The conflict started when the Department of Justice told buy instagram likes American Airlines it had to give up its positions at Love Field before it could acquire US Airways. Southwest already controlled 16 of the airport's 20 gates, and Virgin wanted in. The airline pleaded its case to the DoJ, which would weigh in as it sorted out the competitive landscape. But the final decision was up to Dallas city leaders and it was tough to fight Southwest, a hometown player. So Virgin took its case to the public. Virgin's "Free Love Field" campaign asked customers on Facebook and Twitter to make supportive posts and to sign and share an online petition. Virgin emailed its top frequent flyers directly to do the same. The airline also publicized its pledge to donate $20 to a local school group for every ticket it booked out of Love Field on a designated day. And Virgin enlisted its founder, Richard Branson, to put out a YouTube video of the celebrity executive writing a cheeky love letter to the airport. "No one should have a monopoly on your love," he said. "My virile young planes yearn for your runways." In one week, more than 20,000 people signed a petition on Change.org urging Dallas to let Virgin fly at Love Field.

World’s heaviest social media users, study finds

Research by the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at NUI Galway finds that 99 per cent of journalists in Ireland use social media for work. The study shows that Twitter is by far the most popular social media service among journalists in Ireland, with 92 per cent of respondents using it on a weekly basis. buy instagram likes A similar survey on the use of social media among journalists in various countries (which did not include Ireland) put UK journalists as the most regular users of micro-blogging platforms. That study reported that 92 per cent of UK journalists use microblogging platforms, such as Twitter, in a typical week. The UK was followed by France at 91 per cent, Canada at 89 per cent, Australia at 85 per cent and Sweden at 77 per cent. This figure was 79 per cent for the US. The new Irish survey finds that journalists in Ireland come in par with the UK as the heaviest users of social media, and in particular Twitter.

What I am not going to cover Social Media

I am not going to cover how to build a social media plan in this article- I am going to assume that you already have a presence on your social networks of choice- perhaps Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Google+. I am also going to assume that you have a website with a blog. One of the big advantages in posting to social networks is in driving traffic back to your website and showing that you are an expert in your field. buy likes for instagram Also, I’m not going to include any of the main social media management tools such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Sendible or SproutSocial. That’s a more complex decision, since you’ll need to decide depending on which social networks you want to manage from one central place, how many people are going to be managing your social channels and what budget you can justify. However don’t worry, I do cover two tools that will help you manage your social channels very effectively- so much so that you may even be able to cope without the social media management tools I mentioned above!