Saturday, April 18, 2009

twitter

Its a great weather for a Sunday to simply laze and just relax. Went for a farewell get together on Friday night which is always a good excuse for a good night out on most nights. Found out from the departing colleague that there were other people in the office (herself included) that were stalking my twitter as well without me knowing which is surprising. I mean, who would want to be bothered with what I have to say? My Twit account is currently being fully utilised to convey messages to a certain someone prowling my blog and social media channels.

I think Twitter is being overrated as its not the only successful tool. Yes, it is definitely up there for short blurbs but does not convey the full tone of the message that you want to get across. As a stand alone, Twit is like a one legged marathon runner. You can only get so far with it. Or more like a picture without substance. Its nice but it doesn't fully deliver what the picture means.

Been tinkering with it a bit in how AirAsia will fully utilise this tool in reaching out to our guest base. I think we need to extend the role of Twitter beyond just marketing campaign announcements and the usual tix giveaways that other airlines and other companies are doing. There must be more creative ways in engaging the audiences hence the two account strategy for AirAsia. One using AirAsiaDotCom and the other, the AirAsiaBlog channel. I think is important to have separate voices to address the different niches. Again, this is broad strategy. Where do we go from here?

We know the obvious that its important to get the strategy clear before integrating these with the other tools like facebook and the blogs for instance. Don't believe any company has been daring enough to use coordinated efforts across all their social media platforms but AirAsia is definitely in a strong position to reach out in synergies with all our platforms. Which is both exciting when we are bold and daring enough to think out of the box. Think the days ahead for social media in AirAsia will definitely be interesting as we seek to go where no organisation or individual has gone before.

On a lighter note, my baby is finally on twitter which is fantastic (if shes still into it after a while :P). I think its evident that new fads will come and go but its simply amazing that the new age media keeps giving me more tools to be creative in my life and in getting what I want to say out there and more importantly, straight to her heart.

PS. Baby, don't ever let them take away your comp and your handphone...ever....

3 comments:

Siew Wan Siong said...

Hey Derek, I'm not sure why you are seeing twitter in such a superficial manner..
Perhaps you may not know this, but let me enlighten you with something about twitter that makes it so valuable.
So yes, when google landed, it was such a brilliant idea to have all of human's resources summed up in one domain page.
And although twitter does the same, but at a micro scale, the real factor that twitter succeeded over google is the TIME factor in their twitter search engine.
With twitter's search engine "http://search.twitter.com", a person is being able to get hold of 1st hand information out from the horses mouth, albeit the lack of complete info like what google provides.
More often, with 1st hand info, although scarce, proved useful to be a few steps ahead of your competitor.

Go try it out, type "AirAsia" into it and I bet you can do wonders to turn an unsatisfied customers into happy ones, instantly.
Good luck!
=)




Benjamin Siew Wan Siong

Derek "thewrecktan" Tan said...

The point is not that Twitter is superficial but rather, the depth of Twitter alone is not enough to sustain a message. Twitter is a cool tool but it simply does not end there. It is in crafting a message in the right mindframe and not only relying on one social media tool but a hybrid of all to maximise the impact. Companies simply have not done this before by thinking in individual parts. The challenge is how do we at AirAsia use the totality of 'weapons' we have in synchronising a proper message channel online with the best bang for our buck.

Siew Wan Siong said...

Derek,
If that's the case, then I'll agree with you. Like in any cases, one needs an arsenal of knowledge to build a solid foundation in his/her career. Nevertheless, on the Tweeter part, I think it's a very good source for getting traffic into one's blog without paying big bucks for advertising.
If you wanna target Malaysian market, check out www.pacmee.com
It's a pretty cool web2.0 widget similiar to twitter, but with extras.
Get your AirAsia programming team together. I'm pretty sure you guys can come out something much better in terms of innovation.
Let me give you some head start.
Look for Wee Yam Chuan, a programming staff in AirAsia.
He's a good programmer, but lacks solid idea and a creative house.
And I think you have the foresight to make things happen, so all you need now is a real team and time.
For now, the rest is up to you.
Good luck.




Benjamin Siew Wan Siong

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