As a basis for our comprehensive analysis we have compiled twoTwitter lists of 546 regional and international airports. So we are able to report the development of these airports and by analyzing the most important monthly statistic changes. The following tables show the key indicators followers, friends and status by end of April 2013.

Top 10 airports with the most followers on Twitter

London Heathrow (IATA code: LHR, Twitter screen name: @HeathrowAirport, their Twitter philosophy) is still the airport with the most followers on Twitter. This number is already 9.27% (see Footnote*) of total airport followers. Significant is that at least five out of ten airports are British sites. It is a share of 23.54%.

Maiquetia Airport got the most new followers in April followed by BostonLogan

Venezuela’s Maiquetia Airport (IATA code: CCS, Twitterscreen name: @SVMI) had as to end of April 39,808 followers. They ranked at No. 4 of all 546 airports. They got last month 4,015 new followers (a plus of 11.22%). But the marginal growth turned negative with 1,315 less new followers than in March.

Logan International Airport (IATA code: BOS, Twitter screen name: @BostonLogan) became top with an increase of 3,265 more new followers in comparison to March. Usually this account didn’t got more than a few hundreds per month. We would assume, that the forthcoming marathon event or the tragic terror bombings did have had an impact for Twitterati following BostonLogan. Another untypical increase the airport got in February.

Top 10 airports with the most friends on Twitter

Same than in the month before. The Twitter user @HeathrowAirport is the most linked airport on Twitter! In April they had 148,077 friends (an increase of 734 friends than in previous month). These are 31,88% of all total airport friends. The second airport is Manchester (IATA code: MAN, Twitter screen name: @manairport), which counted “only” 62,405 friends.

@manairport became friend in April with most Twitter users

Apparently @HeathrowAirport followed in the past each new Twitter follower. In April the number of new followers did face only 734 new friends. @manairport headed the Top Airports List of Change of Friends. Every third following in April’s Twittairport World was made by Manchester Airport. But with in 62,405 friends they did have had less than half of LHR’s share.

At Manchester Airport the passengers can get flight information by Twitter. They simply have to send a direct message starting with flight number etc. Ergo, it is neccessary that the passenger and the airport are following each other.

Japan’s Chubu Centrair International Airport (IATA code: NGO, Twitter screen name: @centrairairport) went into our Top 10 list because of the fact, that in the last month they only dropped friends. In April they started to follow new Twitterati.

Top 10 airports with the most public statuses on Twitter

Frankfurt Airport is still heading the list of statuses in April. @Airport_FRA released in total 39,715 statuses. With 7,699 followers FRA ranked at Number 42. The target groups for their statuses are passengers and visitors. The guys from Frankfurt are continously busy day by day. The average number Tweets per day is 48 – 16 more than the second in the list: Depati Amir Airport (IATA code: PGK, Twitter screen name: @PGK_AP2).

BTW PGK is one of the threeIndonesian airports, which were amongst the Top 10 – the other two: Sultan Thaha Airport (IATA code: DJB, Twitter screen name: @DJB_AP2), Sam Ratulangi International Airport (IATA code: MDC, Twitter screen name: @mdc_ap1). But since November 2012 latter, @mdc_ap1, isn’t active on Twitter.

In April Airport_FRA is again the busiest Twitter poster

Frankfurt Airport (IATA: FRA, Twitter screen name: @Airport_FRA) was in April 2013 the busiest Twitter poster with 1,437 public statuses. Airport_FRA published a lot of greetings and gave information about shops and events. @Airport_FRA had only 538 friends. Therefore their amount of monthly statuses is signicant for public conversation. Going through their timeline one could see quite a lot of replies.

More information?

As far you would like to know a bit more about the data or if you would like to ask for the entire list of airports, please leave us a comment or send an e-mail to sven@solterbeck.net.

* Footnote: In April we changed the formula of calculating “Percentage Change”:= Absolute Change/previous month’s volume * 100.

Our colleagues from the Airgate Team asked us yesterday via Twitter: “Lots of Data, but what Conclusions in terms of Airport Customer Engagement?” Via their Twitter account they themselves actually already answered this question: Statistics alone are no appropriate measures to increase customer engagement.

For what an airport stands for?

The first thing is: Who are the customers of an airport? An airport stands for a market place of bringing people or shipments together with airlines and agents. Airports are meeting places, shopping malls, investment objects or real estate companies. On the other sides they are neighbors of citizen and therefore as well employers and public entities. It is obvious that a Social media strategy is a multiple task, considering different target groups, which need a specific address. An airport is also an aggregator of information coming eg. from airlines, agents, passengers, share holders. Drastic events like ashcloud or heavy onset of winter showed us, how important well airport’s Social Media efforts are.

All measures common is the airport’s focus on cult and brand. That means, you don’t need neccessarily a Facebook or Twitter strategy. The success factor for being not lost in Social Media is at least a marketing strategy how to communicate with your target groups.

Before you start, ask yourself these 25 questions!

Jochen Mai, a German Social Media Expert, compiled once some questions about the target group as well as questions about the contents. “At least the most important word in social media, the term social is – that is, the interaction and communication with others. And this happens usually about content.” Jochen’s list goes along with our findings for the Social Media Conference for the Aviation Industry taken place last autumn. A lot of our questions were addressed to this target group and considered today’s Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook. Questions about target groups and content put a light more on your strategy and your thoughts before dealing head over heels with these specific tools.

Coming back to Twitter

Focusing solely on the follower numbers is merely charts or vanity fair. Sure, this number might say something about the creditability: Many listen to this airport. Let us suppose that not all the Followers were purchased. Vice versa following many others, like @HeathrowAirport does, is like giving a bit of this creditabilty back to the community.

The key for customer engagement is a matter of semantic (the meaning behind the Tweet), communication (question and answer, time to repsond), stakeholders (see before with pax, firms, residents etc.) and strategy.

Only experience gives a real sense of customer engagement. Typical fields of work of social media tools are e.g. proximity marketing, destination marketing, customer care or collaboration.

We observe that airports advertise in communication with target groups already specifically with Facebook or Twitter screen names. To get “accurately” the followers, which are needed for its social media strategy.

The following KPIs can be derived – in terms of Twitter:

• Using the example: quotes of questions and answers (semantic analysis)
• Time to respond
• Number of tweets within a communication
• Origin of Followers
• Rates: E.g. Tweet/pax ratio, Tweet/flight movement at a time ratio
• Number of Retweets and Favourites
• Queries for mentions eg. through IBM Cognos BI system
• Klout Social Media Analytics score

The Twitter API isn’t enough dedicated to analysis, since it limits the data and the request. For getting Followers, Friends and Status numbers it’s ok. So our monthly evaluation is initially just a competition (“Who has the most?”) and occasionally – from sporting ambition – an invitation to improve the Twitter engagement – as part of its strategy. So an airport promised me, to increase the number of his tweets in April. They are encouraged to communicate with passengers and to stress even more the airport’s services. But at the end we can say, that we are working on some topics to get more information out of Twitter.

Picture credit: (C) by Orlando Florin Rosu – Fotolia.com, adapted by Persitence.

Nota bene: Lost in Social Media? Sceptical? Be encouraged!

Our founder Sven Solterbeck mentioned once in a World Routes note, while he presented his thoughts on how companies sceptical of social media can see the benefit: “You can not run away from Social Media.” It is essential, not whether to do but how to do. You cannot avoid that people are talking about your company. With everything an airport or airline is going to public they will be noticed in social media. Sometimes this exceed the view on passengers. Target group of an airport for example are airlines, handler, destinations, authorities and brand embassadors. So what might be the reason for being sceptical on social media? Often the use of social media is a result of a certain kind of appropriation. It is not like that, that you could go through stream an messages comming with Twitter, reading bit for bit. You would be lost. You would like to get rid of this. The catching of information is by the way and selective. Experts are used to get aware accidentially of the buzz and trends. Monitoring tools help to categorize this stream of information.

Question 1: Number of Followers vs Number of Tweets – What is more relevant?

With Twitter user @LrdBlackAdder we ran yesterday into an interesting discussion. This user calls himself “Passionate about ManchesterMegaCity”. He mentioned, that “MAN = .00291 LHR = .00210 Manchester attracts more followers as a % of paxthoughput per year!”

Our answer was: “The Tweet/pax ratio is indeed an asset.” We will keep an eye on this soon.” As well @ChopinAirport mentioned it indirectly to us. A lot of airports are more social media active than follower numbers show.” Lord Adder added: “Also being the busiest Titter is significant IF its announcing new services/routes/frequency and equipment!”

Question 2: It is possible that pax use twitter to air grievances MORE than the airports do to promote/market new services?

@LrdBlackAdder obviously addressed this question due to a subjective impression, that passengers drive the communication. Rather than airports take the chance to comunicate with their stakeholders. We said: “Interesting question. We would say: yes. Statistically it’s almost impossible to check semantically tweets to learn about kind of communication. But social media is promoting, grievance, proximity marketing, collaboration, HR tool. But actually we’re thinking on how to catch the semantic from tweets to learn a bit more on airport’s communication strategies.”

In another Tweet Adder said: “Very few seem to target Twitter media outlets in same way they issue Email press releases … seems very odd to me !”

Question 3: What do you mean by “Friend” status. Who is a friend on Twitter?

Friends means: The number of users an account (eg. @ChopinAirport) is following (AKA their “followings”). Friend is out of the nomenclature from Twitter Official Programming Interface (API).

As a basis for our comprehensive analysis we have compiled a Twitter list of 500 regional and international airports. So we are able to report the development of these airports and by analyzing the most important monthly statistic changes. The following tables* show the key indicators followers, friends and status by end of March 2013.

Top 10 airports with the most followers on Twitter

London Heathrow (IATA code: LHR, Twitter screen name: @HeathrowAirport) is still the airport with the most followers on Twitter. This number is already 9.66% of total airport followers. Significant is that at least five out of ten airports are British sites. It is a share of 21.88%.

HeathrowAirport got the most new followers in March

LHR had in March as well the most absolute change of amount of followers, plus 5.657 Twitter users (529 more than in January). They are also Number One at the top list of friends and with 526 statuses they ranked at Number Eight of the status list. Mainly @HeathrowAirport was conversating with other passengers or airport visitors. In few cases they informed about sales offers and events at the airport. Passengers and visitors are obviously the Twitter target group.

Top 10 airports with the most friends on Twitter

Here the Twitter user @HeathrowAirport was as well the most linked airport on Twitter with 147,343 friends (7,207 friends more than in previous month). These are 33,52% of all total airport friends. The second airport is Manchester (IATA code: MAN, Twitter screen name: manairport) counted “only” 59,171 friends.

HeathrowAirport became friend in March with most Twitter users

The high number of absolute change might be an indicator, saying that LHR is conversating directly with a lot of Twitter users. Nevertheless with nearly 17 tweets per day @HeathrowAirport sents out a significant number of public statuses and answers with general interest.

Top 10 airports with the most public statuses on Twitter

Frankfurt Airport is still heading the list of statuses in March. Airport_FRA released in total 38,278 statuses. With 7,354 followers FRA ranked at Number 42. The target groups for their statuses are passengers and visitors.

Malpensa Airport (@mxp_arrivals) was one of the Top Twitter poster in the past, with more than 34,000 statuses (plus around 900 per month). Obviously they stopped their arrival annoucement service. The Milano Airport Group itself can be found in Twitter as @MiAirports.

In March Airport_FRA is back on Top List of the busiest Twitter poster

Frankfurt airport (IATA: FRA, Twitter screen name: @Airport_FRA) was in March 2013 the busiest Twitter poster with 1,299 public statuses. Airport_FRA published a lot of greetings and gave information about shops and events. @Airport_FRA had only 458 friends. Therefore their amount of monthly statuses is signicant for public conversation. Going through their timeline one could see quite a lot of replies.

How UK airports use Twitter to better communicate with travelers

A few days ago the travel portal Skift posted an article about the unparalleled commitment by British airports in terms of usage of social media. “Tweeting airports is not a new thing; most registered their accounts back in 2009. Now, with tens of thousands of followers, Twitter has become key component of airport’s communication infrastructure”, editor Samantha Shankman wrote. “Passengers reach out to airports with information requests including the terminal of a specific airline, retail and restaurant locations, car parking, and weather delays.” On their website Skift has launched an online analysis tool on social media airports.

We do have a “few” airports more in our Airport list but the advantage of Skift is, that they take a look as well on Klout, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. “To see how Airport brands respond to their customers, check out the Conversations view.”

@BLQairport and where are we?

“BLQairport and where are we?”, our Bologna airport mate Alberto asked today on LinkedIn, with a link to the interesting article of Skift. So Alberto, here are our numbers for BLQ:

With 234 statuses in March they are not too bad. @BLQAirport ranked on No. 28 of 500 Twittairports. These are in average eight Tweets per day. Bologna is giving the audience a good feeling about the airport. As far people let the world know, that they are or were around the site, @BLQAirport responds friendly with greetings. Questions on service are also welcomed.

More information?

As far you would like to know a bit more about the data or if you would like to ask for the entire list of airports, please leave us a comment or send an e-mail to sven@solterbeck.net.

* Footnote: The tables are format with German digit point and decimal comma instead of international digit comma and decimal point.

A Twitter list of regional and international airports is the basis for our monthly analysis. Taadaa … Today we have 500 regional and international airports in our Twittariport List.

Refer to my two comments, where I put the data tables in.

As a basis for our comprehensive analysis we have compiled a Twitter list of 462 regional and international airports. So we are able to report the development of these airports and by analyzing the most important monthly statistic changes. The following tables* show the key indicators followers, friends and status by end of February 2013.

Top 10 airports with the most followers on Twitter

London Heathrow (IATA code: LHR, Twitter screen name: @HeathrowAirport) is still the airport with the most followers on Twitter. This number is already 9.86% of total airport followers. This number dropped slightly, because of considering 37 – mostly newly discovered – accounts. Significant is that at least five out of ten airports are British sites. It is a share of 21.86%. This share slightly dropped due to the same reason we mentioned before.

HeathrowAirport got the most new followers in February

LHR had in February as well the most absolute change of amount of followers, plus 5.128 Twitter users (5.249 less than in February). They are also Number One at the top list of friends and with 444 statuses they ranked at Number Nine of the status list. Mainly @HeathrowAirport was conversating with other passengers or airport visitors. In few cases they informed about sales offers and events at the airport. Passengers and visitors are obviously the Twitter target group.

Top 10 airports with the most friends on Twitter

Here the Twitter user @HeathrowAirport was as well the most linked airport on Twitter with 140,136 friends (6,798 friends more than in previous month). These are 33,43% of all total airport friends. The second airport is Manchester (IATA code: MAN, Twitter screen name: manairport) counted “only” 55,562 friends.

HeathrowAirport became friend in February with most Twitter users

The high number of absolute change might be an indicator, saying that LHR is conversating directly with a lot of Twitter users. Nevertheless with around 15 tweets per day @HeathrowAirport sents out a significant number of public statuses and answers with general interest.

Top 10 airports with the most public statuses on Twitter

Frankfurt Airport is still heading the list of statuses in February. Airport_FRA released in total 36,979 statuses. With 6,963 followers FRA ranked at Number 42. The target groups for their statuses are passengers and visitors.

In February Airport_FRA is back on Top List of the busiest Twitter poster

Frankfurt airport (IATA: FRA, Twitter screen name: @Airport_FRA) is back on the top. They were in February 2013 the busiest Twitter poster with 1,306 public statuses. Airport_FRA published a lot of greetings and gave information about shops and events. @Airport_FRA had only 450 friends. Therefore their amount of monthly statuses is signicant for public conversation. Going through their timeline one could see quite a lot of replies.

More information?

As far you would like to know a bit more about the data or if you would like to ask for the entire list of airports, please leave us a comment or send an e-mail to sven@solterbeck.net.

* Footnote: The tables are format with German digit point and decimal comma instead of international digit comma and decimal point.

Today we have added @sxmtweets to our Twitter list of regional and international airports. St. Maarten Airport took off with its Twitter activity in August 2011. They released ten Tweets. They are following 15 friends and being followed by 43 Twitter users.

A Twitter list of regional and international airports is the basis for our monthly analysis. Today we have added 26 more airports.

Currently we are working on a comprehensive analysis on the Twitter accounts of worldwide airports. As a basis for this project we have compiled a Twitter list of 435 regional and international airports. We are continuing our monthly series of articles by reporting the development of Twitter accounts of these airports and by analyzing at this point the most important monthly statistic changes. The following tables* show the key indicators followers, friends and status by end of January 2013. Due to some internal circumstances the period of January was recorded from 03 JAN 2013 til 31 JAN 2013.

Top 10 airports with the most followers on Twitter

London Heathrow (IATA code: LHR, Twitter screen name: @HeathrowAirport) is still the airport with the most followers on Twitter. This number is already 10.13% of total airport followers. Significant is that at least five out of ten airports are British sites. It is a share of 22.19%. This share slightly increased in comparison to December 2012.

HeathrowAirport got the most new followers in January

LHR had in January as well the most absolute change of amount of followers, plus 10.377 Twitter users (4.490 more than in December). They are also Number One at the top list of friends and with 908 statuses they ranked at Number Four of the status list. Mainly @HeathrowAirport was conversating with other passengers or airport visitors. In few cases they informed about sales offers and events at the airport. Passengers and visitors are obviously the Twitter target group.

Top 10 airports with the most friends on Twitter

Here the Twitter user @HeathrowAirport was as well the most linked airport on Twitter with 133,338 friends (11,753 friends more than in previous month). These are 34.06% of all total airport friends. The second airport is Manchester (IATA code: MAN, Twitter screen name: manairport) counted “only” 52,242 friends.

HeathrowAirport became friend in January with most Twitter users

The high number of absolute change might be an indicator, saying that LHR is conversating directly with a lot of Twitter users. Nevertheless with around 30 tweets per day @HeathrowAirport sents out a significant number of public statuses and answers with general interest.

Top 10 airports with the most public statuses on Twitter

Frankfurt Airport is still heading the list of statuses in January. Airport_FRA released in total 35,673 statuses. With 6,668 followers FRA ranked at Number 42. The target groups for their statuses are passengers and visitors.

FansOfChangi was the busiest Twitter poster in January

Changi Singapore Airport (IATA: SIN, Twitter screen name: @FansOfChangi) was in January 2013 the busiest Twitter poster with 1,345 public statuses. FansOfChangi gave information about shops and events. Therefore their amount of monthly statuses is signicant for public conversation. Going through their timeline one could see quite a lot of replies. Significantly @FansOfChangi kept an eye on tweets around the world, some of them they retweeted. They obviously provided a friendly image of the aviation.

More information?

As far you would like to know a bit more about the data or if you would like to ask for the entire list of airports, please leave us a comment or send an e-mail to sven@solterbeck.net.

* Footnote: The tables are format with German digit point and decimal comma instead of international digit comma and decimal point.