JetBlue Best Practice Guide for Twitter
At JetBlue, our mission is to inspire humanity — both in air and on the ground. We are committed to providing excellent customer service. “We’re all about people and being on social media is just a natural extension of that. It’s no different than any other part of the airline” (Cox, 2019).
Voice and Tone
JetBlue’s voice on social media is casual and friendly yet professional. Because people often view travel as a stressful experience, we want to flip the script and ensure that our voice represents travel as easy and fun (Del Gigante, n.d.). We like our tone to be lighthearted and upbeat to everyone, customers and competitors alike. JetBlue aims to maintain a consistent voice and tone on Twitter to show our customers that we care about them through genuine, positive interactions with us.
Customer Service
At JetBlue, we have a team of dedicated customer service professionals to help customers who tweet us questions. The JetBlue Twitter account averages a 10-minute response time (Cox, 2017). As a company that prides itself on putting people first, our goal is to consistently go above and beyond with our customer service on Twitter. Our number priority is that our customers feel valued, supported and satisfied (Del Gigante, n.d.), especially when responding to customers who are experiencing issues. In all of our responses to customers, JetBlue is open and sincere.
When it comes to dealing with negativity online about things we can’t control, like extreme weather and its consequences on travel, we have to accept it. It’s important to empathize with customers’ frustrations, inform them and try to help whenever possible (Cox, 2017). When situations like these arise, use Twitter to keep everyone updated on what to expect.
Posting Schedule
Twitter is a fast-paced social media app. The average lifespan of a Tweet is just 18 minutes (Hill, 2022). The industry average is three to four Tweets per day. It is recommended that businesses post between one and five Tweets a day (McLachlan & Cohen, 2021). JetBlue tries to follow these guidelines. We usually average two tweets per day. It is necessary that we post on Twitter at least once a day.
As for what times to post, JetBlue posts our first tweet of the day around 9 a.m. because this is when we see the highest engagement (Keutelian, 2022). After that, we spread out the rest of our Tweets throughout the day to guarantee that we are not overwhelming customers with content or unnecessarily cluttering up their timeline.
Content
JetBlue’s purpose on Twitter is to create content that “customers want to read, know and share” (Del Gigante, n.d.). Our tweets contain interesting and educational information for the benefit of our customers. We strive to keep our messages customer-focused and culturally relevant. It’s important to us that our customers are inspired by our content.
We want to make sure that our Twitter account gives off wholesome vibes. One way we achieve this is by asking customers to share their stories and experiences with us. Also, we like to put up polls for our customers to vote on various topics related to travel. Furthermore, we like to include jokes or one-question quizzes in our Tweets. Our Tweets often feature witty humor, puns, word play, memes and emojis to create engagement for our followers. We like to have fun but not go overboard with it.
Most of our Tweets include some type of visual component. For visuals, we like to focus on quality. This means that all visuals should be high resolution, relevant, aesthetically appealing and creative. Our Twitter account offers an array of visuals, including short videos, GIFs, graphics, images and memes. Beyond displaying our planes, products and services, we incorporate a lot of content about holidays, humor, deals/specials, employee activity, customer spotlights, gorgeous views and more to create a sense of community.
We strive for our content and language to always be inclusive. For example, we engage the Spanish-speaking community, the Black community, the LGBTQ+ community and more by ensuring that we talk directly to them, address their needs and celebrate their holidays and special events.
Other Key Best Practices
- Prioritize social listening
- Customer care
- Use relevant, trending hashtags
- Retweet and quote tweets
- Interact with other brands
Helpful Tools
Sprout Chart — Best times to post on Twitter
Analytics
JetBlue doesn’t respond to everything blindly. Instead, we focus on value when responding to tweets. “We recognize how important it is to measure the ROI of our social media efforts, but we actually make a point of not measuring response rate on Twitter,” (Cox, 2017). This way, employees don’t feel pressured to hit a response goal by sending quick, sloppy or unnecessary responses to every tweet that we get. We want our employees to engage with purpose, so that dialogues are organic and natural. We focus on adding value to the conversation and connecting with our customers.
Events
During events, it’s important that JetBlue enacts all of the best practices explained in this guide. For example, during the 2023 Super Bowl, we tweeted a few times with content focused on connecting the event with our company. Also, for Valentine’s Day, we tweeted about a rom com movie for our passengers to watch on their flights.
References
Cox, L. (2017, October 20). Delighting people in 140 characters: An inside look at JetBlue’s customer service success. HubSpot. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/jetblue-customer-service-twitter?hubs_content=blog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing%2Ftwitter-best-brands&hubs_content-cta=read%20this%20blog%20post%20for%20a%20deeper%20dive%20into%20JetBlue%27s%20unique%20Twitter%20strategy
Cox, L. (2019, October 9). 10 of the best brands on Twitter (and why they’re so successful). HubSpot. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-best-brands
Del Gigante, J. (n.d.). How JetBlue has become a social media standout. mdg. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://www.mdgsolutions.com/learn-about-multi-location-marketing/how-jetblue-has-become-a-social-media-standout/
Hill, C. (2022, August 25). How often to post on social media. Sprout Social. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-often-to-post-on-social-media/#post-TW
[JetBlue Twitter profile] (n.d). Twitter. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://twitter.com/JetBlue
Keutelian, M. (2022, July 29). The best times to post on social media in 2022. Sprout Social. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/#twitter-times
McLachlan, S. & Cohen, B. (2021, June 16). How often to post to social media in 2023. Hootsuite. Retrieved February 19, 2023, from https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-often-to-post-on-social-media/
