Social media can increase the reach and effectiveness of aviation marketing programs.

For aviation marketers to fully understand the power and potential of social media, they should take a look at how companies in other industries have successfully integrated social media into their marketing mix.

Social media usage in people-to-people marketing is growing. Both small and large companies are finding new ways to connect with their customer base and build relationships.

Every year B-to-B Magazine publishes its Social Media Marketing awards by category. The categories include:

• Integrated
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Viral Video
• Blog
• Closed Community

6 companies to look at:

1. Omni Hotels and Resorts for their integrated use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter to reach over 50,000 people who have responsibility for events or meetings.
2. Mongoose Metrics who grew their Twitter base from 211 to 8,500 in 8 months and counted more than 3,200 mentions in social channels.
3. Global Crossing who leveraged their community and sales reps on LinkedIn to extend brand awareness by sharing blog posts, news releases and expertise.
4. American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for utilizing Facebook as a recruiting tool. In a 3-month period “likes” increased 46% to more than 10,000.
5. Cisco Systems use of viral video to attract over 6000 video views and 500 contacts from interested users.
6. Sybase Inc.’s blogging efforts that increased page views from 1000 in May 2010 to 140,000 by January 2011.

Each of the above companies developed a strategy to reach their audience and went about implementing it using individual or integrated social media platforms.

Benefits to using social media digital platforms include:

• Ability to establish relationships with a broad audience
• Daily analytics to monitor success and course corrections when needed
• Lower cost of customer acquisition compared to outbound marketing
• Speed of implementation
• Ability to monitor what is being said about your company
• Leveraging your knowledge base to assume a thought leader position

Click on the following link for a complete company and category listing report: B-to-B Social Media Marketing Awards