Southwest’s Social Media Presence
Joely Zappia
Southwest is an airline that runs through 42 of the United States and Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, and the Carribean internationally. They’re known to be one of the more affordable airlines with outstanding customer service. With that being said, they still have plenty of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and potential opportunities like any other company. Their social media plays a crucial part in gaining an audience in such a competitive field.
Southwest’s instagram (@southwestair) is a verified account with 961,000 followers. While this is a huge accomplishment, it’s actually their second least followed social media account. Their content on this platform has the widest range from funny reels to photos of their planes and passengers flying. A lot of the pictures they share are actually from customers who took a cool picture on a flight and the link to send one in is in their bio. They also share plenty of advertisments and promotions on their profile, it was even their latest post from earlier today. They shared a collaboration with Omni Hotels giving away the opporunity to fly and catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse. But, believe it or not that’s not their top content. The posts with the most engagement are typically humorous or emotion reels. They would have what I would consider to be a very aethetically pleasing profile. Their iconic colors blue, yellow, and red are clearly demonstrated and cohesive throughout the feed. My only recommendation for them would be to improve engagement in their comment section and on other profile’s. Since they are so well known for their customer service and do a great job of responding to people on other platforms I think this would be a great way to improve connecting with their social media auidence one step more.
On Facebook Southwest has their biggest following with a whopping 6.1 million. As a verified account they get lots of exposure on there and capitalize mostly on a very “dad joke” sense of humor that does very well on the site. The content consists of plenty of reels, images/ memes, and tweets. Thier most recent post (see below) was a light joke poking at how other airlines are increasing their carry on prices but on Southwest yiu can fly with two bags for free. I think the way they’re running this account is working extremely well for them and is smart considering the age demographic on Facebook is mostly adult.
X
Their X account is their second most followed and verified platform. This suprised me a bit because they don’t post as consistent as they do on other platforms. I noticed a trend of posting every few days and the not for two weeks or so. With that being said, their engagement on the site is huge. They’re constantly getting tons of reposts, likes, and comments and often respond to followers in the comments and on their posts. Almost all the content on their X account is funny, relatable, or an advertisment. I would suggest that Southwest picks up how much they post on here because I imagine the platform to be huge for them if they did.
TikTok
Southwest’s TikTok is their least followed and verified platform. This is actually in my favorite of all Soithwest’s social media because I think it shows their “personality”. They do a great job at expressing through their videos humor, emotion, why they do what they do, and how they can help. They love to respond to videos made about them whether it’s just to laugh at or even offer something in return to a loyal customer or one who was done wrong. I think it would be in their best interest to really market these videos and share them on every platform. Their most recent video was one trolling the other airlines for raising their bag fee price, a spin off of their tweet on Facebook.