Southwest Airlines Social Media Audit
By Marisa Berger
Southwest Airlines has a very strong social media presence, having accounts on four different platforms (Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok). They have many different kinds of posts and have geared them towards the audiences on each of the apps.
On Instagram, Southwest Airlines has almost a million followers, clocking in at 962k. They post both photos and Reels. The more popular posts are photos, but their Reels are also successful. Their most recent post is an Instagram Reel and has 4,766 likes. One thing that they should be doing more of is posting landscape photos that were taken from their planes. Instagram is a platform where many people like to post and look at aesthetic photos. If they posted more of these professional-looking photos, they may gain a larger following.
Southwest has the most followers on their Facebook account with 6.1 million followers. They have many different types of posts on the platform, including photos, videos, and text posts. Their top posts are their photos and text posts. A lot of their posts are relatable content for people who are traveling. These posts are heavily geared towards the Facebook audience and seem to do very well because of this. The latest post was a relatable travel post and it seems to have done well. They do a good job of marketing their posts to an older audience that mostly uses Facebook.
X
Southwest Airlines also has a popular account on X. They have 2.1 million followers on this app. The majority of their posts on this platform are text, but they also have a few photos posted as well. They could also add some more videos to their feed which can break up the photos and text. Their last post on X is from January 9, which means that they aren’t posting very much here. It is from a promotional campaign that they were doing to give people cheaper flights. Their posts seem to do well on X though, even if they aren’t posting very frequently on the platform.
TikTok
Southwest’s TikTok account is their least followed account with 305.9k followers. This doesn’t mean that their posts aren’t successful though. They have many videos that have gained over a million views, with one TikTok that has 26 million views and almost 5 million likes. They have a total of 12.2 million likes throughout their entire page. Their latest post takes a jab at other airlines for increasing baggage fees. This is something that sets them apart from their competitors and they are taking advantage of this.
