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Kingfisher Airlines has joined the Twitter.com bandwagon to carry out conversation with its target audience. It has created a presence on Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging website, at twitter.com/FlyKingfisher.
For the uninitiated, Twitter is a free service which enables its registered members to send and read other members’ updates or short text-based messages known as ‘tweets’, of up to 140 characters in length. Members can share URL’s of web pages as well.
A member can post messages which will be displayed on his profile page, but to receive messages from other members or friends, a member has to follow or subscribe to their Twitter accounts. This way, members can follow and start receiving messages from each other. Members can send and receive ‘tweets’ through mobile phones as well.
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“With the launch of FlyKingfisher on Twitter, we hope to start a dialogue and actively participate in conversations with our stakeholders,” Vikram Malhotra, vice-president, marketing, Kingfisher Airlines, says in an e-mail response to afaqs!.
He adds, “Through Twitter, we are targeting consumers or guests of Kingfisher Airlines who would like to stay connected with the latest news and updates on the airline, as well as those who want to be fully updated on their travel with us.”
The company will be sending messages related to news, latest promotions, new sector launches, airport and weather updates to its consumers.
Kingfisher Airlines has already posted about 15 messages on its Twitter profile. Some of the messages read, ‘Tired of taking same airline to Colombo? Fly Five Star directly from Bangalore or Chennai to Colombo daily’; ‘All Kingfisher Airlines flights out of Delhi will be departing out of Terminal 1-D effective 19th Apr ‘09’; and ‘Kingfisher Airlines launches new route: Mumbai – Vadodara’.
Twitter.com, which received about 1.2 lakh unique visitors in India as per comScore data released in February 2009, is still nascent in the country and not many brands are using it.
Some of the brands which have started experimenting with Twitter are Zapak.com, Naukri.com, Business Line, The Times of India, Mint and DNA, but these are still striving to get traction on it.
For instance, Zapak.com, which is available at Twitter.com/Zapak_News, has only 40 subscribers or followers. The Times of India’s page at Twitter.com/times_of_india is subscribed by 257 members. Naukri.com at Twitter.com/Naukri is followed only by 290 members, while 296 members have subscribed to Mint at Twitter.com/livemint. Business Line, the business daily newspaper from The Hindu, has 934 people following it at Twitter.com/businessline.
The twitter account of Kingfisher Airlines is already subscribed by about 50 members.
Brands using Twitter to converse with and inform consumers is not an India specific phenomenon. Some of the brands which are using Twitter effectively in the US include Dell, JetBlue Airways, Pizza Hut, Samsung Mobile, Ford Motors and Kodak.
One of the Dell profiles on Twitter, at Twitter.com/delloutlet, is subscribed by more than four lakh members. JetBlue Airways, a low-cost airline, is followed by 4.3 lakh members at Twitter.com/jetblue.
Twitter.com received 9.3 million unique visitors in the US in March 2009, according to comScore data.
© 2010 afaqs!From Mahua, Fri 26 Jun 2009 04:26:35 PM Among the consumer brands in India, the online businesses are comfortable with social media and many of them are on Twitter. The "offline" brands either are still unaware of the potential or are afraid that presence on Twitter will open Pandora's box for them. Kingfisher has shown how refreshing brand interactions can be on Twitter. Another "offline" Indian brand that's showing the way is Reliance World (www.twitter.com/relianceworld).
From Prerna, Fri 01 May 2009 07:13:49 PM You forgot to mention Nokia here.
Nokia actively using Twitter and we would see more engagmenet from nokia on Twitter in the coming days.
From Sunil Agarwal, Fri 01 May 2009 01:18:16 PM Really impressed with the quality of research and Kapil's insight.
Yes, I believe Twitter will cross a million users in India by year-end.
