Lessons Learned from Twitter and Pizza

Last Friday was a big day at Yeager Airport, the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, members of the US Senate, and US House, and former President Clinton, all visited West Virginia to pay tribute to Senator Robert C. Byrd at the memorial service held at West Virginia Capital. We also were visited by Mark Knoller, CBS Radio White House Correspondent, who made some tweets about the lack of food, specifically, pizza post security at Yeager Airport.

His tweets attracted some attention, and were retweeted, and Carl Lavin of Forbes.com wrote about the tweets and his blog post was re-tweeted more than 200 times. The next day Aaron Lee of Askaaronlee.com wrote about tweets and those were re-tweeted many times.

So what have we learned from this episode?

1. We have found a method to have tweet mentions forwarded to a few people tasked with monitoring our Social Media presence. A business that fails to respond to Tweets or Facebook posting is like a business that fails to answer its phone in today's environment.

2. During business hours, Tweetdeck is kept open on the computer of the airport receptionist so that we can respond in real time to customer concerns. Ten minutes in Twitter time is like ten hours in real time.

3. We have had discussions with our concessionaire in regard to opening a cafe' post security that will serve food, soft drinks, beer, wine and yes Pizza, in a very visible location. A business can gain valuable insights by listening to what their customers are saying in tweets or other social media postings.

4. I had to figure out how to set up blog and provide my thoughts and insights on Yeager Airport and aviation issues in general. A business that does not proactively interact with its customers using Social Media is missing a great opportunity to effectively communicate with a large segment of its customer base.