Social media monitoring is necessary in a crisis

As you know, I've been following the Qantas/A380/Rolls-Royce engine debacle since it began. I noted Qantas had a pretty bad crisis communications response. It didn't utilize its social media channels (ignoring customers who tried to contact them through it) and allowed the media to guide the conversation.

Rolls-Royce, in my opinion, got off easy in the mainstream media outlets. Besides frequent flyers and airline industry people, the average consumer doesn't understand engines come from different suppliers. Say Rolls-Royce engine to your best friend and he(she)'ll think you're talking about a car. Now, on the business side with airline executives and airplane manufacturers, Rolls-Royce needs to cover its bases.

Well, it appears Rolls-Royce is monitoring the social media conversation during this crisis. Windfall Media, of London, seems to be compiling mentions of Rolls-Royce. How do I deduce this? One of the referring links to my blog came from a sub-domain of Windfall Media, aptly named 'Rolls-Royce.' According to Windfall's web site they, "help companies manage opportunities, risks and threats to their brands online."

Now I can't say with 100 percent certainty this is exactly what Windfall Media is doing for Rolls-Royce, but it seems very, very likely.

Rolls-Royce, you get a thumbs up from me for monitoring the social media conversation. It's clear you're serious about your reputation want to be on the ball. A lot of companies doubt the power of social media and end up destroyed (Cooks Source anyone?). Rolls-Royce has a lot on its plate now, since Qantas says 40 engines need replacement. Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa will probably need replacements too, since they use the same engine on their A380s. That's several million dollars down the toilet.

I want to see how Rolls-Royce and Windfall Media use their social media monitoring in this crisis. Let's see what happens next.

Engines need to stop picking on Qantas

As if things weren't going bad for Qantas already, birds took out an engine on one of its planes today. Talk about unlucky.