Listen up JetBlue: if you've got a corporate blog, use it... or lose it!
JetBlue CEO David Neeleman launched a blog in September 2006. He calls it a FlightLog.
But... OOPS. He hasn't posted a new entry since Feb. 1st, despite the uproar from angry passengers over the dozens of flights cancelled because of last week's winter storm.
A couple of thoughts: I looked more closely at Neeleman's FlightLog and realized that technically it really isn't a "blog" I.e. you can't link to individual entries, you can't leave a comment, and trackbacks aren't enabled for other bloggers who might want to link to Neeleman's postings.
There's also no RSS feed.
That's a problem and a puzzling one. Why suggest this is a blog - an interactive, easily discoverable (via RSS) Web page - when it isn't?
The bigger problem, of course, is the lapse in posting. One of the biggest faux pas for a CEO blogger is silence during a crisis. Let me say that more charitably, the biggest challenge for a CEO blogger is what to say in a crisis. But ya gotta say something.
Meanwhile, mainstream media is eating up JetBlue's predicament with a stream of stories.
Ouch
C'mon guys. This isn't that hard to do. Why ignore a channel that you've got set up (although, as noted above, not set up properly) whereby you can communicate directly with customers?
Update
OK, JetBlue's corporate comms team appears to be struggling to get this right. They've created and posted to the corporate site a YouTube video interview with CEO Neeleman talking about a Customer Bill of Rights. But they still don't quite get how this works. Hey guys, you need to embed the video into his "blog."
[Via Cathy Taylor on AdFreak]
My thoughts exactly, Debbie! At least a quick post every week or two to say "Hi, real busy right now, but I hope you're having a good time, maybe tell us how your last flight was", etc. So sad to see the buzz potential wasted.
Posted by: Easton Ellsworth | February 21, 2007 at 10:49 AM
We agreed... we even suggested that they needed to use social media tools earlier on during the crisis...
Here is our post on the topic:
http://www.affariedge.com/blog/2007/02/19/jet-blew-how-a-great-airline-handled-a-public-relations-catastrophe/
Posted by: Jim Johnson | February 21, 2007 at 01:40 PM
Interesting blog entry! That is the first I have heard about David Neeleman's blog. I do appreciate their use of "new media" with the YouTube apology. I actually had a really interesting experience with JetBlue this week as well. I wrote a blog titled "Why I Still Like JetBlue"
Check it out at:
http://thenierenblog.typepad.com
Posted by: AndreaN | February 21, 2007 at 03:01 PM
I thought the company had done a pretty good job of responding the public criticism on TV, the customer bill of rights etc. However, Debbie I think JetBlue does need to rethink its blogging strategy as you suggest. Maybe the CEO is not the right person to blog at the moment, perhaps a rethink and something a little more like Southwest's blog would be in order.
Posted by: John Cass | February 24, 2007 at 06:14 AM