Facebook Fan Numbers Aren't Nearly as Important as Airports May Think

(MoneyWatch)  At least ten million times a day (maybe a slight exaggeration), articles come out touting the importance of Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools. While I don't disagree that there are good opportunities to use these tools for airports, the metrics some folks pay the most attention to are actually the least useful.

For example, let's take a look at a list compiled by Simplifying and Airgate. They start out by simply measuring the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers to determine which airports are the "top" airports using those tools. This is later refined to look at a ratio of Fans/Followers to passengers using the airport.

Seems fine, right? But there's one problem. Just because you have a lot of fans doesn't mean you're interacting with them well. Let's look at Cleveland Hopkins, the airport which not only has the most Facebook fans but also the most fans per passenger according to this review. Good for them. But how are they interacting?

In short, the answer is "not very well." Take a look at the Cleveland Facebook fan page and you'll see that most of the interactions are one way. Lately, the airport has spent a lot of time talking about its upcoming charity plane pull while failing to respond to several complaints and questions from fans.

There's one person asking if flights to the Caribbean are impacted by a tropical storm. No response. Another person asked if someone could fix the clocks on concourse C. No response. Another person complained about not getting a response to an issue as promised. No response. Others complained about the elimination of free parking for 30 minutes. No response. And this doesn't include the large number of people complaining that they never received their $100 discount coupon that was promised when they signed up. No response.

In fact, the only response I see in the last month is to someone who was asking questions about . . . that plane pull.

Now, is it possible that the airport is reaching out to these people individually to address the problems being discussed? Sure. But that's a mistake, because that assumes that nobody else is having these problems or cares about the answer. It just looks like an entity that wants you to be a fan but doesn't want to interact with you.

On the other hand, look just a few miles down the road at number two on the list, Akron/Canton. Here is an airport that is incredibly responsive. Despite having less than half the number of fans that Cleveland has, it has a much more robust discussion taking place. It is quite difficult to find a complaint on the Akron/Canton page, but even the most mundane questions get direct responses. That has led to some impressive numbers.

This simple post . . .

Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) TGIF CAK family! What are your plans for the weekend? Anyone traveling to/from CAK?

. . . led to 8 people liking it and 40 comments. The responsiveness has created a powerful tool for the airport.

So looking at the number of fans and followers isn't a great metric when it comes to success on Facebook and Twitter. It's what you do with them that counts. Some do it well, and others still have a lot of learning ahead.

Photo via Flickr user Spencer E Holtaway