Corporate Social Media Case Study: Imagine JetBlue’s Troubles in a Bloggy World

Todd Defren does a good job of imagining how last month’s travails suffered by JetBlue would play out a year from now, after the customer-friendly company adopts a number of social media tools to establish and maintain more rounded relationships with its customers.

Pilots passing on messages to stranded passengers from loved ones’ MySpace posts; real-time response to criticism; real-time official reports of how the company is responding to the crisis; bloggers and vloggers posting about their experiences while still on the tarmac. You get the idea.

In the absence of a lot of real life examples of companies that have fully adopted a range of social media tools, Todd’s scenario-building is an interesting exercise in “what if”.

The end result is a company that’s a lot more connected with customers across the spectrum. The risks are high, though, if a company like that fails to deliver on its promises.

At least company execs and industry pundits could watch real-time while the company either delivered on its promises or imploded very publicly. In that scenario, it would be hard to imagine management, employees and board members getting lazy about living up to the company’s values.

Photo by Hyku.

Tags: business, airlines, jetblue, todddefren, bloggers, social media, vloggers, values, communications, crisis