Social media's
rapidly growing influence in societies all over the world means that
transport operators should ignore it at their peril, "Wild Wild West of marketing" though it might be. Facebook now
has over 1 billion worldwide subscribers, while Twitter has 200
million active users. A vast number of these "likers" and "tweeters"
also use public transport which inevitably means they are instantly
commenting on the services they use, good or bad.
"Social media does not exclude anyone," Mr Ciaran Rogan,
marketing executive for Northern Ireland's Translink, told the
International Public Transport Association (UITP) social media
workshop in Mechelen on March 7. "You are on it whether you want to
be or not."
Indeed in many cities where operators have yet to embrace social
media, passengers have taken it upon themselves to set up their own
pages dedicated to reporting performance. When Vienna's publically-
owned transport operator, Wiener Linien, was embarking on its social
media strategy, Ms Claudia Riegler, Wiener I .inien's content
manager for social media, said that she found 68 pages and teeds
dedicated to its activities which were set up by so-called "co-
creators."
"One even used the official logo," she says. "This had the
potential to leave a bad impression." It was a similar story in
Dresden where Mr Jan Bleis, head of marketing and traffic planning
at Dresden Public Transport (DVB), reported that his company
contacted Twitter and actually took over an account that had been
posing under DVB's identity.
Losing control of the message is clearly a dangerous proposition
for operators; it is therefore no longer a case of whether an
operator starts to use social media, but when.
As is often the case when reacting to new trends, the railway
industry has been relatively slow to pick up social media and
explore the full advantages that it could provide. Many operators
seem to have deferred engaging with some platforms through fear of
doing a bad job or the cost of maintaining a responsive online
presence.
However, Rogan believes that the more you put in, the more you
will get out in terms of improving an operator's reputation and
ultimately the quality of service provided to passengers. He
believes that operators should "treat it as an opportunity" and not
shy away from dedicating resources to social media.
"It shouldn't be a space for v/ IuL we have not done. Hit
somewhere where you are able to say what you will do," Rogan says.
He added that with Twitter and Facebook now driving the news
agenda with photographs and video of news events appearing on the
platform in real-time, well before media outlets are able to pick up
and disect them, transport operators have to equip themselves to
respond quickly to these events. He says that Facebook in particular
has been useful for Translink to state its official position on an
issue before it gets out of hand, recalling its response to a recent
picture of a rioter in Belfast who was wearing a Translink uniform.
Rogan said that by responding to the incident immediately, Translink
was able to quell negative reaction to a potentially damaging story.
He also recalled recent heavy snowfall in Belfast which had a
huge impact on train and bus services during the morning commute,
and the way in which social media helped to mitigate its impact. "I
