Evaluating Virgin Australia's Social Media Strategy: A Detailed Report

This report examines Virgin Australia's social media presence across various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, assessing its effectiveness in brand promotion, customer engagement, and overall business development. The analysis covers the company's website design, user experience, and content strategy, highlighting strengths and areas for improvement in leveraging social media to maintain a competitive edge in the airline industry. The report also explores how Virgin Australia utilizes social media for customer service, recruitment, and disseminating information about special offers and company achievements, emphasizing the importance of a strong online presence in today's digital landscape. Desklib offers a variety of solved assignments and study tools for students.

Professional
practice in
Accounting

1
By student name
Professor
University
Date: 10 October , 2017.
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Contents
Introduction……………………………………………………………...3
Analysis…..…………………………………………………………….…..5
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………10
Refrences.....……………………………………………………………....12
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Introduction
The power of social media is very much prevalent in today’s time. It has become a very big
platform for branding and marketing. Almost 60% of the world population uses these social media sites
to fulfill their day to day needs, to get insights about the products they want to purchase, the companies
they want to have some knowledge about. Every company in today’s time wants to have a strong social
media influence so that they can carter to as many people as possible. In this era of digitalization and
excessive usage of internet, it has become very important to stand out among the competitors. In this
report, we will analyze the power of social media and how helpful it can be for the overall growth and
development of a company1. The company that we have selected for our analyses is Virgin Australia; it is
one of the biggest airline companies in Australia and has been operating since a decade in the country. It
is completely user based and gives customer satisfaction the utmost importance. The company has the
second largest operations in the whole of Australia in this service industry. The company has
headquarters in Brisbane and is operating in four main cities Adelaide, Gold Coast and Perth. The overall
revenue of the company runs into billion and being in this customer service business the company needs
to maintain strong social media presence so that more and more people choose their services. The most
popular social media sites are Facebook, Instagram, Linkendin, Pinterest etc. These sites are not only
platforms where people can join and communicate with each other and maintain good connections,
they are also meant for some serious brand promotion and marketing. A lot of people choose these
social media platforms for having some serious business relationship that can help them in securing new
opportunities for their business2. In this report we will analyze how the Virgin Australia airlines are using
these tools for promotion of their business and how they can improve their present standing in the
market with the help of these social media sites. There are various changes that they can embed in their
present system of branding to attract more and more customer and make people more aware about
their standing in the airline sector. There are many big companies that are operating in this sector like
Qantas and it is important that they must have something that helps them in creating an edge over their
competitors in this field of business3.
1 (Alexander, 2016)
2 (Given, 2016)
3 (Chiapello, 2017)
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2) The company has a very strong social media presence and is available on a lot of sites that
helps them in connecting with their audience in a better way. The few websites that the company is
actively present and operating are twitter and Facebook. Both are platforms where people can
communicate with each other, present their views for the general public and can share their opinions.
The company also has its own website that is the first thing that the Google handle shows if you search
for the company. The website has been richly designed and is a very good customer experience for the
people who hop on to it. The Company is also present on job websites like LinkedIn and seek.com. The
company also has its own job portal where people can directly apply to the company openings and do
not need to go through consultancies. The company is also present on the photo sharing site known as
Instagram, on which the company shares various picture related to its operations, flights, people who
work for the company and has good number of followers over there4. The company is also present on
Pinterest that is a photo site where people shares pictures that are of their interest and taste. The
company is also uploading videos and trying to advertise their services on YouTube. The various
advertisements that the company makes are uploaded on YouTube and helps the company in getting
attention of the masses. So we can see that the company is very active on social media and is present on
almost all the sites that is possible. The company is making good use of its social skills and is trying to
make its presence feel in all parts so that more and more customers avail their services. We will now
analyze how effective are these social media sites for the overall growth and development of the
company and what role does it play in the betterment of the company and improving its overall brand
value5.
4 (Sweeting, 2017)
5 (Arnott, et al., 2017)
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Analysis
3) In case of the given company, the company has its own website with its name. A screenshot
of the website is attached below to give better ideas about the same. The website is very attractive and
is very user friendly. There are different sections in the same that covers all the various services that the
company has to offer along with specific details about the company and its operations. The color of the
website is very vibrant and attractive.
Few of the sections on the website includes experience, planning, destination, bookings, holidays,
special offers, business travels etc. Apart from booking their flights and getting detailed information
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about the rates at which they can avail these services, there are other services also that the company is
offering to its customer. There are options like find your own holiday. The customer also has the option
of booking their car, and also booking a hotel. So this helps a person in planning their entire travel from
booking the flight, to choosing the hotel and car6. There are also various special offers that the company
gives from time to time for the customers. One of the best section that is most helpful is the section of
experiences. This sections has all the details that the customer might require and also provides
necessary answers to all the questions that they may have. There is also a section where the customer
can give their feedback to the company and can file their complaints if they are not happy with the
services of the company7. The website of the company is well designed and is easily navigated through
the different sections. It is very easy to book flights from there and also there is an option of online
check in. This helps in saving the customers from a lot of pressure and chaos. The aim of the website is
to provide the customer best services of boarding and travelling that might be helpful to them in coming
again and again to the company. Few extracts from the website are attached to give a better idea about
the same.
There is a different section in the end that has link to all the social media platforms on which the
company is active. There are also contact details and other help lines given so that people if needed can
6 (Anon., 2017)
7 (Visinescu, et al., 2017)
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contact the customer care department. There are also options to develop business relations and also
there is a link for the job portal where interested people can apply if they are interested in working with
the company. An extract of the same is attached below.
Other social media platforms includes-
 Facebook- The company is highly active on this platform and has as many as 669,796 people
following it. The page is active with a lot of images and videos being uploaded every now and
then. In case people feel any kind of problems they can comment and tag the company in their
posts8. The support department replies to them and also the feedback of the people helps in
understanding where the company is standing at present what changes it needs to make to
increase customer satisfaction. There is also a option through which people can directly book
their tickets from the company’s Facebook page. The page is well designed and also contains
links to various other sites like instagram and YouTube. An extract from the same is attached.
8 (Sweeting, 2017)
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 Instagram – The Company is also active on instagram and shares various pictures and videos on
the same. These pictures are mostly related to the flights, the people who work with the
company, special business offers that the company is giving. Major announcements are done on
instagram to get attention of the people. It is one of the most popular sites in recent time. The
company is having 246000 followers till today with 1211 posts. The company shares pictures
that are clicked by people in which the company is tagged with their official hastag
#virginaustralia. This helps in improving the overall interaction between the customer and the
company and also it helps in developing close connections that helps in enriching the customer
experience. An extract from the same is attached below9.
 Twitter- Twitter is the micro- blogging site on which people share their views and opinions about
anything they want in some limited character. It is one of the most popular social media sites in
9 (Trieu, 2017)
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the world and has a billion of people operating on the same. In case of Virgin airlines the
company is also active, and tweets about its recent discounts, offers, or achievements and also
helps in solving the grievances of the customer, if customer tags them in specific post. It helps in
developing better relationship with their clients and also helps them in putting out their views
and opinions in a brief manner. The company has 266000 followers and 108000 tweets. This
shows how active it is one the micro blogging sites and is using the same for branding and
marketing purposes. An extract from the same is attached to give a better view.
 LinkedIn and other job sites- The company is very active on sites like LinkedIn and seek. Com,
where people can get good job opportunities and can apply for the openings. The company has
three different sections on the LinkedIn page that includes recent news about the company,
new job opportunities for the company and how individuals can get connected to the employees
of the company. These help people in getting instant updates about the various new jobs that
the company is offering, they can easily apply for the same from this forum. It also helps them in
getting a better understanding about the company by communicating with the employees of the
company. Other sites that provides jobs and other recruitment sites also host job openings from
this company and helps people to get jobs in case there are some openings. Thus we see how
these social media sites are connecting the deserving candidates with the good companies and
making them aware about the overall working condition, job descriptions and other profiles that
will help them in the long run in getting a good job. Thus Virgin Australia is making a good use of
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these social media sites to get good employees and developing better connection with the
people and the customers.
 YouTube – YouTube is one of the most popular sites on social media where people upload
videos about anything and everything they want. It is a content driven site where people like to
experiment with their creativity. In the given case also we see that the Virgin Australian airlines
are making good use of this platform by allowing them to upload variety of videos that will help
them in attracting more customers10. These videos are mostly related to the new advertisements
that the company launches. The company has good fan following on YouTube and there are a lot
of people who watches this channel. As of now the company is having 7256 subscribers and can
improve with the same by developing better contents for the masses. An extract from the same
is attached to give a faint idea about the same.
One thing that is common is that all these social media sites are content driven and it is very
important that they should be used as a tool to enrich the experience of the customer and help
in development of the brand of the company.
4) The company is actively operating on all the social media channels that is possible and
is having a good presence in the digital arena. There are new sites on which the company can
operate to develop their customer like Reddit and Tumblr11. Both the mass driven and content
driven sites and is crowd funded and can be used as a great platform to get the feedback of the
customers and also post their own view points on matters that they think is necessary. The
10 (O’Connor & Woo, 2017)
11 (Laursen & Thorlund, 2016)
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company can also be active on Flickr and ClassMates that will help in improving their overall
social media influence by entering into new zones and trying out new platforms.
Conclusion and Recommendations
On the basis of the overall analysis it can be said that the company is performing really
well, the company has a strong social media presence with lakh of followers. The company
needs to work on their websites to make it more compelling by adding more options with which
the customers can easily connect with the customer support. Other platforms like Facebook and
Instagram are used very well with the company and have helped it in getting more customers
and can be used more effectively to secure more business for the company12. The customers are
also benefited from all this as they get good experience with regards to planning their holidays,
booking their tickets and in any case if they feel any issues they can directly use these social
media sites to complain for the company and raise their voice against the same. It has made the
overall company customer relationship very transparent and nowadays companies cannot foul
play with the customers in any way. The customers can easily raise their voice with the help of
the social media. So it can be concluded that the company is doing an excellent job and is
proving the best services to the people with the help of these social media sites. The company
does not need to make a lot of changes just need to better their services so that more
customers are attracted and the customers get good services13. The power of social media is
limitless; it can easily make or break things. It is upon individuals on how they use the same. It is
one of the greatest revolution of today’s time and companies should try to use it for the
betterment of their operations and also for the people who are connected with them.
12 (Alexander, 2016)
13 (Maynard, 2017)
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