Corporate Blog Review: Nuts About Southwest

Southwest Airlines
Originally uploaded by Darhawk.

Nuts About Southwest, Southwest Airline’s blog is a great example of a corporate blog done right. Why does it work?

1. The company has a goal and reason for the blog.

Our goal with this blog is to give our readers the opportunity to take a look inside Southwest Airlines and to interact with us. This is as much your blog as it is ours.

2. Diversity of bloggers.

We have lined up a crew of bloggers representing a diverse cross-section of our Company.

3. Encourages interaction from their customers.

We want to build a personal relationship between our bloggers and you, and we need your participation. You are the “other half” of this blog, and our bloggers can’t wait to communicate with you, so get busy posting.

4. Grounds rules for comments and sets expectations.

This is the point where we insert the “fine print” and discuss the guidelines for posting. The Southwest Blog is starting out as a moderated site because we want to ensure that everyone stays on topic. We would LUV for you to post your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions, but when you post, make sure that they are of general interest to most readers. Of course, profanity, racial and ethnic slurs, and rude behavior like disparaging personal remarks won’t be tolerated nor published. Even though our blog is moderated, we pledge to present opposing viewpoints, and we will strive to keep it interesting, diverse, and multi-sided. Our bloggers want to engage in a conversation with you, but not every post will receive a response from us. However, we encourage you to respond to our bloggers and to the posts of other individuals. We also ask that you be patient with our bloggers for a response. Some of our bloggers are Flight Crew Members, so they may delay a response for a few days while they are “on the road.” (Actually, we should probably say that they are “in the air.”)