Qantas story drowns out Melbourne Cup in social media discussions
The story about Qantas grounding its planes over the weekend has dominated discussions in social media over the last 24 hours.
According to social media media monitor Meltwater Group, the Qantas grounding has sparked almost three times the number of mentions on Twitter as the Melbourne Cup – which is tomorrow.
The Qantas debacle has led to 65,000 mentions on Twitter, compared to just 22,000 for the Melbourne Cup.
Alicia Kennedy, area director of Meltwater Group in Australia and New Zealand said, “The emergency Fair Work Australia hearing created a ground swelling of community action on social media with over 65,000 mentions about #qantas made over the weekend. By midday today, the issue was still dominating Twitter conversations with six out of the top 10 trending issues in Australia about Qantas’ dispute with employees.”
“Whether you’re a customer who has been affected by yesterday’s lock-out, a Qantas employee or have shares invested in the company, people are publically weighing in on the debate on social media. This is a caution for companies who are still dipping their toes in social media and are not quite sure how to make the best use of the medium. Whether it’s positive or negative, the conversations are taking place in a very public way.”
This is alarming for companies still thinking about focusing their money on Facebook. With so many feedback, negative mostly, companies may find themselves in a grave situation sooner than they expect. This has to be prevented by actively engaging with people.
User ID not verified.
It also drowned out the sad loss of 3 diggers, which is terrible. The News coverage of this sad event was shocking on all networks
User ID not verified.
Twitter is now all about Kim Kardashian with little mention of QANTAS. It’s a great way to see what is on people’s minds ‘right now’ that also shows how short the attention span is. Perhaps the important measure is how quickly your issue disappears from Twitter.
User ID not verified.
Hi Neil. While I agree with your post in the main, I think it should say “It’s a great way to see what is on SOME people’s minds ‘right now'”. Clearly the Twittersphere is a self-select subset of the population (41k was the daily peak on these two issues), so the omission gives credence to any semblance of representativess that is in my opinion unsubstantiated.
User ID not verified.
Weird how some try and pretend twitter is now the ‘data friendly’ water cooler. look at twitter trending terms – it reflects one thing … maybe 2 max, what twitter users are thinking and what twitter bots are gaming.
good PR attempt by the agency here to show some entry level SM monitoring, but let’s take it for what it is yeah
User ID not verified.