Tweets aren’t just for trendy hashtags and song lyrics anymore. On November 11 in honor of Veterans Day, Southwest held its first Military Tweet-a-Thon. Our twitter followers were given the opportunity to tweet @Southwestair using the #AMillionThanks with messages of thanks and appreciation for members of the military. Southwest volunteers then transcribed these tweets by hand onto cards that were sent to deployed troops all over the world with the help of our partner organization, A Million Thanks. Now that’s a tweet with a purpose!
We transformed our Listening Center in to a lively, transcribing hub in which we funneled the tweets and directed them to the transcribers. It was great to see the warm and kind-hearted messages that our followers sent to us. Meghan Kahlig, one of the volunteer transcribers and coordinators of the project, shared some of her feelings about the day:
“This was a great opportunity to serve the men and women who bravely defend our country. Even something as small as a thank you note truly does make an impact on a service members day and I’m really happy that I was able to be a part of that!”
We were able to transcribe over 100 cards during the two day social media activation! A special thanks goes out to our volunteers, project leaders, specialists and our partner organization, A Million Thanks for their consistent hard work and eagerness towards helping catalyze this initiative. Digitizing our efforts was an innovative way to reach an even larger than audience than ever while showing our appreciation for some of our country’s most admirable men and women.
However, our efforts did not just stop at social media. As we have done in previous years, Southwest coordinated a large in flight card-writing campaign in honor of Veterans Day on November 11th. 7,500 cards were shipped to 10 Southwest bases. Guests who are on one of these flights are able to handwrite a card personally while traveling to their destination. Our in-flight activation has always been a huge success, as it provides the opportunity for customers to write thoughts of appreciation, demonstrating their gratitude to our members of the military.
Special thank you to all of our Customers, Followers, and Employees, who came together to support this initiative and even warmer thank you to our troops who are bravely serving our country!