Today, April 5th, 2024, my classmates and I had the pleasure of hearing from Kara Salazar and Cheyenne Allgood who are both social media and communications professionals at SouthWest Airlines.
Kara Salazar is a member of the social and digital strategy team at SouthWest Airlines. She also helps with influencer marketing. Cheyenne Allgood is part of the external communications team, which includes two other members. Together, they create organic content for social media platforms. Both Kara and Cheyenne use a Hub-and-Spoke model of communication, where teams report to them and they report back, creating an open communication system. They also discussed the tools they use to analyze the performance of their posts and to find influencers. Southwest Airlines has employee influencers who post content on their pages about the company. Employees must follow guidelines when posting on their accounts to ensure that their posts are appropriate and represent SouthWest Airlines well.
Cheyenne explained what it’s like to create organic content and how she and her two team members meet weekly to discuss current social media trends. They then incorporate these trends into Southwest’s social media platforms. Cheyenne not only works on organic content but also partnerships. She mentioned Southwest’s partnership with Make-A-Wish and how they coordinate to create a positive environment for Make-A-Wish participants.
Southwest also started a BeReal account a month ago. Cheyenne discussed the process of creating new accounts and how they get accounts and posts approved, which typically takes 48 hours.
Kara explained how SouthWest finds Influencer to work with using a platform and what kinds of things they do with the Influencers. The influencers can get free trips, promo codes, and more, and how they are given a central message to incorporate into their content about SouthWest. Kara talked about the importance of target audiences and about all the Gen Z influencer trips that they recently hosted.
Both Kara and Cheyenne explained SouthWest’s main goal of being the most loved airline and how they measure whether their posts are meeting their goals. They use a sentiment tracker on their posts and look at each post’s metrics to see if they are reaching their goal of being the most loved. They also talked about Crisis management and how they navigate different crises at SouthWest by putting their customers and employees first.
There were so many things I learned from their presentation and I am so grateful I was able to meet them and hear what they said. They were both so organized and how a PowerPoint full of charts and pictures helped my fellow students and me learn what their day-to-day life looks like at work. I feel like I got a real glimpse into what working in communications professionally looks like which was so interesting. One thing that stood out to me was how they both said that the people they work with and the culture at SouthWest have been incredible, I find that being close and respected by your coworkers is huge and so important to work efficiently. I will be following both Kara and Cheyenne on LinkedIn and look forward to hearing more about their SouthWest careers.
When I move onto to working in the professional field I hope I can have as good of a relationship that Kara and Cheyenne have with my future coworkers and I hope the culture at my future job is as positive as it is at SouthWest!
