I'm not a fan of Twitter. But I'm wrong. Certain brands have no choice but to use Twitter for brand protection.

I'm not the biggest fan of Twitter. Not at all. 5000+ Tweets in ten years will show you how much I use it. Its not even one of the top social media channels. Facebook has 2bn+ users, YouTube monthly active users are 1.57 billion, Instagram has 700m monthly active users, Twitter 328m users and 255m Snapchat users.

Why do I not like Twitter? It is the most easily gamed of all the social media channels. You can get a message retweeted thousands of times by "bots" - pieces of code connected to Twitter accounts. These accounts come with profile photos, bios, previous tweets and hundreds of followers. Nefarious organisations, such as the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, use technical tricks to avoid detection, retweet posts to make it look like a lot of people are talking about something and even post original tweets. Twitter's algorithm takes over and starts showing it to real humans who can start jumping on the bandwagon.

But there is one place place where Twitter reigns supreme: journalism. Social Media now drive all media – and that includes ‘old school’ news media. Journalists make up some of the most active users on Twitter making up around 25% of verified accounts.

Twitter is extremely popular with journalists, and they are the most active group in terms of follower ratios and number of tweets. Reporters build their career capital by breaking news which translates into more readers, which attracts more advertisers, building a virtuous circle for them. Twitter can also expand their readership to the world that was once limited to geographic circulation boundaries.

So, for journalists, their new rule is: if you don’t have it on Twitter first, it’s not a scoop. And, journalists treat whats on Twitter as a news source, because the physical number of journalists is in decline. Less journalists 'on the beat' looking for stories mean journalists are going online to get their stories. And, in this case, this means Twitter. Even though its not the media channel that most social media users are spending time on. Thats Facebook!

With social media being around for over a decade now, it’s easy to forget that its is still not top of mind for many brands. And travel brands are no different. I recently attended the Aviation Summit. It's now one of the top aviation events in the world – and the 2018 Summit was bigger than ever: more attendees, more presentations and more streams.

Today, ignoring social media for airlines is no longer a choice or even a valid business strategy. The convergence of social, smartphone cameras and controversy mean that social has to be top of mind for savvy airlines. People now take out their smartphone and film anything controversial live, and put it on social feeds such as Facebook Live in real time.

Airlines like American Airlines now use social media in real time on Facebook and Twitter as brand protection - not just as information sharing.

Crisis management is a big issue in airlines. I should know, I was Director of Marketing for a number of airlines. Know how to manage, communicate and prioritise is a key skill I learnt from working in airlines. As a result, nothing phases me in crisis. I once got a call to say that one of our passengers had tried to open the door of the aircraft at 30,000 to get out. I was sitting on a ski-lift at the time when I got the call. I got another call from a journalist without any 'hello' - just straight in 'how many were killed?' (There was no crash, nobody was killed - a private aircraft had been blown off a runway far away from us - but they still mixed it up)

Crisis management today is now run by social media, not press releases – everything is now put on social first. This is more important than ever given the spate of aviation controversies in the US in 2017 and 2018. AA has recognised that newswires and the news cycle is dead: every major media outlet monitors social media in real time and inundates airlines with calls whenever there is a sniff of controversy online.

But social is often cut-off from senior management. I was interviewed once years ago by the CEO of an airline who told social media is a waste of time, and they would never spend the resources on it. I think that airline has revised its thinking. Funnily enough that CEO never acknowledged that he got it wrong! For even advanced thinker, senior management did not wish to create the resource to do so. As American Airlines A pointed out at the Aviation Summit, their attitude used to be, “I know I have to do it. I just don’t know how I’ll find the time.”

Applying crisis thinking to social is a skill that takes time and investment, alongside a technology solution. It’s also ever-evolving and rather mysterious as social algorithms change.

 Social is making new kinds of engagement, formats, and sharing possible every day, at zero costs with no gatekeepers. Today, aviation leadership finds out from social media - in real time – what is going in the business. It used to be the operations team were supposed to be on top of that sort of thing. Not any more. Perhaps 2018 is the time for some mature thinking, silo-reduction, and ensure that social and operations are totally integrated in aviation. Most of all, to ensure integrity of the brand is kept.