How Ryanair is making its weaknesses a strength

As a business enterprise, whatever your product or service is, being present on social media has become almost mandatory nowadays. As we all know, getting interaction and user engagement on social media is easier said than done.

Yet, when I came across Ryanair’s account on Tiktok, I was impressed by how easy they were making it look like to achieve high engagement. How are they doing so well? Absurdly, by keeping it simple. By following trends and using light humour, they found a creative way to increase their visibility and improve their reputation.

What is worth highlighting, is the success they are getting with an overall of more than 9.7 million likes and almost 500k followers. Their most successful video - which is less than 10 seconds long - has over 5M views, 721k likes and 85k comments. It’s even more absurd that only a few other airlines are present on the platform and, compared to Ryanair, they don’t seem to be doing so well. 

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Even when Ryanair jokes about its weaknesses (such as being honest about making consumers pay for any kind of extra service), it manages to do so in a way that creates engagement and sparkles interest in users. Just by taking a quick look at the comments section, it’s hard to find a negative one. And even when it does, Ryanair’s account managers are always ready with a good answer!

I would be lying if I said that Ryanair’s account hasn’t become one of my favourites on TikTok. They keep surprising me with hilarious content that is up-to-date with today’s trends, while the comment interaction between users and account managers is a fun read as well. 

Personally, I would have never thought that a business such as an airline could succeed so greatly by posting this type of content. Yet, firms from other industries are following Ryanair’s example (take a look at Innocent Drinks) and achieving high engagement levels too. Is TikTok the next best platform to increase your brand awareness? Maybe. But it is for sure a place where you can find entertaining content.

Hence, my question for you today would be: if you were to post something on social media, what kind of content would you aim for?

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By Rosa.