On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. His carefully planned social media strategy was not least responsible for his landslide victory in the elections on November 4, 2008.

Obama’s web portal served as an interface for bundling social media activities: The Obama page contained visible links to the most frequently visited social media channels, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

More and more companies are now orienting their social media activities on Obama’s strategy: On Facebook, companies are increasingly interacting directly with their customers – setting the pace instead of letting the user force topics on them. YouTube is used to market products using advertising clips. On Twitter, companies let their customers participate in company events in “real life”.

Lufthansa has also taken Obama as a model and coordinates its social media activities through a single page – the newsroom. Just like Obama, the airline limits itself to the channels most frequently used by its customers: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

1. Facebook

With over 1,100,000 fans, Lufthansa is the fourth most popular airline, well ahead of Air France and British Airways. Due to Lufthansa’s international focus, the majority of announcements are made in English. Users have the option of writing posts in German or English.

2. Twitter

Lufthansa has five channels on Twitter, i.e., for the German-speaking countries, the USA, Brazil, and Spanish-speaking South America. Lufthansa Cargo also has its own Twitter channel.

3. YouTube

With 4,500 subscriptions and around 2,000,000 views, Lufthansa is behind several other airlines, such as Delta and British Airways, which each have higher subscription and view numbers.

With its newsroom, Lufthansa occupies a special position among airlines. So far, the competition has been unable to find comparable portals. Even most low-cost providers now have YouTube channels and Facebook fan pages. However, their social media channels are usually poorly linked to one another.

It is conceivable that other airlines will follow suit with similar social media portals in the future. With its pioneering role, Lufthansa has a clear head start. Just like Obama in 2008. He was so successful not only because he invested significantly larger amounts of money in setting up his social media platforms but also because he started his social media activities earlier than his Republican competitors.