Ryanair’s head of social on TikTok, Twitter and flying up the ranks of online marketing

“People go to social media for two main reasons. One is to be entertained, and the second is to escape from the shit show that’s going on in the world.”

At least, that’s what Ryanair’s head of social media Michael Corcoran thinks.

From trolling Taylor Swift over reports of her carbon-pumping private jets to laughing at Liz Truss’s resignation from No.10 after just 45 days as Prime Minister, Ryanair’s anarchic – yet iconic – approach to social media has been a huge success.

With nearly 700,000 followers on Twitter and more than 1.9 million users subscribing to its TikTok videos, it’s no surprise that other brands have attempted to mimic the way Ryanair presents itself online. But there’s a fine line to tread between being effective and offensive, as Corcoran explains.

Ryanair’s ‘low cost, high reach’ marketing strategy  

Corcoran believes the company’s approach, like any other good social media strategy, is born on four variables including, brand, category, customers and the landscape itself. 

“From a branding point of view, Ryanair as a business is a low-cost airline, so we live and breathe low cost. Every move we make from a communications point of view, we take an approach that is low cost, high reach,” says Corcoran. 

“Our strategy is not anything new. We know that being talked about and reactive is going to generate publicity – so that is the backbone of what we do.” 

In fact, the budget airline saw “incremental growth” from its clever ‘always-on’ content just six months into its strategy. 

“Every time we hit a spike, we used that as the best time to reengage people with our content,” he says. 

“Now we have your attention and you got entertained by a piece of our content, here’s some other content that will make you understand a little bit about us more, but it’s still equally as entertaining.” 

To prove his point, Ryanair has reported an increase of over 20 million impressions per week in the past 12 months on the back of five or six key spikes, growing from an average weekly reach of five to 10 million users. 

“Overall the message stays the same across most channels,” he explains.

“We simplify our creative approach to Twitter, invest more in the world of Instagram on production quality and Facebook, on TikTok we are completely unhinged in what we do. The more imperfect the content and the visualisation of the creative, the better and the more attractive it is to that audience.” 

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On pre-planned content vs Twitter clap-backs 

While some of Ryanair’s consistently creative and provocative content is of course pre-planned – which “has true entertainment value” – its social media team primarily reacts to topical news.

The team of eight is split into two departments; ‘always-on’ and ‘react and community’ – the latter are the ‘news-jackers’ of the company but also manage and engage with social media comments, where their reactions are as on-brand as the content itself. 

The ‘always-on’ squad, which creates the pre-planned content, aims to change perception about the budget airline, explains Corcoran.

“They are delivering the messaging and the first-world problem-solving content that educates people on our low-cost mode, but also decreases friction about how we operate.” 

On the process behind THOSE social media posts 

The process begins with the reactive and community social media team undertaking regular trend checks across Twitter and Reddit, looking for emerging trends. 

“Being reactive and timing are everything. So we move fast,” Corcoran reveals. 

“Essentially the team has five minutes on the clock. If we can’t find an idea that is strong or simple enough by then it’s not worth it.” 

“We also have a disruptive and high-risk strategy where, if there is content that we are on the fence about, we are willing to take that risk and learn what works and what doesn’t,” Corcoran adds. 

“We will then look for meme-able scenarios around key messaging, with a two- to three-day period to create, produce and put the ideas on our platform for sign off, approval and feedback.” 

TikTok videos – which are crucial for attracting the Gen-Z audience – benefit from a similar amount of scrutiny. The company uses a TikTok Tracker to look at emerging trends, combining the information from a variety of ‘for you’ pages – the tracker then shows which are consistent trends that it can capitalise upon.

“It’s good because all of our ‘for you’ pages are different, as we’re all interested in different things. So if there’s a sound that’s breaking through across different for you pages based on our niches, it might be a signal of something that’s exploding on the app.” 

He continues: “The beauty of TikTok is the timing and the simplicity of it. It is simply content which goes out fast, it is not overly engineered and is simple to consume immediately.” 

To meme or not to meme? – that is the question 

“Safety is a no-go for good or for bad. We don’t talk about it on socials as we don’t need to, our reputation is stellar and we let that do the talking,” he emphasises. 

“We will always make sure that we stay away from things that might upset people like race, religion and other discriminatory areas that we could be cancelled for. Although we do push the boundaries on certain topics and and that’s a risk we’re willing to take and learn from to make our content better.” 

Corcoran adds: “Twitter is an interesting space right now, aside from Elon Musk, it is interesting to see how to digest and interpret content right now.

“Usually, people getting offended simply do not like the person who has tweeted the content, or is being offended on other people’s behalf – what that has unearths is a lot of outrage and wasted energy that is completely out of context from people who don’t get what the post was originally… a joke.” 

Corcoran believes social media right now is a “challenging space”, and this does sometimes make his team “second guess” what they put out. 

“A good thing that is that we are posting in a live environment and not many brands or businesses are allowed to do that. We can let the response from people do the talking on whether the content is good or not.” 

On luck or good timing? 

“Luck is luck at the end of the day. It’s down to timing and conditioning – we can all have that one big winnable viral moment that is just based on someone sitting at their computer at the right time or when a certain piece of news breaks,” he adds. 

“For us, it’s about timing and it’s conditioning. It’s all about repetition, having small structures and processes to find and discover the opportunities, and then being conditioned to be able to craft really good, fast copy in the tone of voice that is right for us.” 

He says there are only a couple of parameters around each post. Is it entertaining enough? Will everyone understand it in its simplest form? Is it slightly unhinged and chaotic? Is it directly or indirectly linked back to aviation, in some shape or form trying to bring it back to the brand? 

Other brands using Ryanair’s social media approach 

“Not enough brands and people are thinking about the role social media can play for their brand or business,” says Corcoran.

“People need to start identifying the problems their brand has and how social media can help them address those issues. 

“There are certain parameters we can use to make the creative as optimised as possible. But that’s just advertising on social media, that’s not true social media – brands first need to understand what social media is, their tone of voice and what content resonates with their audience.”

He concludes by saying that most of Ryanair’s social media strategies simply can’t apply effectively to other brands. 

“Ryanair is not the norm on social media, we are a weird exception. There are a few brands who are like us, but often people think that because we are like this they should be too – so they’re trying it and it’s failing for a lot of them.

“That humourous tone of voice need to be genuine, otherwise it just won’t work.”