RD2, Inc., a Dallas-based web design and development agency, and Southwest Airlines have teamed up to launch the first-ever official corporate weblog (blog) in the airline industry. “Nuts About Southwest”, at http://blogsouthwest.com/ , features regular posts from Southwest employees at all levels of operations and management.

The goal of a blog on any business website is to attract an audience of users educated on subjects familiar to the company or its industry. The ultimate result is a community of users who perceive that business’ site to be an authoritative, rich source of knowledge that is constantly being refreshed with up-to-date, pertinent information.

“Southwest’s interest in corporate blogging is a testament to its forward thinking in business and culture,” noted Chris Ronan, President of RD2, Inc. “Southwest Airlines now joins other blogging Fortune 500 innovators like IBM and General Motors in providing their customers a platform to create a community around their brand.” Readers have the opportunity to respond to posts made by Southwest employees, creating rich interactive dialogues and forming unique customer relationships.

“We’re very excited about this new way to bring the Southwest Airlines culture to our customers,” said Angela Vargo of Southwest Airlines. “The ‘Nuts About Southwest’ blog will give Southwest customers another peek into our operations, daily work life, and people.”

“Nuts About Southwest” highlights design that embodies the Southwest spirit of fun, friendliness, warmth, and efficiency. Behind the design lies cutting edge technology in HTML, CSS, and content management. “We chose open source content management system WordPress to power the RD2 blog because of its emphasis on reliability, adaptability, and usability,” stated Ronan. “It is important that the tool running the blog be easy to use for all authors.”

RD2, Inc. previously collaborated with Southwest Airlines to launch a blog for Southwest’s innovative “Adopt-A-Pilot” program, where pilots in the program author posts geared towards fifth-grade students in the program. Pilot authors contribute stories from their flights, aviation-related lessons, and inside information on Southwest Airlines. The Adopt-A-Pilot blog is located at http://adoptapilot.blogs.com/ .

A blog is a web site with regular, dated entries which are displayed in reverse chronological order. Blog entries could be thought of as conversation starters. When posting to the blog, the conversation does not stop. Readers can contribute their thoughts on the entry.
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