case study: how bt global services increased its social engagement through the empowerment of its...

Craig Chadburn

BT Global Services, Social Media Manager

June 2014

BT Global Services Increasing social engagement through empowering our own people

Our campaign was the first step to becoming a ‘social brand’

© British Telecommunications plc 2

Social marketer 1 Social brand 2

Social business 3

• Defined social Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Company’s Tone of Voice established

• Channel managers assigned and active

• Social research integrated into comms planning

• Social insights help develop content and comms activity

• Customers engaging with social channels to develop campaigns

• Social findings and customer insights integrated into product development

• Social activity fully integrated into the businesses day-to-day running of business

• Vital to product development and internal comms, used to maximise productivity

Time

Mat

uri

ty

3

We aim to fully integrate social media into the

business strategy to reap the complete benefits of

being an active social business.

Key objectives are:


Our social media plan

Increasing activity and visibility of BT social media

Increasing customer engagement levels with BT social channels

Empowering our people to engage in social

Moving BT from being a social marketer to becoming a fully social business.

Social activity is led by marketing and sales departments


Marketing

Sales

Customers and prospects

Key influencers

Critical social groups


Engaging in social media comes with an element of risk

Risk = Emotion

Rational thinking

x Volume x Awareness

By fully understanding this risk, your strategy can be built around it


Having an accurate picture of those involved leads to better success

• Our strategy meant primarily targeting the sales teams, marketing and comms and internal subject matter experts for involvement, aiming to give them the knowledge to make social media part of their job role and integrating it into company ethos.

• We found varying levels of social responsiveness:

80 per cent ‘should-do’s’ who want to take part but aren’t sure how to get involved due to the fear factor.

10 per cent ‘cynics’ who don’t believe social media works.

10 per cent ‘social advocates’ who are already socially active and provide internal case studies.

BT is at the end of a three-year strategy

• De-cluttering and aligning all BTGS social media channels into one hub, ‘BT Let’s Talk’

For BT, this meant

• Training people to write using the BT Tone of Voice

• Empowering people to contribute content

• Training marketing and comms, sales teams and subject matter experts to use social media as part of their job function

• We gave workshops that targeted key business functions for marketing and comms, sales teams and subject matter experts. These were delivered in stages, based on corporate strategy.

• We also provided separate training sessions for LinkedIn, Twitter and the blog.

• They started at a basic level, then progressed and could be tailored to job roles.

Topics, whitepapers, external/internal SME leading discussions supporting key messages, see what we can do (links to the website), or see what we think (blog)

Community

Personal, engagement, demonstration of what we can do and what we know (links to the website), or see what we think (blog)

Subject community


The customer defines the channel

BT Tone of Voice (unless technical), fact-based, what we do and how to engage with us, links to social media

Global services website

Personal ,‘my’ opinions, how BT has helped ‘me’, discuss and engage with ‘me’ and SMEs, links back through to website

Blog

Personal, shows what we can do, links to website and chances to see what other people think (external sources), links to blog

Twitter

Personal, engagement, see what we can do (links to the website), or see what we think (blog)

LinkedIn to contacts

One message


Metrics of success

Total views

Total posts

Average monthly engagement

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

• The amount of content posted isn’t as directly linked to monthly

engagement as previously assumed

• You need to be able to spot and make the most of trends

• Having a fully-engaged team of enthusiastic and skilled people makes all the difference

• It may be more fruitful than you think…

There are many factors that drive engagement


The success stories

Blogger outreach:

“$2.9 million of closed sales through new connections made on LinkedIn”

A customer approached a BT account manager for thirteen new data centres

Marketing Manager

“LinkedIn — my god, it does actually seem to work”

Got a ‘foot in the door’ with key clients in retail, media and banking sectors

“£25–30 million of opportunities identified in the UK public sector”

PR and Analyst teams developed new connections

Campaigns:

42 new leads for the Benelux cloud campaign

Switch on Utilities Event — 42 per cent of attendees sourced via social

Any questions?

bt.com/globalservices

http://www.globalservices.bt.com