O2 Enterprise has taken an innovative approach to using social media for business over the past 12 months. The programme has focused on using the core business social media platforms to support individual O2 employees in their 1-2-1 interactions with customers, prospects and influencers.

1. CATEGORY:
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY OF THE YEAR
O2 ENTERPRISE
AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH
TO SOCIAL MEDIA IN B2B
AGENCY: THE MARKETING PRACTICE
CLIENT: O2

2. 2
SUMMARY
O2 Enterprise has taken an innovative approach to using social media
for business over the past 12 months. By focusing on people rather than
relying on our brand alone, we’ve been able to have real conversations
and create valuable 1-2-1 relationships with customers and prospects.
It’s about encouraging our own industry and product experts to get
social, sharing their expertise, experience and opinions with their
followers. The key then lies in ensuring there’s lots of useful, valuable
content for our ambassadors to recommend to people. And to ensure
consistency with our well-known consumer side, O2 Business is injecting
some much-needed humour and enthusiasm into B2B social media.
The results speak for themselves: over 11,000 followers on Twitter,
a 50% increase in YouTube views and a LinkedIn following that’s
doubled in the space of one year to over 27,000.
“WE’VE MANAGED TO SUCCESSFULLY TRANSLATE OUR
SOCIAL BRAND AND ITS ‘BE MORE DOG’ VALUES INTO
THE B2B SPACE, TO GREAT EFFECT.”
Becky Potgieter PR & Social Media Manager

3. 3
MARKETING POSITION BEFORE
MARKETING IDEA WAS DEVELOPED
Apart from B2B vendors with very specific, lower-value products (such as
hardware providers), most B2B organisations are still trying to work out
how to use social media effectively. Particularly when sale values can be in
the tens of millions of pounds, as is the case with O2’s enterprise services.
When you’re promoting complex ICT products and services, it’s difficult to
get your proposition across in 140 characters or less. Which is why taking
an integrated approach that recognises social media as a key strategic
channel is so important. So while there’s plenty of social noise in the
marketing of technology and services to enterprises and the public sector,
there’s not a lot of carefully structured strategy that seeks to make social
media effective and accountable. This was the opportunity that we set out
to exploit.

4. 4
DETAILS OF THE NEW STRATEGY,
WHAT YOU DID AND WHY IT WAS
INNOVATIVE OR SPECIAL TO THE
ORGANISATION
By the beginning of 2013, we had begun work in earnest on our social
media presence.
Our approach differs from most B2B enterprise social media activity in that
we recognised that social is a personal medium. We chose to focus on our
people rather than our brand because we know that social media users want
personal conversations as part of their digital experience. We interpreted this
trend into our B2B environment, and created an ambassador scheme
to encourage 1-2-1 engagement through our social spokespeople.
We encouraged employees from all parts of the business to become
O2 ambassadors, and share our content through the channels that suited
them, with an emphasis on Twitter and LinkedIn. Sales teams, practice
heads, consultants – they’re all experts in their fields and the conversations
they have with customers and prospects via social media are much more
valuable than anything the social media team could do on its own. They are
also able to respond more quickly, and refer to the latest industry findings
and developments in conversation – adding value to their interactions.
While O2 has worked hard on its consumer media presence, the people
we wanted to target through social media for O2 Business – the people
responsible for purchasing ICT products and services – would find more
value in two-way conversations with an expert than from a faceless brand
continually flogging its services. This was the trick that so many B2B social
media programmes seemed to miss.

5. 5
OVERVIEW
What follows is a quick overview of how O2 Enterprise used Twitter,
LinkedIn, SlideShare, YouTube and our blog platform in 2013 to reach
a wider audience and drive greater engagement:
TWITTER
We used Twitter in two main ways over the past 12 months.
1. We made sure that we regularly created the right kind of valuable
content for our ambassadors to tweet and share with their contacts.
Then we encouraged them to do so as often as possible.
2. For example, Ben Dowd, Business Director at O2, has over 1,700
followers who he regularly shares O2 content with, most recently
in promoting the O2 Local Government Digital Fund (a programme
designed to stimulate innovation in local government and highlight
O2’s digital expertise in the sector).
3. We used the O2 Business Twitter account extensively in the run up to
and during the launch of our 4G service. We created thought leadership,
example business cases, short videos and in-depth webinars around
4G for business, which we then shared with our 11,000+ followers
(as well as through our ambassadors) to drive people to engage with
our latest content on YouTube, our blog site (The Blue) and our 4G
landing page.
O2BusinessUK @o2businessuk
Thanks to flexible working. O2 saved more than £3.8 million
because we now need 500 fewer desks
O2BusinessUK @o2businessuk
You can now get glorious #O24G in Wolverhampton.
Be there on the move!
O2BusinessUK @o2businessuk
Customers engaged with brands on social media spend on
average 20-40% more on those brands than those who aren’t
Expand

6. 6
LINKEDIN
Last year we also focused on ensuring our O2 Business LinkedIn profile
was complete and contained valuable content. We recognised that, in
the business space, it is difficult to crack the humour that characterises
social media. So we developed a strategy of parodying some of the most
over-used clichés. For example, in the run up to Christmas 2013, we ran
‘12 days of Christmas’, where we posted a new ‘gift’ that IT could bestow
on the business for each day.
SLIDESHARE
We recently joined SlideShare and we’re using this new channel to make
content available in a quick and easy-to-digest manner. In just five months,
the page has racked up over 2,000 views.
WE’VE SEEN GREAT CONVERSATIONS TAKING PLACE
BETWEEN OUR AMBASSADORS AND PROSPECTS,
CONVERSATIONS THAT ARE VALUABLE TO BOTH SIDES.”
Helen Brougham, Enterprise Engagement Manager

7. 7
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS SPECIFIC
TO YOUR CATEGORY
WHAT WAS ACHIEVED/RESULTS
TWITTER
@O2BusinessUK now has over 11,400 followers.
Example: https://twitter.com/o2businessuk
LINKEDIN
The O2 Business company following has more than doubled in the past
12 months; it now has over 27,000 followers.
Example: http://www.linkedin.com/company/2012?trk=prof-exp-company-name
SLIDESHARE
In just five months, the O2 Business SlideShare channel has received over
2,000 views.
Example: http://www.slideshare.net/o2businessuk
YOUTUBE
We posted 47 new videos in the past 12 months, and the O2 Business YouTube
channel has seen a 50% increase in views from July-December 2013.
Example: http://www.youtube.com/user/o2ukbusiness
BLOG
We published roughly 70 posts on our blog ‘The Blue’ over the past 12 months,
which have received over 20,000 views. Whenever possible, these blogs are
created by industry or product experts to ensure they are relevant and valuable
to our readers.
Example: http://news.o2.co.uk/2014/01/17/using-digital-technology-effectively-
workforce-customers

8. 8
CLIENT TESTIMONIALS
We’ve seen great conversations taking place between our ambassadors
and prospects, conversations that are valuable to both sides.”
Helen Brougham, Enterprise Engagement Manager
“We’ve managed to successfully translate our social brand and its
‘Be more dog’ values into the B2B space, to great effect.”
Becky Potgieter PR & Social Media Manager