AT&T implemented a social media strategy in 2009 that utilized their employees who were already active on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. They encouraged these employees to share information about AT&T's products, services, and promotions. This group grew to over 1,500 employees who actively posted on social media. AT&T provided training to ensure regulatory compliance and measure the effectiveness of employee posts. Their goal was to leverage the trust consumers have in opinions from friends and family over traditional advertising. The program centralized content for employees to easily share and saw over 20,000 influencer activities generating an estimated $1 million in media value.

1. Analysis& Outlook
AT&T social media strategy included utilizing the company’s employees who are already active
on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Twitter and encourage them to share their opinions
on the social media platforms and create awareness about the company’s products and services
and also promote the marketing and other promotional campaigns. It all started in 2009 with a
small group of employees and currently the group grew into strong 1500 employees who actively
share updates and posts on Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. For eligibility into this program
employees should be active on the above mentioned social networks for more than 90 days and
they have to go through a training program to avoid any potential issues and problems. The
company initially identified some 500 employees who were active in social networks and started
a pilot project with them.
In a presentation at SocialMedia.org‘s BlogWell conference in Dallas, AT&T’s Senior Manager
of Emerging Communications, Lee Diaz highlighted Nielsen survey facts that 92 % of
consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of
advertising and 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a product when they hear about it from
someone they trust, which also encouraged AT&T to encourage their employees as social
advocates. Employees are an excellent resource of knowledge and information about company’s
products and services, actively participate on various social networking sites and with training,
necessary tools and platforms and encouragement from company allowed employees to actively
engage with consumers on social networking sites. AT&T also monitors and measures the
activity and engagement of the employees so as to analyze the effectiveness of their content.
Lee Diaz also highlighted AT&T added a hub to centralize the content and the employee
advocates. It allowed their advocates to explore all of the content in total and decide, for
themselves, when and how they would share. The centralized hub allows AT&T to share content
immediately, make announcements, etc. It was important that the employees can access the hub
from any device. They used SocialChorus for the hub, which includes the embedded hashtag.
One of the main components of AT&T’s social advocate program was a simple hashtag,
#ATTemployee. This let their employees share content from AT&T while being transparent and
staying legal. It is also important for AT&T employee advocates to engage with one another, too
so as to further improve the content efficacy and AT&T has an internal platform called tSpace
based on IBM Connections platform, which is available only to employee advocates. The
program has seen some good results as there have been more than 20,000 influencer activities,
more than 410,000 audience engagements, and estimated media value of more than US$ 1
million. AT&T is now encouraging all its 250,000 employees to participate in this program
voluntarily and company is actively sharing the content that they want the employees to promote
in all the internal platforms and it is up to the employees whether to share or reshare the AT&T
news, information, announcements, etc. on their preferred social networking site. AT&T realizes
the fact that employee engagement will have significant influence on the reputation & brand
image of the company.
AT&T Social Media Strategy: AT&T Social Circle employees as Social Advocates