About the company
Headquartered at Whitacre Tower in downtown Dallas, Texas, AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation. It is the second largest mobile telephone provider and the largest provider of fixed telephone in the US. AT&T also provides broadband subscription television services. As of May 2014, AT&T is the 23rd largest company in the world in terms of market value, assets, profits, and a composite of revenues. Also, being 16th largest non-oil company, AT&T is the largest telecommunications company in the world when it comes to revenue. In the starting of the year 2016, AT&T Inc. became the 17th largest mobile telecom operator in the world having 130.4 million mobile customers.
Business Objective
The company wanted to win business via blog-centered social sales strategy. They wanted to take a new approach in order to build heavily favored relationships via social media.
Strategies adopted by AT&T
The company with support from the internal team and rigorous training implemented a content strategy that was aimed at ‘persons of interest’ from customers’ perspective. AT&T wanted to be viewed as thought leaders.
Social Sales Strategy
The company came up with B2B blog known as Networking Exchange. By making sure the content was viewed by ‘persons of interest’ at the client was the next part of the strategy. AT&T leveraged two social sites that were leveraged by customers most frequently namely LinkedIn and Twitter.
Content
It was obviously a hurdle for the company to find unique content that could put their technology in the right light. The content that was already there was aimed at technologists, and not business people. The company put in efforts on the business of the customers and discusses the problems in user’s language. Also, the company wrote entirely new posts customized to the users and their roles. The content made was not only approachable and business-focused; it also helped in building relationships as well as encourages engagement with the authors.
Promoting the content
As per the training they had, they learned content was powerful only if it moves. For this purpose, they build a relevant network. The company first approached Twitter and built a network. Many of the tools were used in order to find relevant Twitter users.
There were routine engagements with the targeted group which included replies to tweets and re-tweets. Also, relevant articles and blogs from the Network Exchange and alike were retweeted by the company and its team.
The users were engaged with the customized content from the blogs along with tweeting about it and asking specific questions related to the content.
By using well-established methods on LinkedIn to find people in the customer base who were relevant enough in a similar manner. LinkedIn Groups were examined and correlated the groups between customers to find the groups that most likely to have the largest base of potential users attached.
There were over 5k members in the employee LinkedIn group for the company’s customer. There were interactions in the discussion groups and posed questions along with giving the helpful solutions whenever possible.
Results achieved
- AT&T Inc. was awarded with $47 million in a matter of 18 months.
- The reaction to company’s authentically valuable content and engagement was extraordinary. The social media presence was changing the relationship with the customer.
- AT&T was being regarded as an expert resource. Also, they were building relationships with people from new departments that contacted the company.
Learnings
- With the ‘refreshing’ approach, the customers were able to relate with the company.
- AT&T Inc successfully leveraged the power of social media marketing and took the precious bids.
- The customized blog posts by the company helped the company to engage the users with them.
- In a period of 18 months, the time when the company started the social media strategy, they got $47 million in the new business. All of these were directed to the 10 target solutions.
How are you planning to use famous platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter for boosting your business?
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