O2 and Twitter have embarked on an official exclusive partnership to support UK small businesses.
The companies will work together to help small businesses in the UK better promote themselves and engage with existing and new customers.
O2 will provide educational content from Twitter, specific to the small business audience, with marketing tips and best practice advice. Eligible UK businesses will also receive a share of £1m free advertising credit on Twitter’s new self-service advertising platform.
In addition, O2 Business is launching a unique O2 social insights tool to provide small businesses already using Twitter with advice to improve their social media outreach and activities.
This includes the Social League, a social media leader board where small businesses can track and rank themselves against all the other companies that have signed up. This allows each business to compare themselves by size, region and sector.
The Dashboard enables small businesses to check how their social activity is performing and monitor their influence and outreach, milestones and achievements. The Social Toolkit delivers content straight to each member’s account, providing useful tips, guides, FAQs and case studies on social media best practice.
The announcement coincides with Twitter’s news that it is opening up its self-service advertising platform to small and medium-sized businesses in the UK.
To celebrate the partnership, O2 Business is giving qualifying businesses that sign up to its social league a kick-start with a £50 credit to spend on Twitter’s new small business advertising platform. In addition, O2 is running a two week-long competition on Twitter from November 18 through its business channel, @O2BusinessUK, that will see one business win a year’s free advertising on Twitter.
Ben Dowd, business director at O2, said: "We are absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Twitter to equip Britain’s small businesses with the tools they need to succeed and grow in digital Britain. We truly believe our O2 social insights tool is one of the best free resources available.
"During conversations with our small business customers we are often told that what they really need is advice to understand how they can use platforms like Twitter, and we believe that it’s our responsibility as both a large corporate and a digital services company to guide them. That’s why we are investing our time, money and expertise in this new O2 social insights platform."
