Social Media in Oil & Gas: A Snap Shot

Posted by Jason Warnock on February 11 at 2:00 PM Social Media in Oil & Gas: A Snap Shot

At DMD Insight, we spend a significant amount of time in the social media space—to build our company, to stay current on our clients’ industries, and to gain visibility and audience connections on our clients’ behalf.

We also spend a lot of time talking and educating about social media.  Sometimes half of a client’s objection is fear of the “unknown.”  Oftentimes a client believes that if they do not have an outbound social media presence, they have less to worry about what’s being said online.  Out of sight, out of mind.

When I read Stacy’s blog about the discussion of social media in the Oil & Gas industry, and the subsequent comments, I couldn’t agree more.  The principals of social media are relatively consistent across categories/industries—understanding, strategy, relevancy, dedication and positive engagement.  The benefit/risk equation, however, certainly can vary and is cause for much discussion within Oil & Gas industry.  However, not participating is quickly coming a liability for any industry as the social media space continues to grow.

To get a clearer picture of the Oil & Gas social media space, we thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at what’s currently happening there.  We started with two of the biggest names—Exxon/Mobil and BP—to determine exactly what kind of risk existed (i.e., negative discussions), and what potential benefit was potentially being lost by not addressing social media.  What became clear is while there may be a lot of risk, the potential for benefit is high.  This is just regarding discussion of the company itself, and not looking at the opportunity to join a discussion on an industry or global trend where the company could show leadership and forward-thinking actions.

As a quick snapshot, utilizing Radian 6 social media measurement software, we compared a month of social media activity, and also a closer micro-view of two weeks of discussion topics.  Below you’ll see a series of graphs with highlights.

I am confident both organizations are well aware of this buzz happening, and have far more elaborate tracking/monitoring, but even a 30,000-foot view shows the community is well engaged, and there is probably as much risk in ongoing silence as there is once the company engagement in conversation gets underway.

Share of Voice




Looking exclusively at the share of voice in the social media space—which includes blogs, forums, twitter (‘micromedia’) and other smaller networking sites—Exxon clearly has a larger visibility at 70% vs. BP’s 30%.  But it’s not of their own accord.  They do not have an outbound social media effort, so all the talk is un-addressed in the same forum where it is posted.  The actual number of mentions is also interesting to compare—over 30.4k Exxon mentions vs. 12.6k BP mentions in one month.

While BP does have a social media presence, it is very infrequent and limited.  What we see above is mostly community-driven and not addressed by BP.

Share of Media Type



Looking beyond share of voice, one can see from this media breakdown, which excludes mainstream media and is just the social space, there is quite a difference in volume—blogs at approximately 50% total for both brands, yet micromedia (twitter) is running close behind at approximately 30% (and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s growing in share). While many corporate executives are not interested in talking about or engaging with twitter users, numbers like those above indicate it cannot be ignored.

Exxon Social Media Breakdown


For Exxon, blog mentions are at about 46% of the total, which interestingly is only slightly ahead of twitter (‘micromedia’) at 35% of total. I would imagine that corporate marketing must take note of this significant stream of discussion, and understand the potential for opportunity there.

BP Social Media Breakdown


Blogs make up far more of the online social media volume for BP at approximately 60% of volume compared to twitter (‘micromedia’) at 17%. While BP has a twitter account, they have only posted 41 tweets since April 2009.

Digging further, the software can help us understand exactly what the chatter is about.  We mapped out a two-week time frame, and monitored comments to determine positives and negatives, and identified topics where spikes occurred.

Two-Week Content Overview:



In the two weeks we monitored, the chatter clearly spikes around newsworthy events—including a court ruling, an oil spill and quarterly earnings announcements.  Of the first two, a response from both companies could help quell concerns.  On the latter—the earnings—an online conversation could be helpful to manage direction, explain corporate point of view, and engage in meaningful discussion.  Interestingly, all news stories broke on blogs and micromedia before being picked up by mainstream media, creating another opportunity to help craft a message as it gets picked up.

As part of our research for this post, I went to BP’s site to determine what press releases they sent out during this time period, I was incredulously struck by their homepage headline, “2009: A Very Good Year,” which clearly relates to their financials, but to me is quite oblivious to the very difficult year that probably most of their global customers have experienced.

That said, engaging in social media needs to be honest, sincere and in tune with the concerns, interests and needs of the audience.  A campaign or online discussion without significant understanding and empathy for audience will surely weigh heavier on the risk than benefit side of the social media equation.

More information on DMD Insight can be found at www.dmdinsight.com Topics: energy, information_technology, strategy        SHARE: