BP’s Social Media Scorecard

The ups and downs of the public’s interest in—and attitudes toward—BP and its handling of the Gulf oil spill can be traced in online activity.

According to blog and twitter tracking by Sysomos, which provides business intelligence for social media, after April 20, 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon platform first caught fire, to July 15, 2010, when the spill was finally capped, social media mentions of BP exploded.

Online news mentions concerning BP also jumped, from 69,273 in the first four months of the year, to 590,154 from April 20th to July 15th and 68,882 during the last week tracked.

Not surprisingly, the he tenor of the messages and posts concerning the oil giant shifted abruptly after the spill.

Between January 1 and April 20, 2010, BP had a fairly positive image with bloggers and other social media users. But after the initial explosion on April 20, 2010 through July 15th, when the leak was capped, the comments became dramatically more negative.

During the period of the leak, BP’s favorable sentiment percentage dropped more than 20%, while its negative sentiment rose from 22% to 46%.

Tracking during the first week the leak was capped (July 15 to 22) found little change in the flow of social media discussion: there were more than 55,000 blog posts, 42,000 forum mentions and almost 528,000 tweets about BP.

In fact, there were more tweets about the company in the last week covered than there were in the first four months of the year, and despite the fact that the leak was capped, negative sentiment did not really decline, though there was a slight rise in positive sentiment, from 16% to 19%.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 59% of US consumers now get their news from a combination of online and offline sources, so no company, no matter how large, and no advocacy group, no matter how committed to a cause, can afford to neglect social and online media.

To that end, BP mounted a broad crisis-management campaign, which included a steady stream of tweets, blogs and online updates and videos. For one example, see Gulf of Mexico Response.

For more information on attitudes toward the disaster, see Opinion Continues to Swing Against Offshore Drilling.