Tweeting and Posting the Way to a Better Image

By stacey on June 21st, 2010

Not surprisingly, we were not the first to notice BP’s use of social media resources to reach out to the public. Just after our first posts on the subject, on Friday, June 18th, NPR ran a segment on “All Things Considered” entitled, “Can BP Tweet Its Way to a Better Image?” Please listen here.

Tweeting and retweeting postings at the rate of at least one per hour during the work day, BP is publishing information that generally centers around recovery efforts, what BP appears to be doing well, and news articles on the subject. You can follow BP’s tweets for yourself on their official Twitter account: @BP_America/gulf-response

BP’s homepage directly addresses the topic with a large, bolded headline, “Gulf of Mexico response”, but you can also follow a link to a homepage dedicated to the cause. This individual site is a wealth of information and propaganda involving BP’s response and actions in the Gulf, but no where does it give the option to create a conversation with the people they are responsible for helping.

As was addressed in the NPR broadcast above, this age of social media has created an environment of doers. People who want to take action and BP so far has done little to give people that opportunity to take action, make statements, and have a conversation with the company. This is one reason that the anti-BP Twitter accounts and Facebook groups have more followers that the official BP sites. The anti-BP creators have given people a platform to voice their opinions and to receive feedback.