It’s hardly a secret that the oil and gas industry has an image problem. In a 2013 Gallup public opinion poll that ranked 25 major U.S. industry sectors according to whether the public’s impression of them was positive, neutral or negative, the oil and gas industry ranked 24th. The only “industry” faring worse was the federal government.

These negative numbers have stayed constant since 2001, even as the oil and gas industry has poured millions of dollars into national advertising campaigns in print and on television to improve its image. It’s also an oddity, given such widespread public support for major industry initiatives such as offshore drilling and the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Indeed, according to a 2014 University of Texas poll, Americans believe that increased natural gas production creates more jobs; the domestic natural gas boom lowers energy costs; dependence on foreign oil is a bigger problem than the environmental impact of domestic production; U.S. production promotes energy independence; and that increasing American oil and natural gas production is generally a good thing.

Yet despite this tight alignment between what the American public believes and the industry’s goals, the oil and gas sector’s poor reputation persists. And that negative image should not be seen as a casual, it-could-be-better issue; it presents a real barrier to companies’ ability to achieve their goals, which can ultimately mean delivering less value to their shareholders.

Lessons learned from Colorado

Coordinated local opposition to oil and gas development, especially hydraulic fracturing, can derail industry initiatives. In November 2013, for example, four Colorado towns voted to ban or temporarily halt fracking even though the industry spent nearly a million dollars on advertising to defeat the measures. Opposition groups, however, invested heavily in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to better communicate with the affected communities. They also used search engine optimization to make sure their anti-industry messages reached the top of the Google rankings.

In other words, while the oil and gas industry was using old and expensive tools to reach a mass audience, anti-industry activists were adopting smarter (and, in some cases, less expensive) weapons in this fight, and learning to target audiences at the individual level. This is especially effective when the issues in dispute affect communities concerned with local impacts—as is almost always the case when it comes to fracking.

A report on the Colorado votes revealed that the top 10 groups that opposed drilling had millions of Twitter and Facebook followers. By contrast, the report found “no engagement” by the oil and gas industry, and “no communicating with influential neutrals, no two-way conversation.” Put simply, the industry’s one-way, non-conversational style of communication through advertising—in print and on radio and television—was less effective in the new era of social media, which has accustomed people to interacting and engaging not only with friends and relatives, but also with the companies with which they do business.

The oil and gas industry also continues to focus on federal and state regulatory engagements, which are still important. But they arguably have come at the expense of community outreach and two-way communication, even though fracking is predominantly a local concern. Permits are still issued by state regulators (and, in some cases, the federal government), but the license to operate within the community is becoming more important as so-called “urban drilling” becomes more common.

Clearly, social media has proven to be an effective tool for anti-industry activists. There’s no reason why the same tools couldn’t be used just as effectively by the oil and gas industry, especially as there is a deep well of popular support for its goals.

Not just for sharing cat videos

Although less than 20% of Americans are on Twitter or use LinkedIn, and an even smaller percentage of adults use Pinterest or Instagram, social media is highly and intensively employed by key influencers—and not just for sharing cat videos.

Virtually every journalist—newspaper, magazine, or TV correspondent—is on Twitter. According to a 2014 Indiana University survey, journalists use social media for at least 30 minutes every day. Nearly 60% of these journalists said they use social media to identify story ideas, and approximately 55% use it to find sources for their articles.

Also, some of the world’s biggest stories in recent years appeared first on social media. Osama bin Laden’s death was announced via a tweet nine hours before the news of his demise hit the wires. Carl Icahn announced his position in Apple on Twitter. A Facebook posting not only broke the news of the burgeoning 2010 uprising in Egypt, but Facebook ultimately became a virtual platform for revolution in the Middle East.

A 2014 study found that Facebook was responsible for 20% of web traffic to more than 300,000 websites surveyed, an increase of 40% over 2013. Taking this evidence into account, there’s no longer any justification for ignoring or dismissing social media. The oil and gas industry must acquire social media skills or risk allowing a minority that is antagonistic to its message to shape the public narrative and guide the societal conversation.

Rules for a social media strategy

Get visual. According to 2013 research from Ipsos OTX, over 70% of online consumers share some kind of content on social media, and the most shared content is pictures. Companies, nonprofits and activists increasingly are taking advantage of this trend by embedding information graphics in key messages, such as adding pictures to their tweets that correspond with the message being conveyed. Because visual information fits so well with the graphic nature of the Internet and is the kind of content most often shared, oil and gas companies should leverage graphical representations in their messaging of production data, as well as the job growth their activities generate. This information can be broken down by state, and even by community, thereby encouraging the data’s swift and broad dissemination.

As Mark Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan at Flint (who fills his blog, Carpe Diem, with graphical representations of oil and gas production data), recently said, “Using charts helps make the blog more visually interesting compared with text-only blogs and websites, and has crossover appeal to social media. A tweet with a graph always gets more interest and re-tweets than one that is text only.”

Get fast. The dominant characteristic of social media is the speed with which messages are disseminated. We’ve never seen anything like it in human history, and that speed is driving events, as it did in the 2010 Egyptian uprising and other, more recent social upheavals.

For the oil and gas industry, communicating industry news via social media is a faster, more reliable way to distribute a message than sending out a traditional press release, crossing one’s fingers and hoping someone takes notice and reports on it. It is also a more efficient way to get coverage in the mainstream media, as journalists are now turning to social media as one of their main sources of information.

Companies should post online messages and tweet regularly, consistently and as frequently as possible. This cannot be done in an ad hoc matter; it must be part of a coherent, articulated strategic imperative. In the world of social media, being slow puts one behind the eight ball and it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get out from behind it.

Control the message. One of the advantages of communicating via social media rather than through writers and their editors is that your message can reach your targeted audience unfiltered by media spin. This direct engagement can then be shared through social networks, magnifying its impact and framing the story before journalists get hold of it.

In this way, the industry can be proactive, setting the table for the reporters, who must react to your message and join an ongoing conversation rather than starting one on their own terms. By the time a story is printed in the local paper (potentially with an unfavorable editorial spin), dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people may have already seen the news.

Remember: Social is local. Social media provides a channel for the industry and its allies to communicate directly with the people who provide the local license to operate. Facebook has geo-targeting tools that allow companies to tailor their messages for designated regions as well as provide updates for users and industry allies in relevant areas. Concerns in South Texas may not be the same as those in North Dakota. Questions raised in Greene County, Pennsylvania, may not be a concern at all in Lycoming County. Put simply, social media allows the industry to communicate with messages designed to address specific situations and concerns like never before.

This is a huge advantage over the mass communication strategies the oil and gas industry has traditionally relied upon, and it represents a more efficient (and cost-effective) communications strategy that can reach and rally the key influencers.

Drill for those hashtags. Basic research can reveal what specific hashtags (which are used to categorize tweets and Facebook posts) people are using on Twitter in any given state, city or town. Leveraging those particular hashtags can allow companies to insert themselves into the conversation on important local issues in a measurably effective way, including sharing information about newly planned initiatives. Hashtags can also be used to send targeted messages to distinct communities wrestling with questions that are of supreme importance to oil and gas interests.

The risk is not using social media

In an environment in which towns are considering restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, local issues are the critical ones. We’ve seen that the majority of the American public—for a host of good, solid economic reasons—largely is in favor of increasing domestic oil and gas production; the problem for the industry arises when that production needs to take place in someone’s backyard. That’s when opposition arises, and a locally passed measure can have a snowball effect on adjacent communities if companies fail to respond quickly and through the most effective channels.

Right now, anti-fracking, anti-energy activists are using social media in increasingly skillful ways and are well-equipped to take quick advantage of a dilatory industry response. And once the opposition is allowed to frame the narrative, it’s extraordinarily difficult to change it.

The oil and gas industry needs to tell its story more effectively. It must develop the requisite skills and place its resources where they will do the most good and have the most impact: in the social networks that are increasingly setting the agenda, and are even determining where companies will have the license to operate.

Steve Everley (@saeverley) is a senior director in FTI Consulting’s strategic communications practice. He serves as team lead for the nationally recognized Energy In Depth program, a public education program on hydraulic fracturing and tight resource development. He recently was ranked among the top 10 oil and gas professionals on Twitter.

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