Clark University Final Presentation from Arielle Ganem Rosen

Exxon Mobil Part II

The competition- Website analysis... 

As you remember, 

According to Alexa.com, the website is not the most popular in the World, or even the US. Since it is not fair to compare one website to all the websites in the world, to judge the effectives or reach of their website, we compare it to one of their like-minded competitions, Chevron and British Petroleum. We chose these two companies since they are both international, multi-million dollars companies in the same economic sector.  

Graph 1: How popular is ExxonMobil’s website?

How popular is Chevron? 

Engagement metrics helps us understand how interested a site’s visitors are with the sites content. Since the bounce rate is the percentage of visits that consists of a single page view, the fact that this percentage is decreasing in the last three months is a good sign. At the same time, the fact that this percentage is so high (almost 1::2) demonstrates that the website has a low retention rate and needs to improve its ability to retain its visitors, past the first page. The other two statistics reemphasizes that Exxon website is doing better. It is a positive thing that their daily page view and time spend on the site have been increasing, however, again, the fact that these are so long are problem enatic and worrisome- since Exxon, to really be a leader in petroleum sectors should seek to be the website  of reference, and not an afterthought. 

Youtube 

You remember the videos from last time, now let's evaluate the effectivness. 

To analyze the outreach of their YouTube website, again, we utilize Alexa.

Since the bounce rate is so low that it does not even appear on the website, this is worrisome. The other two statistics reemphasizes the belief that Exxon’s YouTube page is not doing well. It is a negative thing that their daily page view is decreasing. On the other hand, it is positive that the time spend on the site has been increasing, however, again, the fact that these numbers are so low to begin with is problematic.  

Twitter @exxonmobil

Even though Exxon does not utilize their Twitter page to engage with their consumers, it is important to realize that the number of Exxon followers has been steadily increasing. This has been concluded thanks to the tool, Social Baker. Thus, there is a great possibility for Exxon to increase its reach- since its Tweets are being followed by more and more people as demonstrated in the graph below.

Addictomatics

 At http://addictomatic.com/topic/exxonmobil, we see the wide variety of ways that people are talking about Exxon Mobil.

ExxonValdez Accident 

Twenty-five years ago on March 24, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez slammed into Bligh Reef and spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into the cold, clear waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound -- one of the "last best places" on Earth. The oil charged through Prince William Sound and out into the Gulf of Alaska, damaging more than 1,300 miles of the remote, wild shoreline. 25 years later, the Sound’s coastal ecosystem is permanently damaged. Thousands of gallons of Exxon Valdez oil still pollute the beaches. This oil is still toxic and hurting the ecosystem near the shore. The government considers, as of 2010, only 13 of the 32 monitored wildlife populations, habitats and resource services that were injured in the spill as fully "recovered" or "very likely recovered." Some are still listed today as "not recovering." This includes a pod of orcas, which lost 15 of its 22 members after the spill, and has not produced a calf since. Given only one older female is left, scientists appear certain that this unique pod of orcas will go extinct -- it's just a matter of time. The government conclusion is that "there appears to be no hope for recovery."

Addictomatic 

According to http://addictomatic.com/topic/ExxonMobil+valdez, you also can find information on Exxon Valdez on Bing News, Google Blog, Truveo Video, Flickr, Twingly Blog, Wordpress.com, and Yahoo Web etc.

Ice Rocket/Meltwater 

Ice Rocket/Meltwater is an internet based search engine that tranks the daily blog citations of any company entered into the search bar. For our project, we entered both exxon mobil exxon valdez, valdez and valdez spill.

Although not very high, during the anniversary, there was a spike in blog posts mentioning those terms. This is not surprising, since there was a high media presence as well Greenpeace action during this week.

Twitter from IceRocket 

With the Twitter results from Ice Rocket, we see that there was a high rate social engagement on the Twitter feeds of various people regarding the Exxon Valdez spill. Although most was a retweeting of the Sierra Club tweet, the fact that this was retweeted is significant. The Sierra Club has over 106,106 followers and when they tweeted “What has the oil industry learned in the 25 yrs. since #Exxon Valdez? Not much”, some of those followers decided to retweets it.

 Even if this exact tweet was not retweeted many times, a larger number of Tweets were original and addressed the Exxon Valdez incident directly. The mix of individual and institutional tweets demonstrates the variety of US interest in this anniversary.

Valdez spill and Online petition 

After I “signed”, I discovered this window:

This picture demonstrates the attempts by Sum of Us, to utilize all the tools available to extend their virtual reach- such as Facebook, and Twitter. 

Exxon and Social Mention

Social Mention was used to evaluate the trend of the power of the company over time. We see that Exxon Mobil mostly has a neutral tone, however its strength did substantially decline around the anniversary of the Exxon Valdez incident .

With these tables, we numerically identify the sentiment, passion and reach of the website and the website visitors. We see a strong dip in strength, passion and reach around the time of the anniversary of the accident. Indeed, the numbers dip from 23% strength to 7% around the anniversary date. 

The power of the terms "Exxon Valdez" reached its peak during the anniversary period. Between the Greenpeace activity, the social media flurry from environmental conscience groups such as Sierra Club and the online activity from the petition, it seems like the activity about the spill  come from the consumer and environmentally activities, virtually engage side. there was no responsse from the compagny-again demonstrating Exxon's unwillingness to engage with the virtual community. 

Today's temperature: 

Keywords: 

Strength: Likely hood that the brand is being discussed. 

Sentiment: Ratio of positive to negative emotions 
Passion: Measure of likely hood that those talking about  your brand, will do it again. 

Reach: Number of unique authors mentioning your brand.

Google Trends 

Another tool used to analyze the interest over time into the company and its website is Google insights/trends. With this tool, we were able to enter various terms and see the interest over time.  

According to Google Insights, worldwide searches for Exxon Mobil Exxon Valdez spill Exxon Valdez ship peaked in April 2006 and May 2010 last year. For ExxonMobil, most of the searches have come from international countries, such as Nigeria, Singapore, Qatar and Cameron- the USA only comes in 5. For Exxon Valdez, the most searches come from USA and more specifically Anchorage and Washington DC. For the last search terms, the highest country of interest is the USA. The origin of these searches makes sense, since the Exxon Valdez spill directly affected Alaska.

Google Blog Search

We also analyzed the content of the blogs that mentioned the keywords of Exxon and Exxon mobile in order to understand what people were saying about the company on their blogs.  If you only type in the terms of Exxon Mobil, as the following screenshot demonstrates, we only see corporate – driven profit focus oriented.  However, there is a large number of blogs that are active and pertaining to the Valdez accident. 

      Recommendations for Exxon

 Before giving recommendations on how to increase the social media, it is important to understand the identities of the website visitors. Knowing who is in your customer base dis essential to forming a concrete and thoughtful groundswell engagement plan.

To establish the identity of their virtual base, we use Alexa Insights to determine the characteristics.

Thanks to these analysis, and the insight from the original article, we can establish three types of visitors to the Exxon Mobil corporate website; investors, journalist and prospective employers. There are generally well educated people, who are browsing from their work location (Source; Alexa)

With the background of this research, we establish a three pronged approach to improve the groundswell engagement from Exxon Mobile

a.       Advertise the CSR actions via the web

ExxonMobil is extremely generous in their CSR actions and donations. This positive action could be enhanced and contribute to the positive feeling surrounding their brand. By associating their brand to a positive image ( helping fight malaria in Africa or teaching low- income American children math and science), the company can slowly peel themselves away from the negative image that the term ‘multinational corporations’ brings to mind. Again, the companies already have, by default, a tremendous potential influence since they are located in over 40 different countries around the worlds. If they used this reach for social media engaging, it would have an amazing, dramatic and visible effect.

b.      Career page

According to the Career platform page of ExxonMobil, the company is « ExxonMobil is a dynamic, exciting place to work. We hire exceptional people, and every one of them is empowered to think independently, take initiative and be innovative.” Among further investigation of the board of directors we see a staff is on the older side of spectrum. It is always important to recruit the newest talent- especially since our generation is the one that is the most intouch with the social media tools, those tools which Exxon Public Relations department is clearly lacking. By having a Facebook page for recruitment purposes, where there would be constant two-way communication, Exxon would have a higher chance of really recruiting a talented and ethnically diverse workforce.

c.       Exxon Valdez Response

Finally, the lack of groundswell engagement is problematic and should be remedied. The lack of consumer engagement and response is perhaps explained with the fact that the company is so old and is currently being run by an older generation.  The fact is that the company’s only response was a flurry of « No comment » and a generic, undated, corporate statement on the website. The statement can be seen at; http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/environment/emergency-preparedness/spill-prevention-and-response/valdez-oil-spill

Alternatively, the corporation can utilize their current social media tools (twitter and YouTube) to launch a coordinated response to the accusations that Exxon did nothing about the Exxon Valdez spill. On YouTube, they could make a before and after video highlighting the Exxon restoration of the coast.  They can also put in place a virtual yearbook documenting all the progress there have done on upgrading the safety of the oil rigs since the catastrophic. By responding in an indirect way to the accusation that Exxon is not doing anything, the company is able to respond in an austere but effective way, while at the same keeping their brand clean and reinforcing the message that their company is worthy of investment and customer confidence

 Conclusion

This project sought to analyze the current online presence for the Exxon Mobil cooperation, headquarter in Irving, Texas. Through the use of various social media analytical tools such as but not limited to Social Mention, Google Trends and Social Baker, we have concluded that despite having physical location in over 40 different countries globally, the companies has very little desire to engage in the virtual world. Even if these reasons are rational, continuing the current path, especially since the competition is more virtually engaging, is not recommended. More and more researchers demonstrate the value of engaging with the customers who sit behind the other side of the computer and instead of receiving orders are the ones writing options, tweeting, and publishing their uncensored thoughts. It is imperative that Exxon reshapes their attitude towards social media and the Groundswell development. To do so, the author has put forward three different recommendation and policy actions that would, if implemented permit a slight rebranding of the company while controlling what is being said and maintain a very corporate profit driven focus.