Social Media and the Mining Industry: Impact?

Is social media commentary going to change the way mining companies around the world do business?  Can industry participating in a blog or forum discussions affect their bottom line or share pricing?  These are just some of the questions today’s mining companies need to answer. Fortunately, we’ve done some research.

A recent quick and simple study MediaBadger conducted on Canadian mining companies in three Latin American countries brought > 4,000,000 hits of Spanish-language data over three months.  The majority of the blogs and forums were posted by social/political and environmental activists opposing mining activities  (often connected by international networks). Supporters of the mining sector were sparsely represented. As a mining company in one of these countries, would you want to know what is being said?

Only 18 months ago a study undertaken by IBM(“From Stretched to Strengthened, Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study”), identified that most of more than 1,700 CMO’s interviewed world- and industry-wide felt unprepared to deal with the impact of key changes in the marketing arena. Three of the “most pervasive and universal game-changing challenges they reported were:

·      The data explosion
·      Social media
-     Proliferation of channels and devices.

MediaBadger’s information and research tells us that more people and companies are increasingly becoming aware of the advantages of utilising the social media.   Many people, however, still feel “deaf, dumb and blind” –  as a colleague recently pointed out – when it comes to understanding and mastering the intricacies of the ‘web’.

Our experience also confirms the impacts of social media on their business still mystify not only many CEOs but also other senior management in the mining sector, trying to understand opinions, social trends, and market currents relating to industry. Awareness of who is supportive, who is critical, why people hold these positions and where they are located are fundamental issues when creating policy, undertaking  community or stakeholder outreach, developing public education, when defining Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes, or when trying to build a strong and positive corporate image.

Download our most recent mining sector and social media impacts newsletter Here: Winter2013-Mining-Badger

Current stats indicate that more than half of the world’s 2.4 billion Internet users sign in to a social network regularly.  These stats indicate that during 2012 internet users numbered:

North America          273,785,413
Africa                       165,335,676
Latin America          254,915, 745
Asia                         1,076,681,059

 Of all these internet users it is estimated that 63.2% visited a social network at least once a month in 2012. That number is expected to increase to 70.7% in 2014. With all of these people chatting online globally – what have you been missing?

Do you know the difference between the myriad of social media channels, apps and services available online – which will best suit your needs and which are the most widely used in specific regions of the world?  Are you tuned in to the ever increasing possibilities of Weibo, Reddit, Ameba, Linkedin or Odnoklassniki?  Or do you need some help navigating the web?

Manage the data, know the channels and understand the message
MediaBadger can get beyond the ‘quantity’ of  data with its proprietary technology and knowledge of the intricacies of the web channels and devices – far beyond what consumer social media monitoring tools can do.  Our expert analysts can make this vast amount of data understandable so you and your company can use it and be responsive to the needs and wishes of your clients and stakeholders.

A recent article in The Atlantic Monthly points out that “The value of social media is the trust created through real people engaging in authentic dialogue.”  ( The Atlantic). Understand what these real people think by tuning in to social media.

 (Contributing Authors: S. Soux, M. McKinnon, A. Colson)

The Top Odd Social Media Research Requests

We’ve completed over 280 and research projects for clients now in sectors covering healthcare, oil & gas, non-profits, governments, tourism and more. Along the way, we’ve received some strange requests for research, investigations or doing other analytical work…keeping in mind our research is all cyberspace focused; social media, news media etc. So we thought we’d share some of the odder requests we get…we shared some a couple of years ago, so here’s the latest.

Is President Obama an Alien?
We had a good chuckle with this one. We can say the request came from the U.S. itself. This person or group, thought perhaps there was evidence online through social media channels or elsewhere, that President Obama is an alien. So after a good chuckle we declined.

Why Isn’t My Cat Popular?
This lady had spent a fair bit of time building up her cat’s profile on Facebook and wanted to start “tweeting” on behalf of her cat. She only had a few hundred “likes” on Facebook and felt her cat was very funny and cute and deserved more followers. She wanted to know what the problem was – with people. Moved right along on that one…

Strategy for Selling Weed Online
Via an anonymous email, this person wanted some research into the best ways to sell marijuana via social media without being caught by the police. That person was smart to use an anonymous email address at least, not so smart on the request point.

Will Pay Based on The Riches We Shall Make
We get a few of these in varying flavours every year. Some person has invented something or come up with a great marketing idea. If we’ll do the market research and help them with a social media strategy, they will pay us vast sums of money from the riches they will make…surefire guaranteed success! Uhm, pass…

Can We Delete Our Competitors Social Media Content
Yes indeed. We have a magic wand to wave at the mystical Web and all you’re competitions content will be wiped away in an instant. This was a good chuckle for the team indeed. And a reminder to anyone that no, content cannot be deleted unless every server it is on in the world deletes it or shuts down.

Heartbreaker: Could We Find a Missing Person?
We actually wish we could. It would be a great service. This was a hard one to take from an obviously distressed patient. It’s the kind of miracle we would love to be able to perform.

Please Prove Christianity is the Number One Online Religion
Spirituality is, we believe, and important part of human existence. These guys were a tad over the top however, convinced that Christianity was the most popular religion in the world and it could be proved with some online research. We do not conduct any work for any religious groups. Our goal is to ne as neutral as possible.