Empowered by the Advocacy Index, we did more than just maintain levels of public support for BP:

• Increased public support for BP in social media by 11%. Grew advocacy from a volume of 6.8% to 7.3% of total conversations by the end of 2013.

• Doubled the size of BP America’s Facebook audience, from 360,000 likes to 700,000+ likes by end of 2013.

• Engaged 500,000+ people with BP America social media content and totaled 200 million+ impressions.

The Advocacy Index is now the key measure that BP uses to assess social media success and inform online communications strategies to increase positive public perception.

Through the Advocacy Index, we discovered that BP’s steadfast commitment to the Gulf and American energy had developed a sense of pride in BP employees. Employees and their family members were actively defending and advocating for the company, especially on Facebook. While many BP employees do not self-identify as such on their personal social accounts, they outwardly shared their employee pride in comments to BP America on Facebook, and we needed to craft content that would bring them to the forefront.

Focusing on Facebook, where the majority of our advocacy was being generated, we created content to connect with BP employees and the pride they feel in their daily work to help fuel America. Whether by sharing a photo of a Gulf rig or designing a graphic to highlight offshore workers’ unique helicopter commute, we told stories that resonated with employees and prompted them to engage. Our employee-focused content strategy resulted in the most engaging organic Facebook post for BP America to date, a time-lapse video of BP’s Houma Heliport that garnered 170,000+ impressions, 6,800+ video views and nearly 2,000 engagements.