Well, not exactly. #oilspill is one of the top 10 trending terms on Twitter right now, and thanks to  people behind the Twitter account @BPGlobalPR (among others) it will probably remain there until there is a real solution for the oil currently spewing in the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day. That account was created just 2 weeks ago, and has already garnered over 121,000 followers (including myself).

The name purposely looks like an official BP account and even has the BP logo (although it is an all black version with splotches on it), but it is actually run by outsiders posing as the BP public relations team who are tweeting satirical comments about the oil spill situation. There is also a hash tag “#bpcares” for others to contribute to their efforts. If you haven’t had the pleasure of seeing these tweets, here are a few recent ones:

“So YOU want to see pictures of dead animals covered in oil and WE are the bad guys!? Sick bastards. #bpcares”

“Just got 100k followers and our oil is headed to Florida. You know what this means… WE’RE GOING TO DISNEYWORLD! #bpcares”

“Utterly confused as to the difference between the dome and the top hat, but barreling forward with it anyhow. #bpcares”

“As part of our continued re-branding effort, we are now referring to the spill as “Shell Oil’s Gulf Coast Disaster”. #bpcares”

You can imagine the effect this could have on unwary tweeters when they come across this account thinking it is actually BP sending these statements. Major crisis right? Perhaps not. BP embraced the account and its purpose, and their spokesperson Toby Odone intelligently responded with “People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up.”

They haven’t tried to shut down the account (yet), and instead they emphasized that all of their focus is on fixing the bigger problem as it should be. BP does have its own official twitter account @BP_America, and they are actively sharing updates on their efforts. They are also actively updating their Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr in addition to paying for Google ad space to share what they are doing for the oil spill.

Creating your own content for social media sites is far better strategy than the alternative of trying to shut down the negative comments and user generated comments, especially on a huge scale like this. Other companies have learned the hard way. Nestle took an authoritarian approach to their Facebook page back in March when they were under fire for using palm oil from an Indonesian company that was destroying rainforests (see below) and started deleting user posts.

That gave the already upset Facebookers another reason to dislike them, and Nestle had to apologize for its failing reputation management strategy (hey at least they admitted they were rude, right?). Although BP has and will continue take heat for the oil spill, their decision to let the @BPGlobalPR account stay alive should at least help their critics see that they are understanding. Besides, shutting down one account will only be effective until the next fake account pops up on Twitter or any of the other social media platforms on the Web, and there’s no real way to fully control user generated content. BP is doing the right thing by concentrating on their own efforts for both online reputation management, and for the oil spill.

Hopefully that pays off soon (for everyone sake).

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Tags: BP Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Online Reputation Management

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.