DROPS Social Media Campaign

On 31 December 2019, the DROPS Asia LinkedIn Page counted around 1050 followers, up from a mere 200 a year earlier. During this period, a total of 32 posts were viewed 41,910 times, clicked on 2188 times and liked 424 times. So What?!

Besides collaborating in various work groups and developing some of the Resources & Guidance, one of the main objectives of DROPS is to raise awareness for dropped objects throughout our supply chain in the region. As DROPS Asia steering committee, we have often taken a "copy-with-pride" approach. After all, why spend resources figuring out new ways to prevent dropped objects when there is still so much improvement possible increasing adoption of what we already know.

Traditionally, we mostly tried to achieve this by organizing regular face to face forums in the region attended by between 50 to 200 mid- to senior level operations and safety professionals. The hope was that these professionals would take the knowledge gained and share and apply it within their organizations.

Since the industry downturn, few professionals would get permission to travel to attend a forum in the region and as a result, we haven't organized any since 2015. In 2018, we started organizing online meeting/webinars which were recorded and posted on our YouTube Channel. This channel has a mere 30 subscribers, but has garnered 107 viewing hours and about 1700 unique views.

The most popular video below with lessons from Seadrill incidents was viewed 387 times. Admittedly, about 50% dropped out after about a minute into the video and only 25% made it close to the end. But unlike a conference, where it may be seen as a little rude to step out if you are no longer interested, with YouTube it is very easy to skip to the next video. In a physical conference, we might pride ourselves that we have a 100 attendees, but how many are checking their phones?, thinking about other things?, how many are mentally present? By contrast, those 25% or 96 viewers are clearly interested and digesting the lessons shared.

The 41,910 LinkedIn impressions mentioned at the beginning of this article may sound impressive, but should be compared to a billboard along the highway, it may pass your view, but you may not always mentally register it. The 2188 clicks and 424 likes however, are a clear signal people are viewing the content we publish. The 2188 clicks are more than all people who have ever attended a DROPS Asia forums combined.

Many people believe that LinkedIn is only for recruiters and sales people. Our LinkedIn page does not attract much interest from recruiters, but indeed there is a lot of interest from people in the profession of sales and business development (second largest audience). Operations and Engineering are clearly an important target group and make up more than half of our followers.

While dropped objects are a common problem in many industries like construction, mining and renewables; DROPS has mostly been active in the upstream oil & gas industry. This is also reflected in 73% of all page followers listing their primary industry as Oil & Energy.

Some of the most popular post of the year include Enquest Safety Day, Petrosea DROPS Workshop, 2019 Strategy Session. What these post have in common are always several people on picture. Posts that are informative only and do not portray any people, viewed significantly less often.

A big part of the success of the LinkedIn campaign is attributed to a group of individuals who consistently share, comment and like the posts we put on our page. By doing so, they spread the message withing their network and allow us to reach people not already following the LinkedIn page.

Similarly to forums, it is hard to determine if and to what extend these posts and engagements lead to actions that reduce dropped objects. Since DROPS Asia was established 10 years ago, concepts, tools and guidance notes like DROPS Calculator, Reliable Securing, Surveys and Inspections, Tools at Height, Red Zones and Recommended Practice have become well adopted by many companies in Asia. Again it is impossible to determine how many incidents have been prevented as a result, but generally, members report significant improvements.

Does this mean we won't hold regular forums anymore? On the contrary, face-to-face forums allow for a deeper connection and collaboration and we do intend to organize at least one event in 2020.

In 2020, we will continue to develop informative videos for YouTube and promote dropped object prevention via our LinkedIn page. We will also explore if other (social) communication channels such as Facebook and WhatsApp. DROPS VR is another tool which will become more important as virtual reality technology gains wider adoption.

The success of the DROPS Social Media Campaign also relies on the ability to share relevant content frequently. If you have any ideas or suggestions to share, we look forward to hear from you.