The Friends of Coal’s direct outreach effort is continuing and in fact is picking up steam headed into the summer months, with several speaking engagements and end of the year state high school championship events through our partnership with the West Virginia Secondary Schools Athletic Commission.

WVCA Executive Committee Member, Jim Bunn, President of Coal River Energy, presented the individual achievement plaque to Matthew Brafford, after his tremendous effort in the State Track & Field Championship in Charleston last weekend.

Our social media campaign’s effectiveness is made evident by the results of a test we performed earlier this year, asking people to go to the White House “We the People” petition site and sign our petition to “stop the war on coal.” We rapidly drew more than the number needed (25,000) to require a response from the White House. The administration’s official response was issued this week.

 

“OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO: End to the War On Coal, end the job killing policies of the EPA and require an economic impact analysis of new policies.

On Thursday, May 23, Coach Don Nehlen and Bill Raney met with the Annual Statewide Convocation of Senior Programs in West Virginia at Cedar Lakes in Jackson County.  More than 300 participants enjoyed visiting with the Coach and had a number of questions and discussion about the industry.  Among those in attendance were a number of retired coal miners and coal miners' wives.

We have continued to increase our focus on social media outreach. Our Facebook pages have continued to grow, with the “Friends of Coal West Virginia” page now reaching over 9,200 fans and averaging approximately 40,000-50,000 page views per week. We have also seen several posts reach 10s of thousands of people – one has now been seen by more than 330,000 people.

Our other pages have also experienced significant growth, with the “Friends of Coal Virginia” page now topping 5700 fans and Citizens for Coal (on which we have posting privileges) topping 2,300 fans. Altogether, it can safely be estimated that our pages are reaching more than 100,000 people per week. Our growth rate exceeds 10 percent, with us adding approximately 300 new fans to the FOC-WV page in just this week alone.

We are rapidly integrating all our social media, including FLICKr, Twitter (both wvcoal.com and friendsofcoal.org have a Twitter feed), and we are evaluating other social media platforms, including a blog, which we are developing  and a social media management tool (Sprout Social) which will allow us to manage all our social media efforts on a single platform.

The Friends of Coal and the West Virginia Coal Association in a sponsorship deal to lend its name and logo to Hillman Racing, for the #27 Camping World Truck Series entry driven by Team 7 MotorsportsVirginia driver Jeff Agnew at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the N.C. Education Lottery 200 held on May 17, 2013.  The truck drove to a 24^th place finish.

Audience estimates indicate the television viewership for the event was approximately 1 million viewers. The event was part of the annual “All-Star Weekend” NASCAR series at Charlotte.