#005: How to Debate Barnett Shale Skeptics with Ed Ireland of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council

The Oil & Gas Digital Marketing Podcast

Reading Time: 23 minutes

Ed Ireland of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council joins the Tribe this week to discuss how to engage a skeptical public. We also discuss how to make the most of your networking time at conferences, and Social Media Marketing World 2014 – which is coming up next week. If you can make a last minute move, make it happen!

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Tribe Tweetables

Don’t go to conferences to network with attendees. Go to conferences to network with speakers. – @JamesHahnII (Click to Tweet)

There are almost 20,000 natural gas wells in the Barnett Shale. – @BSEEC (Click to Tweet)

The vocal group that are being so negative about this area boils down to a few dozen people. – @BSEEC (Click to Tweet)

Links Mentioned

Social Media Marketing World
The Top 5 Marketing Mistakes Oil & Gas Operators Make — And How to Avoid Them
Free 90 minute Digital Marketing Audit
FracFocus.org
Switch Energy Project
Barnett Shale Energy Education Council
Barnett Shale Energy Education Council on Twitter

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Transcript

James Hahn II: Yes, yes ladies and gentlemen, it is once again another Oil & Gas Digital Marketing Podcast. I am your host James Hahn II and this is the podcast for marketers in oil and gas, and B2B marketers across the globe.

And we are here at number 5, which is a very special, special edition for me. Maybe not for you. But for me because my Detroit Red Wings just retired Nick Lidstrom, #5, just retired his jersey. So, very timely. Very fantastic. One of the top 5, unarguably, best defensemen in NHL history!

If you’re anything like the rest of my friends in Texas, you’re probably looking at me a little cross right now. Whenever we had Hockey Night in Fort Worth, my buddies are coming over going, “Where’s the touchdown? That’s two points right? What’s this?” So, we always have a lot of fun watching a little hockey down in Texas.

But, at any rate, we’re not here to talk hockey, as much as I would like to turn it into The Hockey Podcast. We are here to talk about digital marketing and oil and gas. We’ve got a lot of great things lined up for you, including a fantastic interview with Mr. Ed Ireland of the Barnett Shale Education Energy Council (sic). Before we get into that though, as you know last week we introduced a brand new segment called the Pay Zone Power Move, so let’s go ahead and get into it.

Pay Zone Power Move

Well alright, if this is your first time joining us, and maybe you don’t even remember from last week. The Pay Zone Power Move is going to always be a digital marketing tactic, technique, or strategy that will move the needle for you and your business online. But this week we’re going analogue. We’re going offline because I want to talk about networking.

When I was growing up, there was a speaker my Dad liked to listen to because he was in sales. And as you know when you’re in sales you have to listen to a lot of motivational speakers because you get told “No” a lot! And he would listen to Les Brown.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Les Brown or if you’ve ever heard him speak or heard his story. But go and Google him. I’ll put one of his best speeches in the show notes, and do yourself a favor – go get into some Les Brown. It’s classic 80’s and 90’s motivational speaker.

Les Brown would often say, in only the best way that he could, “Your network is your net worth.” And he also had great tag lines like, “You gotta be HUNGRY!” He’d get you real fired up for the day. I loved listening to Les Brown when I was a little kid even. And that lesson always stuck with me, “Your network is your net worth.”

When I’ve transitioned over to business and gotten older and gone to different networking events and different conferences and things, I’ve always been very strategic about what I’m doing at a conference. What I notice is that most people go to a conference because they’re going to sit in the audience, take notes, network with the other people that are there attending.

Now here’s the Power Move: Don’t go to conferences to network with the attendees. Go to conferences to network with the speakers. Because the attendees paid to come there. But the speakers got paid to come there. And if your network is your net worth, best to hang out with the speakers who are getting paid to be there so that you can absorb their knowledge. So that you can absorb their best practices. And so that you can be around successful people who are doing what you want to do in whatever niche or industry it is.

Here it’s oil and gas. It can be a little difficult getting up with the speakers in some of our sessions because they get in and get out. But if you can get the speaker’s ear, start to network with them, develop a relationship over time you’d be amazed at how much great advice and business mentorship that you can get from people who believe in you. And people who see your potential. But know that you need a little input from someone like them to help you go to the next level.

That’s our Pay Zone Power Move, and on that I also wanted to mention Social Media Marketing World 2014. You probably haven’t heard of this conference and it’s only one week away. So, if you’re a marketer or a business owner or anything like that listening to this podcast right now. And when I say one week away, I’m saying one week from March 17th, so it’s coming right up very quickly.

But I had to throw it in here because I went to this conference last year and I met some of the most amazing people. Again, do my strategic, trying to network with the speakers. And I made some phenomenal relationships. It really was the key to me being able to transition from Drillinginfo over to Tribe Rocket very smoothly because I had so many successful people around me saying, “James, you need to be doing this on your own. You’re so good at this.”

When you don’t have that input, it’s really hard to convince yourself that you can do those things. So, not only are their speakers phenomenal out there, people like Jay Baer who’s the New York Times Best-Selling Author that has the quote at the top of TribeRocket.com, if you’ve ever been there. Michael Hyatt, who’s a phenomenal, successful speaker who has 390,000 followers online. Pat Flynn who literally taught me how to do this podcast, so shout out to you Pat. And then also, if you ever read anything of mine you’re always going to hear about my boy Marcus Sheridan over there, The Sales Lion. He’s going to be closing it out with the closing keynote.

It’s the largest social media marketing conference in the world. They have multiple tracks about podcast. About content marketing. About all these things. The leading experts and brands are all there. Huge brands. Whole Foods, and other huge, huge brands. I think Catapillar might be there this year. Discovery Channel. All of these people that you can learn from. That you can network with.

That’s the differentiator between this conference and any other conference I’ve ever been to. Which is that networking is the centerpiece of everything. There are the sessions there you go, you take notes, and you learn and so forth. But networking is very integral throughout so that you can develop relationships with people that can help you in your business.

I wanted to add that to the Pay Zone Power Move. I know it’s a last minute thing. So, if you’re stuck wherever you are listening to this podcast and you happen to have the budget to be able to jump on the plane next week, get down to San Diego, California. 70 degrees and sunny. And hang out with us at the Social Media Marketing World 2014 because it’s going to be phenomenal. You can get more information about that by going to by going to TribeRocket.com/network. TribeRocket.com/networking. That will take you straight to the Social Media Marketing World landing page. You can learn all about the conference. And hopefully you can make a last minute decision to jump on out there because I want to meet you in person. And I know the value of it from attending the inaugural one last year.

Enough of that. Enough of this. I think it’s time to get over to Mr. Ed Ireland from the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council.

Ed Ireland, Barnett Shale Energy Education Council Interview

James Hahn II: Joining us on the program today is Ed Ireland. He is the Executive Director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council. The BSEEC is dedicated to promoting energy education and best practices in oil and gas leasing, drilling, production, transportation and marketing in the Barnett Shale.

Ireland started his career as an energy economist at United Gas Pipeline in Houston. He founded Energy Planning Associates and Gas Mark Inc., a natural gas supplier and pipeline company, and later became president of GeoSource Inc., an independent oil and gas exploration company. Ireland also served as Alderman of the City of Southside Place, Texas for three terms.

Ireland holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics for Midwestern State University, a Ph.D. in Economics and Statistics from Texas Tech, the Red Raiders out there, and did post doctoral work at the University of Chicago. Please give a warm welcome, a little warm tribe rocket welcome.

Thank you very much, Mr. Ireland, for joining us on the program today.

Ed Ireland: Thank you, James. Great to be here.

James Hahn II: It’s a pleasure. Just like most of the people I’ve had on so far, you’re another person I’ve followed for quite some time and always been impressed especially with your Twitter presence which we can get into. But tell me a little bit about the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council.

Ed Ireland: Sure. The Barnett Shale Energy Education Council is seven years old, really in about two months, and it’s been an interesting time for sure. Back when the idea came up to start it, which was I’d say in 2006, the idea really came from the mayor of Fort Worth at that time, Mayor Mike Moncrief.

He mentioned to some of the companies that were starting to drill inside the city units that the Mayor’s Office was getting calls, people had questions. They wanted to know what a landman was who was knocking on their door, or they had questions or concerns about the drilling rig that was going on down the street.

While Texas is certainly oil and gas state, for over 100 years having drilling right next door, let’s say, to your subdivision, in the city, it’s not something that people had been used to. So that was really the idea that started the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council was as an outreach effort initially envisioned to be just for Fort Worth, the City of Fort Worth. But from the time we started, the day we started, it’s really been all about the entire 24-county Barnett Shale area.

James Hahn II: And what did the education outreach look like back then and what does it look like today?

Ed Ireland: Well, we’ve started with a website and that was our initial big effort, and that continues to be a major effort because that’s just the way people find information these days. They go to the internet. We track what people come to the website, and we can get into that in a minute, but the words that they search for and so on are interesting.

But we have a website. We also do a lot of speaking to interested groups, probably average two or three, sometimes more a week, lunch meetings and evening meetings. These range from whoever is interested, but this could be a Rotary Club or a bankers association or insurance group or schools. So we get a broad range of invitations or we get a lot of invitations from a broad range or interested parties. The idea from the beginning is all about energy education, and it still is. That really is our only push is energy education.

James Hahn II: And as you’re out there talking to people, what, if any, sort of pushback are you getting? Do you encounter a lot of NIMBY — not in my backyard type — people or just Texans, once you tell them what’s up there, they’re, “Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, go ahead.” What’s it like out there on the road?

Ed Ireland: It is interesting because being out on the frontlines so to speak means that I run into friendly groups as well as not so friendly groups. From the beginning, when I look back on it, it’s interesting that — I mean we’re talking about just seven years ago — the issues that I dealt with then were pretty simple.

[0:05:06]

They were people who were maybe concerned about truck traffic or the lighting at night being too intrusive, or noise, fairly local issues like that. We really weren’t dealing with any of these national issues, fraccing and so on, that dominates the press and discussions today. They’re really pretty simple issues.

But it changed around 2009 when an SMU professor wrote a paper that came to the conclusion that the air pollution from natural gas wells in the Barnett Shale area was greater than all the cars and trucks in the DFW area combined. That was the first attack, I guess you could say, on natural gases being an air pollutant. I mean not it had never been mentioned, but it was not a major issue.

And the fellow that wrote that report is named Al Armendariz who became the Region 6 EPA director after that and launched a pretty tough regulatory campaign in this area, subsequently left that job, and by the way is now with the Sierra Club running their Beyond Natural Gas and Coal campaign.

But that’s how it proceeded. We started with simple local issues, moved into air and then water, and then the whole fraccing thing came along. I would say that continues to dominate the discussions these days.

James Hahn II: Yeah. It sounds like it was a very unbiased analysis that he provided.

Ed Ireland: Well, yeah. The word “fracking”, spelled with a “K” I might add, now has become the defining word for the natural gas industry, for sure, and to some extent the oil and gas industry. But it is the word that comes to mind because it is the word that the media loves to put in all of their articles. They like to get it on the front page because it is just such a powerful word that the media loves it. So everyone has heard of fraccing now these days.

James Hahn II: Yeah. Especially it’s interesting being from Michigan, a car producing state, that knows nothing of oil and gas except now that we’ve got the Antrim Shale going on up there, which is exciting. Even my friends back home will ask me about fraccing and say, “It’s got to do terrible things to the environment. Look at this video where this guy is doing this or that.”

And I say, well, okay, if fraccing really pollutes ground water, then the people at Fort Worth must be the most resilient people that have ever been created in the history of mankind because if I’m drinking benzene from the well that’s being fracced literally two miles from my house, I must be a pretty tough guy. Something is not adding up here.

Ed Ireland: Well, that’s exactly right. That’s where I would say that while everybody has heard the word fracking and a lot of those people are concerned about it, because they don’t know anything about it. What they know, what they think they know is that somehow fraccing causes water to burn and benzene to be put in the air, dead birds to fall out of the sky and on and on and on. Nosebleeds and stomachaches and you name it, it has been blamed on fraccing.

It is the negative side that people think they know about. I mean that’s what they’ve read about. That’s why the whole energy education side of what I do is more important now than it has ever been. Because not only do people not understand how oil and natural gas is extracted; they don’t understand how pervasive oil and gas is in their lives.

That’s what I continue to be, I guess you’d say, dumbfounded about, at least amazed every time I encounter it, which is every day, that the whole oil and gas has become so pervasive in our everyday lives. Everything, as I tell people, everything you touch, use, dry up, wear, eat on down the line is somehow touched by natural gas if not derived from natural gas and oil.

[0:10:28]

When I say that, people often look at me askance like, “Well, how could that be?” And people, I’m telling you, college students don’t know where electricity comes from. They don’t know that plaque, they don’t know that plastic is made from oil and natural gas feedstock. And they think that fraccing is some ongoing horrible thing that oil and gas companies do. Because of their poor state of energy education, nonexistent energy education, they also believe that they can be against oil and gas extraction and fraccing, and it will not have any impact on their lives. Because if you don’t know how important it is, how could you appreciate its existence? That’s really the state of energy education in this country.

James Hahn II: You were mentioning before on a previous call where we were talking about – it sounded like you were saying there’s even poor education on both sides of the fence still.

Ed Ireland: Well, it is. One thing, you observe oil and gas extraction and fraccing as part of that has become a very political issue, which you have to think is amazing. How could energy be a left or right issue? But it has been and it is. I think one reason it is is back to energy education. I think when people don’t have an understanding of the importance of energy and the pervasiveness of energy, they then revert to their inner feelings, their political persuasion.

So it often comes down to the opinion of if the left is against energy or severely restricting it, and the right is promoting it. You have to say making energy a political issue is a terrible thing, but there again, that’s what is happening.

James Hahn II: So if someone was skeptical that you were dealing with or even maybe somebody that’s listening to this podcast is on that skeptical side but they’re not that defiant, because you, of course being on the frontlines, know the difference between someone who was open to a rational conversation and someone who just wants to yell at you. But what would you say to that person then who has that open ear that’s going, “You know, maybe this isn’t so bad, but I think it might be bad because the USA Today said so, but I’m still open.” So what would you say to that person?

Ed Ireland: Well, that’s the kind of people that, of course, we really want to talk to, because you’re certainly right, James, that there is a group of people, if you will, that are never going to change their mind. They have all kinds of other agendas that they’re pushing. It’s not just maybe that they think natural gas or fraccing is bad. They kind of get it from a completely different mindset. Some of those people may be the NIMBYs, as you say, not in my backyard. But then that ranges all the way up to radical environmentalists who one wing of that really wants to stop growth and development and there are even groups that want to stop human activity.

So there’s such a broad range of people that their motivations and backgrounds come to the energy discussion table that we know there is that group that, as you say, they’re just going to yell, and their mind is never going to be changed. And then you’ve got the people that just don’t know and are misinformed and are willing to listen, and in my experience, that’s most of the people that I deal with.

[0:15:00]

They’re just normal everyday people who are not being given the type of energy information that they really should. So they come to the table with misconceptions.

James Hahn II: And how do you help to — I don’t know what the word is — quell? How do you help to overcome those objections?

Ed Ireland: Well, it’s with facts. That’s all it is. Frequently in discussions, some people would try to lure me in one direction or the other or get into politics. I just say, “Look, I’m going to stick with the facts and every fact that I’m going to bring up, I can give you a source. I can tell you where it comes from, the EPA, some studies somewhere, whatever. So I’m not going to give you my opinions. I’m going to give you the facts.”

When you do that, again, some people are going to continue to be skeptical, and some people will question your facts and that’s fine. I always want people to do that. Don’t just take what I say as the automatic truth. Go look into it. But consider these facts when you do. I think it always has a positive impact on most people.

James Hahn II: What are a couple of those facts that you like to refer to on a regular basis?

Ed Ireland: One is about air contamination, air pollution. Most people have heard, many people have heard that fraccing somehow pollutes the air. Let me throw in right here and I’ll get back to that air, so many people talk about what they’ve heard about is that natural gas is a fraccing operation, that somehow it’s ongoing forever. That’s because the word fraccing has been co-opted now to be everything from moving the dirt to make the pad site, to drilling, and hydraulic fracturing and producing in the future, and somehow that whole thing has become embodied in the word fracking.

But I explain that fraccing and hydraulic fracturing takes about a week, and that’s it. The process of pumping in the water and the sand and the additives takes about a week, and that’s it and then it’s gone. From that point on, that well is no different from any other natural gas well that’s ever been drilled. It’s just producing natural gas. That’s news for a lot of people. They somehow think that fraccing is an everyday process forever.

And then they’ve heard or read that somehow the air gets polluted in this process or contaminated, and one thing I point out is that here in the Barnett Shale, we have the most tested air in the world and that’s according to the TCEQ. There are 15 continuous air monitors in the Barnett Shale areas, strategically located so that the whole area is covered, all 24 counties, all 5000 square miles.

These monitors collect an air sample every hour on the hour, and it’s automatically posted to the internet. It tests for about 45 or 50 different chemical compounds. So anyone anywhere in the world can get on the TCEQ website and look at these monitors and see exactly what’s in the air. Most people have never heard of that.

What I point out with a few graphics usually is that when you look at the air, the chemical compounds that are in the air, in the Barnett Shale, close to natural gas wells, close to drilling, close to hydraulic fracturing and operations, that that air is no different than the air right next door in Dallas where there aren’t any natural gas wells. Or pick another city in Texas where the TCEQ has air monitors, this air is no different. In fact, in a lot of cases, the air in Fort Worth, in this area is cleaner.

[0:19:510]

For example, if you look at a chart of benzene concentrations in the air, and of course, benzene comes from cars and trucks, I mean gasoline and diesel, all that being burned, the primary source of benzene, and industrial activities. But a lot of people, they will blame it on natural gas wells somehow. If you look at benzene concentrations in the Barnett Shale and compare it to the whole state of Texas, the lowest in the state are in the Barnett Shale area. It’s the lowest.

In this Barnett Shale area, by the way, there are almost 20,000 natural gas wells. That’s a lot of wells in a fairly small area and yet our air, and using benzene as a marker, is some of the cleanest air in the state. When I tell people that, they’re shocked.

James Hahn II: That doesn’t surprise me because this brings to mind another myth that is very pervasive, which is that operators refuse to report what they put into a well.

Ed Ireland: Right. Yeah, I get that all the time. It’s a secret. The stuff must be so bad that operators keep it a secret because they don’t want people to know. I point out that it is Texas state law that requires operators to report and publish on the internet, on the website, fracfocus.org, the components of the fluid that they use — how much water they use, how much sand they use, and what chemical additives and the quantities of those chemical additives.

It’s all on the internet, well by well. I go through that with a few slides and encourage people to go home and pull up fracfocus.org and check it out because you can see exactly what’s going on at the wells down the street or any other well that you choose to look at. And people are surprised to hear it. They’re shocked.

James Hahn II: Well, I’ll definitely go ahead and give that link up in the show notes. I also wanted to talk about – we’re talking about the Barnett Shale Energy Education. Also looking at your own website, it says that you’ve been talking to some people from Ghana, Poland, Japan and Brazil. What’s going on as far as the international extraction of natural gas? Nobody’s caught up to us yet or is even close, but are you trying to do some knowledge transfer? What does that look like?

Ed Ireland: Yes, absolutely. We did a solid stream of international visitors here in Fort Worth. These various delegations, you mentioned some of them, come here because in a lot of cases they have shale deposits, that they now know that they have those shale deposits and they want to develop those shale deposits but they don’t know how. They don’t have the technology. They don’t have the infrastructure. So they come here to meet with people and try to learn how they can develop their own natural resources. There’s shale in virtually every country in the world, not all, but there are huge shale deposits all over the world and many countries are just now discovering that they have those shale deposits.

We’ve had Poland and Ukraine, of course, which is in the news. But there are many countries that have been totally dependent on Russia for their natural gas and the thought that they could be independent of Russia, of course, has been something that’s very appealing. Certainly with current events, that’s certainly playing out to be true. If they could be independent of Russia, they could be in a much better position as far as Russia’s activities right now.

But that’s a lot of the delegations that we have now. There are delegations from Japan. In fact, I was meeting with a group from China last week. Japan is interested in importing US natural gas because they’ve shut down all of their nuclear plants. They don’t have any natural gas resources, oil or gas resources themselves, so they have to import it all.

James Hahn II: They’re paying a high premium right now as far as I understand.

[0:24:55]

Ed Ireland: Oh, yeah. In Japan it’s $17-$18 plus per McF, whereas here it’s selling for$3 to $4. So yeah, there’s a tremendous opportunity I guess you’d say for both countries. Producers here could get a higher price and they might be able get their energy for a lower price.

China, of course, is looking at the US for investment opportunities. So, there’s a broad range of interest from all over the world focused on the Barnett Shale because this is where it was developed. This is where the technology to extract natural gas and oil from shale rock was developed, and so people want to come here and learn.

James Hahn II: Are you taking them on tours or are you doing speaking engagements? How many people come on a typical outing? What does that look like?

Ed Ireland: Mostly these delegations usually come with five or six people. I remember one Japanese delegation must have had 30 or more. But usually around half a dozen people come and a lot of these people, usually they are from government agencies, some kind of energy agency in that country, some come from a university, usually some members of the press; their local press comes with them to write about it.

So that’s what it usually is. We’re going to always start with an hour or so in the conference room with some slides to try to bring them up to speed on what’s going on here, answer their questions. And then frequently, we’ll take them out and go and visit a site. If we can get to a drilling site, on the day they’re here, if it’s something we can access, we’ll do that. We can certainly go by some of the producing sites, gas processing plants or other infrastructure just so they can see it.

James Hahn II: That really seems to be something. Because I remember when I started working at Drillinginfo was exactly when Josh Fox’s film, if you want to call it that, came out, and I’m going, “Boy, what industry, what did I get myself involved in?”

But then once I moved to Fort Worth from Austin, and I’m seeing these wells practically next door to my house, it really changes things when you get out there and actually see what the site looks like. You see that there’s a children’s soccer field not too far away and then a subdivision a few hundred yards from that and you’re going they got to be doing something right because all those people would be up in arms if they were just having their property rights trampled on or whatever you want to say.

Ed Ireland: That’s exactly right. I’ve spent hours with a reporter last week and he continues to send questions. He was writing a big investigative piece for Al Jazeera America. I think he was surprised to learn that here we are. For someone outside of this area, I guess he reads about it, it sounds like perhaps that everybody in Fort Worth or the majority of the people in the Barnett Shale area are upset somehow with the natural gas activity. And when we drive around, just as you say, we look at where these wells or these pad sites are, and I point out that we’re an area of say 5 million people and 20,000 natural gas wells among those people, and when you come down to it, the vocal group that are being so negative about this area boils down to a few dozen people.

So you’ve got millions of people that pay no attention to it because it doesn’t mean anything to them. They drive past it every day. They don’t even notice it. They don’t care. Millions of people that for it don’t care one way or the other, and a few dozen people that are against it because I think when people come here and see that, again, they’re shocked.

[0:30:00]

James Hahn II: You’re making me laugh because I’m thinking about driving around Fort Worth with my wife going, “Oh, looks like they’re about to complete that well.” And she says, “What are you talking about?” But it’s just like trees to those people.

Ed Ireland: Yeah. I’ve talked to people who live down the street from a well being drilled and I’ve asked them, “What do you think about that drilling rig?” and they say, “What drilling rig?”

James Hahn II: Right. Yeah. I mean this has been a great conversation. I want to respect your time, and I always try to keep it, like I said before we got on the show here, 20 or 25 minutes, and I always go long because I’m just a geek when it comes to this kind of stuff.

I guess probably because I came from a world where I didn’t know, and once I had that personal experience and saw the truth for what it was, especially, like you said, how pervasive oil and gas is in my life – I mean I’m wearing some Converse sneakers right now which I really appreciate the soles of these shoes. So that’s probably why I end up going a little bit long on these. I think we’re also, as always, going to get into your Twitter account and other things like that, but I guess that’s why I added the Pay Zone Power Move.

So just wrapping things up here, if you wanted to send someone to a site to find out more, where would you tell them to connect with you?

Ed Ireland: Well, the Barnett Shale Energy Education’s website is BSEEC.org. Of course, that stands for Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, BSEEC.org. There we’ve got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of information sorted by topics. If someone doesn’t see what they’re after, there’s a place to ask a question and we will answer that question by email.

Also, I’ve got my own writings and thoughts on my personal website, which is EdIreland.com, so I get into some broader topics there on that blog.

James Hahn II: And just so that we can everybody can go and follow you, how can we reach out to you on Twitter?

Ed Ireland: Twitter is @BSEEC, and that’s the Barnett Shale website. Our Twitter account is very active, so we do continue do a lot of tweeting many times a day. So adding us on Twitter will get you a lot of information flowing into your Twitter account. And then also, my personal one is @EdIrelandPhD.

James Hahn II: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for this conversation and for helping to enlighten us on how to engage a skeptical public.

Ed Ireland, you’re doing great work out there, and I thank you for your time, sir.

Ed Ireland: You bet, James. Thank you.

Wrap – GIVE US 5-STARS ON iTUNES

James Hahn II: And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Number 5 in the books. That was a fascinating interview with Mr. Ed Ireland. I don’t know if you were taking notes, but I had a lot of great takeaways from that. I’m really happy that he shared so many of the things that he uses out there on the front lines. We all come up against a little push back, or a lot of it. And it’s good to know what works and what doesn’t.

My main takeaways were just stick to the facts. Keep it calm and rational. And if somebody is just looking for an argument refer them over to the SwitchEnergyProject.com, and I’ll link that up in the show notes and let them over there do the job. Because sometimes people are just looking to start a fight, even though they drive cars, and aren’t off the grid, and own plastic everywhere in their home. But, that is beside the point.

I really hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. Go check out BSEEC.org and @BSEEC on Twitter, I’ll link those up in the show notes. Also, go ahead while we’re talking about checking things out.

Check me out at TribeRocket.com. There you can download our free eBook, which is The Top 5 Marketing Mistakes Oil & Gas Operators Make. And you can get that at TribeRocket.com/ebook. If you do download that we’ll give you a free 90 minute digital marketing audit where we will get on the phone. Do a screenshare. Walk through your website, and a whole lot of very successful websites and compare and contrast what works and what’s missing. We’ll give you as much free advice as we can in 90 minutes.

Also, don’t forget to check out TribeRocket.com/networking for Social Media Marketing World 2014. Like I said, this is a last-ditch effort. I’m trying to help my boy Michael Stelzner out. He is a wonderful person. He runs Social Media Examiner and this is his conference, and he has done so much for my career. So, hopefully at the last minute y’all can jump on board and join us out there.

Lastly, I need your help! Please. If you enjoy this podcast. Don’t make me beg, I will though! If another week goes by and I don’t have one review, I’m going to break down in tears. I’m going to have to start begging you. Go to iTunes. Give us a 5-star review and just write a few words about why you like the show.

The reason I’m asking for that is because the more ratings you get on your podcast. The more reviews you get. Then the higher you rank in the search engines and the easier it is for people to find you. As I said last week, it’s a great thing for the listenership to grow, so that the Tribe grows, and we can all learn from each other, and we can all get better at what we do each and every day.

I’ve made that super easy for you. Just go to TribeRocket.com/review. That will open up the iTunes page where you can open up the application and leave a review. That’s TribeRocket.com/review.

This brings us to the end of yet another Oil & Gas Digital Marketing Podcast. Once again, I have been your host, James Hahn II of TribeRocket.com.

Thank you very much to Ed Ireland for his time. Thank YOU very much for your time in tuning in. I hope you have a fantastic week. No matter what your role in the industry is. I love saying this because we’er all hustlers. That’s what’s great about the oil business is that everybody’s an entrepreneur. Everybody’s gridin.

So let’s go out there, rise early, work hard, and strike oil.

Folks, we will talk to y’all next week!

The post #005: How to Debate Barnett Shale Skeptics with Ed Ireland of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council appeared first on Tribe Rocket Inc..