Executives Of Mining Companies Need To Take The Golden Bull By The Horns And Embrace Digital Marketing

It never ceases to amaze me at how leaders of mining companies are comfortable staying in the Fax Machine era and reluctant to join the digital marketing era. At best they are dabbling, but very few have truly joined the modern world to go where investors congregate.

When I first got into working in the mining sector, back in 1993, the marketing tools that mining companies had were the fax machine that they used to distribute their news releases. And the telephone to talk to investors about their news and developments. Plus, mining conferences to meet investors face to face.

The internet changed that, but even in the early days, companies were slow to react and build a website, now they all have one. In the past decade or so, social media has revolutionized digital marketing and how to promote everything, but executives of mining companies have not embraced it like their peers in every industry.

The two most important social media sites for digital marketing are X/Twitter and YouTube. They both have massive amounts of investors from small retail investors to institutional investors that spend substantial time every day looking for information about stocks and talking amongst themselves. The bottomline is that every public company has an opportunity to go to where investors are, yet the mining companies are missing the boat.

When I say they dabble, what I mean is that they have an X/Twitter account and appear periodically on Youtube, but they for the most part haven’t embraced these sites like they could or most importantly should.

I hear many of them talk about being mindful of doing the best they can for their shareholders. Actions speak louder than words and dropping the ball on digital marketing does not jive with the story they are telling about their goals of maximizing shareholder value.

Mining companies are in an industry that requires using a lot of science and statistics to do exploration, mine development and mining. Yet, when they look at digital marketing which has robust statistics, they don’t pay much attention to them. I would guess that at best, maybe 5% of all publicly traded mining companies pay attention to the most important digital marketing statistics that are not difficult to find.

Their websites generate key statistics, as does X/Twitter and Youtube, yet I can tell that very few mining companies even bother to look into the backend of their websites, X/Twitter and Youtube. If they did, they would for sure jump headfirst into the digital marketing world.

Take for example websites, many look very cluttered and don’t funnel the visitors to the most important places on their websites to tell their stories. For the most part those are news releases, corporate presentation, video content and who the people are involved that are running the companies.

Every day, since I first started in the mining business, I have made it a habit to read news releases put out by mining companies, which then helps me find companies that I want to do more homework on. When I read news releases, I can see that most are written by geologists that use a lot of geological jargon. I understand that is what their education and work are based on when it comes to understanding the rocks.

But, what I see very little of is writers of news releases paying attention to who their audience is. It is not other geologists, it is investors and they need the technical information broken down so that they can understand it more clearly and get excited about what they are reading.

Sure institutions and analysts are fairly adept at reading geological information, as are many retail investors these days due to the vast amount of geological information at their fingertips online. But to really get a broad audience across the spectrum of generalist investors from retail to institutions means taking that geological information and presenting it in a way that speaks to a broad audience with a flair for storytelling.

I see the same issues when it comes to corporate presentations. They are often cluttered like websites, written by geologists using a lot of geological jargon that aren’t speaking to generalist investors and are missing a great opportunity.

When it comes to Youtube, I don’t think that executives of mining companies are embarrassing it like they should. Plus, they look at the wrong statistics. Views can be bought very cheaply to game the system and pump up the view numbers. What is much more important are the backend engagement statistics that are available on Youtube channels.

You can actually see it in the market activity. Often I will see big viewer numbers on a video and then look at the stock chart and there is practically zero bump in volume. What that shows is that a lot of those views are bought and are bots that click on the video and then leave within seconds.

Whereas other videos have much lower views, but you look at the volume of trades and it picks up shortly after an interview with often a bump in the price as well.

The difference is that buying viewers only helps those that market themselves based on viewer counts. A red flag for companies is when those producing video content want folks to pay attention to their viewer numbers. On the other hand, what is vastly more important are engagement numbers, especially how long the average viewer watches a video.

All executives and marketing people at mining companies need to do is ask content creators about their engagement numbers. If they only want to tell you about their views, they are likely buying their viewers and the vast majority are bots. Or they don’t know where to look on the backend of their Youtube channels.

I wish that more executives of mining companies embraced Youtube and were putting out content more often because many of them are fantastic storytellers and company builders.

A lot of investing these days is about narrative. If executives of mining companies aren’t out telling the stories of their companies and the metals they are focused on and the importance of the mining sector in the global economy the industry and their companies won’t get the investor attention they deserve.

X/Twitter is also very interesting as it is the premier social media site where users go to find information about stuff they are interested in and then chat with others. There is a massive audience of investors on the site, which is why many high-profile people are on there as well.

Elon Musk knows this which is why he bought the site and posts often, which puts attention on his companies and enables him to reach a huge audience about whatever he wants to talk about.

Donald Trump uses social media effectively, it helped him get elected in a landslide victory and to spread the word about his politics. Politicians used to crave being on television because that was the best way for them to reach a big audience. Donald Trump has embraced social media and knows very well that he can reach many more people rapidly that way as opposed to traditional media.

Wall Street types love the site as well, plenty of them are ultra-wealthy and spend a significant amount of time on it. Why do they do that? The simple answer is because it helps them build their audiences and their businesses.

Another factor that I don’t think a lot of people understand, is that institutions have very sophisticated technology that go to X/Twitter and are extremely good at separating the signal from the noise.

What they look for and trade on is people that get the trends right often. Executives of mining companies can tap into this by posting timely information that is correct more often than not.

When I look at X/Twitter and Youtube, I think of it like the world’s largest investor conference that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. Full of investors that are yearning to hear about investment opportunities.

Gold, silver, copper and other metals, as well as the mining sector have compelling stories to tell. After all, mining companies are treasure hunters, exploring for new mines to build.

Gold is by far the best performing investment in 2025, which means that gold companies can talk to a lot of investors at the push of a button.

My hope is that more executives take the bull by the horn and embrace digital marketing. It is good for the metals they are involved in, the mining industry and most importantly the companies they run.

All the best,

Allan Barry Laboucan