LEARNING HOW NOT TO BE ANTISOCIAL
The plus points and pitfalls of going online
Social media has well and truly gripped modern society. Love it or loathe it, it’s nearly impossible to escape it. While for some it’s a platform for sharing memories and laughing at memes, it’s an equally effective promotional tool and source of news for others. This is how it’s extensively being used in motorsport by teams, drivers and championships alike.
Formula 1’s digital output for example is unrecognisable to what it was even five years ago. And one of its star drivers, Lando Norris, is a prominent figure across Twitter and Instagram too, even live streaming his test in a Carlin Formula 3 car recently.
But national motorsport is awash with social media activity too. As motorsport gradually returns, Motorsport News decided to learn more about the social media phenomenon and how best to utilise it in a post-covid-19 environment.
Traditionally, the best ways for a driver to promote their motorsport efforts was to foster strong relationships with the written press and TV crews, and get in the habit of faxing and later emailing press releases to as many people as you could. But social media has radically simplified that process according to Matt Cotton, a former rally driver and now owner of a media agency, MCR Motorsport Media.
“It’s the biggest evolution out there,” he tells MN. “If we go back to 2008 when I competed in the British
Rally Championship, social media really wasn’t a thing. Everybody had a Facebook account but it wasn’t used as a promotional tool. Fast forward then to 2012 when I next did the BRC and it was just a completely different ball game. You had to really concentrate on pushing yourself out on social media then, that was the key focus.”
It is hard to find a race or rally driver at any level of UK competition that doesn’t have some sort of social media presence nowadays. Those that don’t are missing a trick as ultimately it’s free promotion that can have a whole heap of benefits.
Pleasing sponsors
Securing sponsors and additional budget is one of the plus points. Anyone that knows anything about motorsport understands the difficulties of funding a campaign. But social media unlocks the potential to gain extra support whether it be from fans or brands. A great example is when a crowdfunding campaign, extensively shared across social media, allowed Chris Ingram to complete his season last year and win the European Rally Championship.
Former Renault Clip Cup racer Jade Edwards has a similar story to tell. She set up the ‘Jade Edwards 9 for 9’campaign back in 2017 where nine companies contributed £9000 spread over nine weekends. Social media was a major driver in continuing this regime and helped her grow her profile.
“Social media is a major factor in my sponsorship hunt,” she says. “When I launched this Clio Cup campaign in
2017 I put it all onto social media and it went mental. I had messages from companies going ‘tell me more about this’and suddenly I realised that that’s where people were seeing stuff, that’s where people were paying attention.
“So from that point onwards I made sure that every fan interaction I had I would reply back and give people the time of day and say hello to people. It takes five minutes just to say hello to people and to comment back and interact with the people that are interacting with you, because then at the end of the day when you need them to share something if they like you and they follow you, they’re going to share it, they’re going to retweet it, they’re going to push it out to the world.”
British Rally Championship driver James Williams had a similar moment of realisation a couple of years ago.
When negotiating a deal with Network Q to sponsor him in the 2018 JBRC, he discovered that his social media profile was one of the major reasons they were keen to proceed.
He explains: “When I went to Vauxhall HQ in Luton to have a chat with them, the first thing I found out when I walked in the door was they’d done a load of research on me and knew everything about me. It was one of those moments where I thought ‘it all does matter if you do the little things’
and you keep your Facebook clean and there’s no pictures of you going out on the piss. I’ve tried to keep my media clean my whole life but at the same time there’s no measure of it so when I actually heard that I thought ‘yeah, it’s all worth it then’ because it was one of their criteria.”
Cotton deals with sponsorship proposals and packages for competitors on a daily basis and agrees that a wellmanaged social media presence can make all the difference.
“It’s how you treat your partners, your sponsors on social media which 100% helps when you have to go back to them, cap in hand, the following year and ask them for the same money or more money,” he says. “It would be so much harder for you to do that if you hadn’t mentioned them, you hadn’t engaged with them.
Let’s face it, it’s [social media] the prime visibility area to engage with your sponsors and your own audience and you can link them altogether so easily you’d just be foolish not to really.”
Value to all competitors
Pleasing backers isn’t the only motive for growing a social media channel though. Competitors right across the spectrum of UK motorsport are finding uses for it, including Scottish rally driver Alan Dickson. At 56, it might be assumed that Dickson would be fazed by social media. After a 12-year sabbatical, Dickson was entering a totally different commercial environment in 2018 when he returned but it was a natural transition.
He tells MN: “In the years I was away, that was the time we were developing websites and all sorts of social media business-wise, so you get used to doing it with all that and it’s just very, very natural when we started rallying again just to feed that into it.”
Dickson’s social media incentive is almost the complete opposite of most who are chasing business. As a proportion of Dickson’s rallying effort is funded by his Sackmaker business, his profile exists to help justify that expenditure and drum up new custom.
“I probably have 20 or 30 reasonably good customers over the last two years as a result of the name being plastered over the rally car,” he adds. “Some of them are people I’ve met away on rallies who are rallying folk themselves, some are folk that have seen the car and just contacted us. So it does bring a bit of business in.”
Keeping social media feeds stimulating during lockdown has been an added challenge, but Dickson has tackled it by posting throwback content of the various rally cars he has driven over the years. However, for those drivers with sponsors to please, finding the right balance between relevant racing and insightful behind-the-scenes content is a tricky balance as BTCC race winner Jake Hill explains.
“It [social media] has been hugely important in the last few months,” he says. “Partners and sponsors, a lot at least, have paid up front for a year’s BTCC and at the moment they don’t have anything to show for it. That is why social media is key.
“You have to keep plugging away and doing every little thing you can. But, at the same time, you don’t want to shove it in people’s faces, so you don’t do it every day. No one want to see the same thing all the time.”
Expressing yourself
For a driver, letting their personality come across is an underrated and important aspect of a professional social media account. Of course the aim is to appear commercially aware and wellspoken, but revealing glimpses of character is of equal value says Cotton.
“I think you’ve got to be really individual [and] try your very, very best to set yourself apart from other people. Some people might want to appear a little bit cocky or a little bit out there whereas others might want to be a bit more withdrawn and just play the underdog bit. At the end of the day you don’t want to be somebody on social media that you’re not, there’s nothing worse than shouting that you’re the next World Rally champion and you’re dashing around at single venues somewhere.”
Edwards concurs: “A lot of people are very well PR trained and stuff like that but it could sometimes dull a personality. So what I try and do is stay professional but with a personality mixed into it so when people are looking at my social media it’s fun and it’s funny and it’s entertaining, but it’s also promoting sponsors and promoting motorsport and showcasing what I can do.”
According to Williams, video is one of the most effective ways of nailing this. He was one of several BRC drivers to bring a videographer to this year’s Cambrian Rally.
“It’s a powerful tool,” he says. “You need something that can give people an experience, and within a few minutes kind of covers the whole picture.
It can be expensive to get someone on the ground doing it as it’s a lot of work in terms of the editing, but at the same time it’s worth its weight in gold because for some sponsors the best thing for them is a video because they can go ahead and share that with their market audience. And you can stick as many logos on there as you want!”
Importance to series
Perhaps even more so than competitors, championships need strong commercial partners. Securing a lucrative title sponsorship deal can make all the difference in taking the series to the next level. And in today’s climate, social media is the best way of impressing potential suitors or keeping them onboard.
The BRC has capitalised on this to great effect during lockdown with an as-live highlights show of its Esports competition. Testament to the shareability potential of social media, more people have watched it than viewed the real-life highlights show on Channel 4 a couple of years ago and a title sponsor has been attracted to it. Ultimately, entertaining and popular content with the general public will draw sponsors in.
British GT has therefore been filling its feeds with classic content from the
GT1 and GT2 eras as it tries to foster fan engagement as best it can.
Press officer Tom Hornsby tells MN: “Any opportunity we’ve got to grow the fanbase is obviously one we’ll look at. There’s obviously a lot of competition out there now with just about every championship doing social media at a
decent level. The lockdown period has really made us think about what we do with social media, how we interact with people, how we try and keep the championship alive in the minds of the fans and potential fans when there is not a great deal to post about.”
Social media schedules are often devised but equally, off-the-cuff posts can be common where a championship needs to react to a trend, a breaking news story or somebody spots something that’s worth sharing. Posting the right things on each separate platform is crucial.
“There certainly seems to be a very distinct audience between Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and the way that each type of user interacts with social media, so you do have to tailor your approach to each individual platform,” Hornsby adds. “Facebook has got a very core and long-time, longestablished audience I would say whereas places like Twitter and Instagram tend to be a little bit more of a casual audience let’s say, but nevertheless very, very important audiences all the same.”
What not to do
Just like all facets of life, good behaviour is important online and any infringements will be noticed. Motorsport UK has a social media policy in place and matters can and have been known to reach the national court in the past, while the BTCC has its own set of regulations that include a £100,000 fine for commercial breaches.
Series director Alan Gow explains: “We don’t differentiate between broadcast and what goes on social media – because that is, after all, a form of broadcast. So if you were to say ‘that bloke is a **** ’on TV, that is unacceptable. And putting a similarly defamatory statement on social media is the same thing. It is like anything. [The penalties] are down to me in the end. There are a set scale of penalties, which can range right up to exclusion from the meeting or even the championship.
“I think the drivers are becoming increasingly aware that putting something on social media is equivalent to publishing,” Gow adds. “In the early days, they didn’t. They thought anything they posted would only be seen by their mates and that was it and it would be funny. No-one realised in those days that it is there forever and anyone can see it and access it.”
The BTCC is known for its occasional rough and tumble nature, with the closeness of the pack frequently leading to on-track chaos. However expressing disgust at a rival’s attempted overtake is best left for internal conversation. Getting involved in the online debate is not advised.
Tom Ingram tells MN: “You do see it where drivers row on social media and sometimes I get it, because of the old adage that ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’, but that only goes to a point. I am not naming names, but you will see some people have a rant just to be spoken about on social media and the platforms just to get people talking about them.
“I am not much of a confrontational person. That wouldn’t sit with my brand, but equally I think you can make yourself look a bit of a dick if you aren’t careful. Until you know they true facts, you will end up looking stupid by putting something out that is not what actually happened.”
Hill has also seen situations escalate on social media, and can’t quite understand the need for it. “Is it necessary?” he asks. “If you have got that big of a problem that you need to take to social media for it, why not go and talk to that person face to face?
“That is the best way to handle anything that is going wrong. I hate it when things like that get brought to socials when it can be sorted behind closed doors. It should always be taken out of the light when it doesn’t need to be there.”
Top tips for success
Throughout this piece we’ve uncovered several useful tips for successfully using social media, but the very best profiles are the ones that are perfectly finessed.
Given he deals with social media profiles for a living, Cotton gets the final word, and he says consistency is the most important thing. And that’s where experts like him can help.
“You’ve got to keep the right tone, and for me it’s [about] consistency, that regular posting, because it’s so easy to forget to do it.
“You need to have the right number of posts per week that’s engaging and resonates with your audience and have a consistent theme throughout too. Essentially there’s nothing worse than doing one post or two posts in the first week and then going quiet for six months. It’s hard work, it’s not easy but it’s worth it, it really is.”