by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 28, 2014 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Racing Social Media
Welcome back to Doing Social Right, the never-ending series (just kidding – last post for now, I promise!) in which you learn how to be a happy, friendly Tweeter and Facebook poster. In parts one and two of this series, we talked about the types of reactions you can create with your social media strategy, what you should and shouldn’t share, and when and how to do it. If you haven’t read parts one and two, you can brush up now or after you’ve read this post. The final piece in the social media strategy puzzle is arguably the most crucial element to your success online – knowing your audience. Knowing your audience comes from listening without interrupting. Your audience, your fans and marketing partners, are already talking on social media. They’re posting pictures of their vacations, sharing the videos they’re watching, and talking about upcoming races. Taking the time to listen to what they’re saying is key to knowing which of your updates they’ll be interested in and what they’ll tune out. In the racing industry, we already have great cues into what your audience probably wants. They love updates on racing news, your racing plans, motivational and inspirational quotes and photos and videos of race cars. As a racer, it shouldn’t be hard to talk about what you’re most passionate about: racing. Alternatively, the majority of your fans probably aren’t into high-end fashion. So your ten updates about Paris Fashion Week are going to be ignored by the vast majority of your audience. But what’s worse? Not listening to them and looking at what they’re talking about...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 21, 2014 | Media and Public Relations, Racing Social Media
In part one of doing social right, we talked about the three possible outcomes of your social media strategy and knowing what’s relevant to share. To summarize, with social media you can: turn people on (mostly good, sometimes bad), turn people off (mostly bad, but sometimes amazing), or create no reaction (terrible). There’s nothing worse than handing your current or potential fan base right over to a competitor by creating no reaction, but there are ups and downs to turning people on and off. If you haven’t read part one, I’d suggest you do that here. We also talked about what to share and what not to share. Other than avoiding polarizing topics like religion and politics (remember how heated the last election got? If you engage in topics like that, you’ll likely be ostracizing half of your fans) – you should share everything and anything that shows people who you are. As a general rule – following you should make someone’s life better. You do that by showing them that you are like them, or like the person they want to be. Your story is their story. Okay, so that covers an overview of what you should be sharing on social. Now let’s talk about knowing when, where and how you should be sharing. I see a lot of mistakes in this area, even more than people talking about things that I wouldn’t encourage. The book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook talks about sharing ‘native’ content, but that’s not a term that’s commonly used outside of people studying social media. So, what does ‘native’ content mean to us...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 14, 2014 | Media and Public Relations, Mindset, Racing Social Media
Note: I didn’t intend to write a book here, but I realized after the first tip that we’re both probably already exhausted. So, I’m breaking this into a series. Enjoy Where is your phone right now? Is it in your pocket? On the table next to you? In front of your eyes as you read this on it? Chances are, you and your phone are in a serious, Facebook-status-worthy relationship. You take it to dinner, the movies and even places you wouldn’t shouldn’t take your dates (like the bathroom). You hardly ever leave it out of your reach. This isn’t news, though. Who cares? Well, the fact that your audience is also as committed to their phones and other screens as you are should be insanely exciting. The number of people you can reach and the ways that you can reach them is unprecedented. If you’re not telling your story on social media, you’re missing the boat. In fact, you’re missing the ocean. Not only is your audience on social (yes – the audience belongs to you as much as it does to your series or local track), but they are also looking for you there. They are deciding whose shirts to buy, who to cheer for in the stands, and whose story they will share with friends, family and potential sponsors based on what they see on social media networks. But as you know, there’s plenty of talk already happening. In fact, sometimes we make the mistakeof thinking we have to shout to be heard, which can make telling your story on social media really intimidating. Or go...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Feb 8, 2014 | Media and Public Relations, Racing Sponsorship
It might seem like sponsorship is harder to get these days, but when you think about it, there’s never been a better time to prove what your proposal is worth. Here are a few ways to start thinking about valuing a proposal: 1. Show them how big it is. (Your audience, duh.) One of the most common gripes about social media is that you can’t link results with input. But one of the reasons that I love social media is that it’s easy to show people how big your audience is – and even where they live and how old they are – with some straightforward metrics. Audience size. This is pretty straightforward – you can look at your Twitter follower count, your Facebook page likes, Instagram followers, etc. Your audience size isn’t the combined number, and I’ll explain more on that below, but you can prove how many eyeballs you’ll reach on each platform to a potential racing sponsor. Engagement level. It doesn’t matter how big your audience is if they don’t actually care about what you’re doing. That’s where engagement comes into play. And some platforms, like Facebook, are really good at measuring it. You can see what percent of your fans like your Facebook posts, how many YouTube subscribers watch your videos and more by visiting the analytics section of those platforms. That’s a great way to show a sponsor that your audience is actually engaged with your team and not just a bunch of drones. Kevin Kelly maintains that, “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author –...
by Kristin Swartzlander | Jan 23, 2014 | Mindset, Racing Sponsorship
For many of us, it’s sponsorship crunch time – where you really have to step your game up and get some deals done for the season. And if you look practically anywhere on the interwebs, you’ll see plenty of people complaining about how difficult it is to go after sponsorship for their race team. Many people have even given up on it. And it’s true – it’s not easy. But the truth is, if you want to succeed in racing, you have to get the money to pay the bills somewhere and sponsors are generally where it’s at. If you dread working on sponsorship, avoid it at all costs (darn you, cute kitten videos every racing video ever uploaded to YouTube), there are a few things you can do to stop procrastinating on it and start moving forward. Stop thinking of yourself as a salesperson. Even worse? Stop thinking of yourself as someone looking for a handout. Sponsorship is not free money, people. (What’s paid money? I don’t know all this knowledge.) In other words, sponsorship is not something for nothing. It’s generally not money in exchange for slapping a logo on a racecar and calling it a day anymore, either. Sponsorship should be creating value in exchange for value. It is, essentially, solving a problem for your marketing partner. So, start thinking of yourself as a problem solver instead of a salesperson. Almost everyone cringes at the idea of sales. It sounds sleazy, even if it’s not. It makes me think of sales calls, slamming doors, and every other awkward situation you can imagine. It sounds embarrassing, tiring...
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