Scarcity -> Social Media Influence in Racing

by | Oct 4, 2013 | Racing Social Media

As you might already know, this month I’m participating in the 2013 Social Media Success Summit. Going forward, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on how to apply what’s presented in the seminars to racing social media. Not surprisingly, the opening sessions of the Summit started out with social media theory and building influence. This is somewhat unsatisfying for those of us who like tools (duh) but these topics are the most important blocks of the foundation for your social media house. Or garage. If we’re talking about what’s important. Without a strategy on how to build influence, you’re just shooting in the dark with your efforts. And you know most of us don’t have time for that. If you’re trying to build a real racing program, with sponsorship and loyal fans, you have to figure out how to build influence.  And since we don’t race every day, one of the most effective ways to do that is online. So here’s the deal with influence: the things that might make you powerful offline don’t apply to social media. This includes power that comes from an organization, hierarchy or job title. Maybe you’ve made it to manager at your company. The Internet doesn’t care. Maybe you’ve got a diploma from a great college. Internet also doesn’t care. Maybe you’ve got lots of money. Unless you’re rolling around in it on YouTube a la Uncle Scrooge McDuck, the Internet (mostly) still won’t care. The Internet hates real-world rules. And that’s a great opportunity for racers. One of the best presentations of the week so far was Mark Schaefer’s seminar on How to...

Social Media Success Summit + Racing

by | Oct 1, 2013 | Racing Social Media

Just a quick note to let you all know that I will be posting quite a bit about social media over the next few weeks, as I’m attending the 2013 Social Media Success Summit. I often attend conferences and workshops to benefit both my own business and to help my consulting clients. It’s crucial to my business to be on the cutting edge of the public relations, marketing and social media industries so I can give them the best advice possible. This one is especially worth the investment, as it’s broken out into multiple sessions over four weeks. This is not the first social media event I’ve attended, but it is the first month-long workshop I’ve taken part in and I’m looking forward to being able to take the content and digest it before moving on to the next sessions. I’m hoping to share a number of insights from this social media conference on how it relates to racing, from motorsports sponsorship to fan marketing and public relations. I’ll be posting at least once a week on my takeaways from a variety of seminars, possibly more often if I’m able to balance the workload. Below is a list of the nine sessions I’ll be attending just this week. If you have specific questions on any of the topics, you can email them to me or post them below and I’ll do my best to address them as I go through the material: KEYNOTE: Why You Need to Rethink Your Social Media Marketing  – INSTRUCTOR: Jay Baer How to Improve Your Facebook Marketing: 7 Power Techniques – INSTRUCTOR: Mari Smith How to...

Why do we race? (Gaga-fied.)

by | Sep 26, 2013 | Racing Sponsorship, Thoughts and Rants

Silly question, I know. We race to win. Obviously. It’s like asking why you go to a bar, right? Most people would say the answer is to drink. But that’s only partially correct. It’s cheaper and easier to drink at home, where you don’t have to tip the bartender or find a taxi. We drink in bars because we want to interact with people. We choose one bar over another because we want to be associated with the other types of people that chose that same bar. We don’t drink in bars because we want to drink. We drink in bars for all of the other reasons. The choices we make go beyond the obvious, logical, need-based reasons. It’s easy, looking at racing from the outside, to assume why one races. There are so many apparent reasons. But at the core of it all, we could achieve the same things with other activities that didn’t cost as much, weren’t as dangerous and didn’t require a heavy time commitment. So why do we do it? At the most basic level, drivers race to win. But the desire to win comes from a different place in all of us. For some, it’s for the applause (applause, applause ← there it is! The Lady Gaga moment. Don’t resist.)  For others, it’s the look of pride on their father’s face. The victory lane pictures they can post on Facebook. The kids that ask for their autograph. The feeling of satisfaction when they’ve proven the voice in their head wrong. The answer is different for everyone. But why does it matter? At the end...

Change: It’s hard, scary, and totally worth it. Also: Donuts and Bacon

by | Sep 13, 2013 | Thoughts and Rants

We’ve all heard the quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” Unless you’ve been living under a rock, in which case point me in your direction. It sounds peaceful and me (and my bottle of wine) would love to shack up next door. The quote, often misattributed to Albert Einstein, first appeared in a Narcotics Anonymous text in 1981. How ironic that I’d be using advice given to addicts to discuss the state of the racing industry. NOT. Aside from you under the rock, how many of us have heard racetracks complaining about how hard it is to fill seats? Not enough viewers for TV broadcasts? How many of us have complained that there aren’t enough sponsors in the sport? Guess what? Nothing will ever change unless you try something new. And the tough fact is that everything you try won’t work, so you’ll have to try lots of things before you succeed. Sounds hard? It is. But the alternative is death. Or not racing. (Same?) Here’s a useless fact about me: I avoid my own mailbox three days a week for fear of having to face a certain weekly publication. Side rant: It should only be one day since it’s mailed on the same day every week, but it always arrives on a different day. Thanks, USPS, for not one but three days of mailbox-Russian-Roulette. ANYWAY. This publication has always been a running joke in our house, and not because of its wit and bravado. It’s the offensive number of typos, misquotes, inaccuracies and errors that make it to print....