Featuring Sponsors on Social Media Without Turning Your Feed Into an Ad

Every sponsored racer faces the same problem. The brand wants its product seen. Your followers came for you, not for a commercial. Post too little about the sponsor and the deal looks thin at renewal time. Post too much and people scroll past, which helps nobody. The marketers and analysts at my Sponsorship Summits have worked out where that line sits, and their advice is practical.

Let products show up naturally, then feature them on purpose

Megan Meyer, the two-time NHRA champion who now manages social media for race teams, described a normal day on her family's team page. "I posted a couple of pictures of the guys in the shop. We're putting heads together, and so naturally they're wearing a hat with our sponsor's logo on it, and we're using the Lucas Oil assembly lube, and so I tagged the sponsors in it." That is the organic version: the product is there because the crew really uses it.

While the crew worked, she also shot video of the same job, to post a few days later. "That one is going to be more of a product promotion for Lucas Oil, showing, trying to feature how we use their product. So you can do it both ways, organically and intentionally." One shop session, two posts, two different jobs. ▶ Watch Megan Meyer explain this

The intentional post still needs a person in it. Meyer pointed to the ambassador videos Lucas Oil produces, which visit riders at their hometowns or home tracks and show their shops and their lives away from racing. "It's sharing their story, but you're also getting the promotion because you see in the B-roll of them pouring the oil into their four-wheeler." Her warning for anyone tempted to make a straight ad: "If it's just another commercial for Lucas Oil where all you see in the video is just the product, yeah, that's cool, but it's not very attractive. So if there is that human element in the video, it's going to draw a lot more attention to it." ▶ Watch the clip

One brand per post, done deliberately

The most common mistake is the thank-everybody post. Scott Tilton, co-founder and CEO of the social media valuation firm Hookit, sees it constantly. "You'll see it in motocross all the time. You'll get the posts and it's a podium shot, and then it'll be like 20 hashtags and mentions thanking all of their partners." In Hookit's scoring, "all of them get a little bit of value, but no one gets a lot of value, because the promotion quality is so bad for all of them." His name for it: "sponsor soup."

His fix has two parts. "Make sure that if you're going to promote a brand, do it deliberately, and try and do it in a way that's authentic, because you also don't want it to be over commercial where it looks like an ad." Feature one partner, give it the frame and the caption, and save the next partner for the next post. ▶ Watch Scott Tilton on sponsor soup

Post natively so the tag still works

Tilton's other tip costs racers value without their knowing it. "It's always important to post what they call natively to each platform. So even if you're going to post the same photo or video to Instagram and Facebook, don't use the share function and post it to both at the same time." The reason is the sponsor tag. "If you hashtag or mention a partner on Instagram, those @-mentions don't carry over to Facebook, so the link breaks." A brand can also use different handles on different platforms, and a cross-posted tag may point to nothing. Upload separately and tag each brand by its handle on that platform. ▶ See the full answer

Ask for the brief

You can't feature a product well if you don't know which one the brand needs to sell. Kelsey, a longtime Formula Drift driver, works from a specific post calendar with some partners. With all of them, she said, "it's always important to say, go up and ask the company: do you have any new products coming out this year? What are the products that you want to see more sales of? How can I help you push these certain products?"

The partner with no requirements can be the toughest. Some say, in effect, four posts a year and "do what you want, so to speak. Sometimes that's actually the hardest partner to work with, because you're never really sure what they want." She treats it as an opening. For brands new to sponsorship, "sometimes it's using your experience as an influencer, as an ambassador, and say, well, this has been really successful for my other partners, so let's try this with your brand and see how that works," then review the results at season's end and adjust. ▶ Watch Kelsey on the drift panel

Tilton has seen brands get more specific. Where they once asked generically for two or three posts a month, more now spell out the platform, the type of content and how they want the brand represented. If yours hasn't, ask those three questions yourself.

Hand over content they can actually use

Your posts are only half of the value. The other half is content the sponsor can run on its own channels, website or ads. Mark Krumme, head of marketing at Eibach Springs, explained why polished co-branded video can be a problem: if it carries other brands or a "presented by" tag, "it's a little bit harder for us to redistribute as well and share." Raw footage that Eibach's team can cut is often more useful, as long as the rights are clear. Get photographer and videographer releases in writing, and never send watermarked images. "Usually if it comes directly from the driver without a watermark, ready to go, that's the safest stuff." ▶ Watch Mark Krumme on this

Instagram's collaboration feature has made sharing easier. "That falls on everyone's channel and you can all see it, and it just expands the reach and the engagement so much when you do that," Krumme said at the Off-Road Sponsorship Summit. He doesn't treat a racer's content as something to take. "Their success is our success, so the more we can do together, the better." ▶ Watch the clip

Save the collab for something worth it

A collab post with a big brand puts your content in front of its whole audience, which is why the brand guards it. Heath Cofran of Alpinestars told motocross racers to pick their moments. "Is this something you want to hit them up with all the time? 'Hey, I just washed my bike. Can we collab on a photo?' It's like, no. So for those riders thinking of something, doing something like that, make it a significant piece." Pitch the idea, show the content and give the brand time. With around ten pages on its schedule, Alpinestars wants "no less than seven days." ▶ Watch Heath Cofran on the motocross panel

Vaughn Gittin Jr. suggested building that coordination in from the start, especially for racers still growing an audience. "You should be creating content. Well, if you don't have an audience, where's that content going? So create a strategy with your partners that as you're creating content, create a launch strategy that they're all involved in." When partners help release it, the content reaches their followers too, which grows your audience and meets their goals at the same time. ▶ Watch Vaughn Gittin Jr.

The takeaway

• Shoot the product in real use, post the organic version, then post a deliberate feature on another day.
• Keep a person in every sponsor post. Product-only clips read as ads.
• One sponsor per post, tagged in the caption, uploaded natively to each platform.
• Ask each partner which products it needs to sell, on which platforms, and how it wants to be shown.
• Send clean, unwatermarked, released footage within days of the event, and save collab requests for your best content.