Starting From Zero: Building a Following Sponsors Will Pay For

Most racers with a few hundred followers assume sponsors only want the riders with a few hundred thousand. So they never start, or they start, get discouraged and go quiet. The people who measure and buy social media for a living tell a different story. A small audience that knows you and trusts you is worth something to a brand, and the habits that grow it are simple enough to begin this week.

Small numbers are not the problem

Megan Meyer, the two-time NHRA world champion who now coaches racers on social media, has kept a spreadsheet of her own numbers for about ten years. When she went back to see where she began, the starting point was modest. "I had 1,700 followers on Instagram, which nowadays might not sound very much," she said. "I went from 1,700 to 7,000 followers my first year on Instagram. And so I think it's because of two things. I posted consistently and I tracked the analytics for my posts."

Once she knew which kinds of posts her audience liked, she sorted her content into categories and stuck with them. "Then I just stuck with those categories and then was able to go from 7,000 to 10,000 within a couple of months. And I signed my first six-figure sponsorship with that." Ten thousand followers is not a celebrity audience. It was enough because it was real and growing. ▶ Watch Megan Meyer tell the story

Brands have a name for this now. On the social media panel at the Drift Sponsorship Summit, Meyer pointed out that a racer with "only 500 followers" can still land deals "because maybe they have a hundred of that 500 people are super engaged and they talk to them every single day." ▶ Watch the drift panel

Scott Lukaitis of Engine Ice put the same idea in shop terms. "You're the micro influencer in your neighborhood, you're probably the car guy in your family, you're probably the car guy in your block, and you're the one that people go to asking for advice. So even though you don't have millions and millions of followers, you're influencing a core group of people that are buyers." ▶ Watch Scott Lukaitis on this

Pick one platform and go deep

The fastest way to stall is to open six accounts and post badly on all of them. Meyer's advice to beginners at her PRI Show seminar was blunt: "I always tell them start with one. And if it's Facebook, because Facebook is the easiest and personally Facebook is my favorite, then I say start with one and go really deep. Get to know that platform very, very well. And then once you master one of them, move on to the next one." She would rather see a racer "do like 90% on one platform and get really good at it" than spread thin everywhere. ▶ Watch Megan Meyer at PRI

Which one? The platform where your sponsors' customers already spend their time. Look at the brand you want, see where it posts and who it is talking to, and start there.

Before you post anything, fix the storefront. Meyer tells new racers to use a photo of their face as the profile picture, not a logo, and to fill in the bio with what you race, where you are from and what series you run, so a stranger who taps your name understands who you are in two seconds.

Your feed is your resume

A Formula Drift driver named Kelsey, a veteran of the series, told the drift summit that the biggest thing social media has done for her partnerships is serve as proof of work. "It's basically a resume. You know, they can go on your social media and see what you have done for other companies." Her advice for racers who have no partners yet: "Fake it till you make it. Do some review on some product that you happen to really like, or a company that you would love to work with in the future, or something that you use all the time. Show yourself using it, because that then becomes an example of what you can create for a company that you do work with in the future." ▶ Watch Kelsey explain this

Meyer takes it one step further. "If you don't have one and you want one, make a post and promote them anyways. And then make sure you send it to them and send a screenshot of the analytics to show how well it did." ▶ See the full answer

Remember that the resume cuts both ways. "We look on someone's posts and if it's kind of questionable, we may not look at them as a potential partner," Lukaitis said. Everything you post is part of the application. ▶ Watch the Engine Ice session

Leave your own page

Posting is only a small part of growing. Patrick Wagenbrenner, marketing communications director at Randy's Worldwide, said a page he worked on at a large aftermarket distributor grew "from about a thousand followers to two and a half million followers over five years organically" without spending money. The secret was getting out of their own feed.

His analogy: "Imagine if you were out watering your lawn every day and your neighbors all drove up and down the street and they wave, just said hello and say, 'Hey, what's going on, Megan,' and you ignored him. You kept your head down, you kept watering your flowers. They're only going to wave for so long." By his estimate, publishing content "is about five percent, maybe ten percent of the overall task." The rest is answering comments and messages quickly, sharing other people's posts and commenting on a core group of related pages every day.

That work also feeds the algorithm. When a big account engages with a small one, the platform starts recommending the small one. "If I'm engaging on Megan's content on a regular basis, all of the sudden my huge fan base is being served up Megan as a suggested page to follow," Wagenbrenner said. ▶ Watch Patrick Wagenbrenner on the summit panel His closing advice to racers: "Leave your channel and go out into the world and knock on all the other social doors and announce your presence." ▶ Watch the clip

Scott Tilton, co-founder and CEO of the valuation firm Hookit, gave newer racers the same shortcut. "Go team with people that have big followings, because if they're posting about you and mentioning you on their channels, you'll get more followers, you'll get more engagement." Ride with the rider who already has the audience, shoot with the creator at your track, show up in the bigger team's pit. ▶ Watch Scott Tilton

Keep the people you earn

Growth sometimes arrives all at once. Meyer's team page once had a reel reach 2 million views, and the team picked up about 30,000 followers in a couple of weeks. Rich Houseman of Hookit warned the motocross summit that the spike is not the finish line. "If you've gained those 30,000 followers though, that's great. Right now, all of a sudden you have an audience, but the game is not to get another 30,000 followers. The game is to keep those 30 coming back."

Too many people, he said, "are racing to the follower number and they forget that they have to have a show. You go to a concert, there's gotta be a band." New followers who arrive and find nothing worth watching leave, and they rarely come back. ▶ Watch Rich Houseman on the motocross panel

The takeaway

• Start on one platform, the one your target sponsors' customers use, and post on a schedule you can keep.
• Put your face in the profile picture and say what you race in the bio.
• Track every post in a simple spreadsheet and keep making more of what your audience responds to.
• Promote a product you already use as if you were sponsored, then send the post and its numbers to the brand.
• Spend more time on other people's pages than your own: comment, share, answer every message, and team up with bigger accounts.