1) Answer why you need it. Alright, alright, I’ll do it for you: because no one cares about you until you spread the word, engage fans, help fans and sponsors connect with you, sell yourself.
The truth is – you’re fucked. People think it’s easy to grow a personal brand with the help of social media, but it’s not true – it’s hard and expectations are usually too high. Don’t take it lightly, I will go through some strategies that will help you grow faster.
It’s about building your own community, so you need to rely less on influencers (media). Have your own page, accounts, channels, email lists, etc.
2) People only care what you can give them or help them with. A good selfie will work a few times, and that’s only if you’re good-looking. Post more relative news, plans, behind-the-stage content from events, garage sessions, tests. Be honest, say honest things. Giveaway stuff and/or experience.
3) Be everywhere (Facebook and Instagram are a must-have), but choose, video, photo or text. Post a lot (ideally 3 times a day, but at least few times a week). Don’t link to your blog/news/video on Facebook. Mr. Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms will show a link only to 2% of your followers, just copy the news directly to Facebook, blog is dead anyways, and you’ll get a lot more engagement this way. Right now Facebook favours content in this order: live video – video – picture – text – link.
4) Be aggressive – post, like, reply, share, ask for shares. Especially on Instagram. At the moment Instagram has engagement 10 times bigger that Facebook. From day one, find few users who love what you’re doing, follow their followers, use their hashtags. FLC method – follow, like 3 pics, comment 1 pic. Use smaller hashtags.
How to get first 500 followers? Email and message everybody you know. Personal Facebook needs to be your public Facebook.
5) Don’t have content – steal. Fake it till you make it. Find a camera guy who wants to be media, there are a lot of them – help him/her out.
6) Tour a lot and show what drifting is. Never say no to public appearance. Record them.
7) Building your brand is 10% content, 90% distribution. Almost everybody forget that. Have a following. Post a lot. Mediocre post with awesome distribution is better than awesome post with lousy distribution.
8) Be in good relationship with organisers, ask them to share your content with their established fan base. That said, organisers should follow all these steps also in order to win at Social Media.
Read how to get sponsors: https://blog.wheelsbywovka.com/get-sponsors-drift-car-career
Thoughts and examples on topic: if you’re just starting, check out Drift Idiot on Youtube, guy (Sam) basically made his first video when he drifted his 240SX for the first time. Viewer counter grew and after few months his videos started getting 500K views and he was able to secure some basic sponsors. He didn’t become a pro drifter, but his hobby of making drift videos accelerated and now he’s on Vaughn Gittin JR’s team.
Fail Crew, another great example. Guys didn’t win any major championships, but their content and distribution was hitting through the roof. It helped them to secure a deal with Monster Energy and even today, since guys split and the crew is not that big these days, all of them engage with fans every day – tons of content, doing better than 90% of drifters in the World.
Leave your questions in comments or write directly to me by email of FB
