Although not every IndyCar team has a Twitter presence -- Target Chip Ganassi Racing being the highest-profile exception -- team public relations professionals say Twitter is increasingly viewed as a mandatory tool for communicating with their target audiences.
“You kind of have to do it as a brand or company these days,” says Kimberley Jackson (@KimJackson), social media manager for Andretti Autosport (@FollowAndretti). “If you’re not in that realm, you’re kind of left behind. If others are talking about you, you might as well be out there talking about yourself too.”
“A lot of big brands use Twitter for customer service outreach,” Jackson said. “For example if someone posts a negative comment about a certain airline or brand or product they use, then the company can use Twitter to respond to that person and kind of appease the situation. We kind of feel the same way. Our fans are kind of like our customers, and create a direct, special relationship with them. This is one way we do that on a personal basis.”
It’s Twitter’s immediate, two-way communications capabilities that make it a powerful weapon in the brand-building arsenal, Jackson said.
“If a company is only sending out one-way communications and not responding to the people following them, it’s not being used correctly,” said Jackson. “This is obviously a social tool and should be used that way.”
Early Adaptors
Today now it’s rare to find an IndyCar race team without an active Twitter account and many drivers are also tweeting regularly. But just a few years ago Twitter was a tough sell to virtually everyone.
Micahel Kaltenmark (@MSKaltenmark), who along with Pat Caporali (@PCaporali) pioneered the use of Twitter in IndyCar while working together at Vision Racing (@VisionRacing) in 2008 and 2009, said it wasn’t exactly crowded in the vanguard.
“I can remember getting teased a lot,” Kaltenmark said with a laugh. “We got a lot of ‘what are you guys tweeting?’ because Pat and I were constantly on our phones. We probably were tweeting. It’s funny to see today, fast forward, they’re all on their too now. You walk up and down pit lane and you see the same people who made fun of us now tweeting and they see the value now. They understand they need to be there.”
With the Big Two teams in IndyCar (Target Chip Ganassi and Penske) commanding most of TV and the mainstream media's attention due to their success on the track, Caporali saw Twitter as a way for mid-pack Vision Racing to communicate with fans.
"We realized it was a direct link to fans, especially during races, since we were never on TV which was so annoying," she said. "The only way we could get information out to friends, family and fans was by tweeting it and then posting our post-race reports on Facebook."
Can't Beat the Price
Caporali says much of the upside of Twitter can be spelled F-R-E-E.
“I said (to other teams in the early days), look, you don’t get it; it’s FREE,” said Caporali. “It’s a free way to talk to fans and get more of them interested and give them more information and stuff they are not getting from newspapers, radio, TV, stuff that goes everywhere around the world and not just as far as their local station. I didn’t know how to convey that to people.”
While Caporali said she was frustrated by the slow adoption curve for Twitter, IndyCar’s VP of communication Amy Konrath said that “FREE” usually at least gets a serious look from race teams.
“There were teams that were really early adopters and saw the benefit of it,” said Konrath, “especially knowing how budgets are. This was a great way for them, really at no cost, to communicate directly with the fans and I think they saw the benefits of it. We saw teams slowly adapting to this early in 2010 and now I think there’s not a team out there that hasn’t embraced it in some form or another.”
As with many business trends, customers (fans, users) led the way on Twitter, Kaltenmark said.
“Fans did catch on right away,” said Kaltenmark. “The fans are savvy. They are on these platforms already so hooking up with them wasn’t so difficult. The (mainstream) media kind of took a little longer. But in the beginning, the fans were all about it.”
How Much Information is Too Much?
Kaltenmark said part of the resistance to Twitter was because of its perceived threat to the traditionally secretive racing culture.
“The racing culture is so interesting,” said Kaltenmark. “It’s changing now thanks to social media like Twitter and things like that, but (in the old days) you had to find out about everything through the rumor mill. If there was a press release it was on the worst kept secret in the world. Early on, Twitter and Facebook were a way of making these little mini-announcements without rocking the boat and putting out a whole press release. And sometimes a press release isn’t merited anyway. You don’t want to be the team just spewing out stuff that nobody wants to read.”
Since Twitter is free and available to anyone with a smartphone or computer, it didn’t take long for drivers to start their own, personal Twitter accounts. Notoriously competitive race car drivers presented a sort of wild-card element in the Twitter equation. While technically team employees, most drivers are very much independent contractors who have personal brand-building concerns that may or may not coincide exactly with their team-of-the-moment's goals. Twitter gave these drivers an open microphone to fans with nary a PR handler in sight.
Jackson said giving driver’s the means to broadcast messages at will did pose a few concerns. For example, drivers who lace their tweets with F-bombs could cause the team and its sponsors some heartburn. In late 2010, Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton (@IamLewis4real) raised eyebrows and lit up message boards after he dropped an f-bomb on "hater" fans via Twitter. The tweet was very quickly deleted. The trick, PR experts say, is to find the right mix of authentic, transparent, civil and respectful.
“It’s definitely a concern, but it could be the same way in the mainstream media if the driver says something you may not want him or her to say to a reporter,” said Jackson. “I think really it’s about the transparency. We really empower our drivers. They are allowed to say what they want on their Twitter accounts of course being respectful to the team and other opinions. We view it as a positive tool rather than trying to dictate what they say.”
The flip side of the raw, unregulated potential of Twitter is that it enables authenticity, Caporali said.
"With Twitter, nobody can tell you what to say," said Caporali. "Now you can say whatever you want and people can either tune in or not. I share whatever I want and they can take it or leave it. I think they are taking it, because we gain followers every day."
Konrath said while the league cannot force teams to do anything on the public relations front, there are things the league can do to encourage the use of social media.
“We had our annual PR summit (in mid-December) and our keynote speaker was Peter Shankman (@petershankman, www.shankman) who had great social media insight and that’s why we brought him in, to really help these teams start to navigate and understand how to use social media,” said Kontrath. “I think that’s kind of our role. While we can’t mandate anything; we can certainly give them all the tools to make it a success.”
Respect the User-Driven Medium
Caporali, Konrath, Kaltenmark and Jackson all advise teams to approach Twitter with the respect that comes from knowing it’s an entirely user-controlled medium. Nobody is forced to follow your team or driver on Twitter, so you better make it worth their while or they’ll leave.
“Don’t use it just to hawk your product,” Caporali said. “Use it to engage fans. Use it to talk to people. Use it to give them information they won’t get anywhere else. Don’t link Facebook and Twitter. Don’t make it just your press releases and sponsor announcements. All your doing is filling (twitter streams) with crap. They don’t really want that. They want to talk to a human being. They want to know the stuff that you can’t get out of a press release.”
Follower Fixation
In the earlier days of Twitter in IndyCar, some teams, bloggers and even fans seemed focused on growing their number of followers by any means possible. Tweets asking for help "getting to 700 followers by July" or some similar message were relatively common. Teams would sometimes offer prizes to the 3,500th follower or for retweeting calls for more followers, etc.
Today there is much less of that within the Twitter racing community. Jackson said her team is more focused on quality of followers than quantity these days. Jackson's @FollowAndretti twitter handle had 4,574 followers as of Jan. 4.
"There are sponsors or potential sponsors who say 'why don't you have a million followers yet?' " said Jackson. "Really, we have a very, very engaged group that follows us. That's one thing you see in the entire IndyCar series, the people who do follow the series are very passionate and very vocal and that's something great about our fans."
Caporali considers her team's follower count as a sort of ratings number. A steady growth in followers is a sign the team's Twitter account is giving fans what they want. A drop in followers might indicate the opposite.
Will the Renegade be Tamed?
The biggest threat to Twitter, many agree, is that it will become sanitized and corporatized to the point that users no longer pay attention to it.
“I think people see the value and importance of being genuine on Twitter,” said Konrath. “And they encourage their drivers to do that, within reasonable limits. People want to connect with someone and they want to connect with someone in a reasonable manner. That’s important to maintain as it grows so it doesn’t just become like a corporate tool.”
Jackson, a 2008 graduate from Ball State University, said today's public relations professionals are arming themselves with knowledge of how to blend Twitter and other social media into their multi-pronged PR strategies.
The New Generation of PR
“Today social media really should be part of the strategic plan and not just all the focus on one thing,” said Jackson. “It should be part of the plan.”
Social media, she said, isn’t going away, especially as succeeding generations grow up in a world where wireless, digital, instant communication is virtually ubiquitous.
“Honestly, considering I’ve grown up with always having a phone attached to my hand, social media has kind of become second nature by now,” Jackson said.
--
The pressdog™ Original Twitter Series --
Part I: Twitter Takes Root in IndyCar
Part II: Tweetups — Let's Tweet and Greet
Part III: PR Pros See Twitter as a Tool
I love that Indycar teams and drivers are becoming more active in Twitter. As a long time Andretti fan myself, I follow both Andretti Autosport and Marco Andretti on Twitter. I especially enjoy reading Marco's tweets, as with him bei g my favorite driver, it's interesting hearing what he's doing in the off-season. And there were many races in 2010 where Marco's pit crew would tweet Marco's status and updates all throughout the races, which is great, because in this day and age of constant multi-tasking, it's easy to miss something here and there. I don't follow any of the other Indycar teams and drivers, and so I can't comment on their involvement in Twitter, but so far I'm impressed with all the constant tweets coming from Andretti Autosport and Marco. Before I got started in Twitter last year. it was always waiting several months between seasons to hear almost anything about Indycar, especially from the Andretti's (of course, I could have searched the internet during my pre-Twitter days for news and such, but it's just not easy finding the time to do that. And so with Twitter, I'm constantly hearing about Andretti Autosport and Marco. It's fun and it just adds to the experience. Twitter is great!!! :-)
Posted by: Mark Miller | January 05, 2011 at 12:29 PM
"The biggest threat to Twitter, many agree, is that it will become sanitized and corporatized to the point that users no longer pay attention to it."
Absolutely bang on sir!
Posted by: Leigh O'Gorman | January 08, 2011 at 06:20 AM
Nice post. I love it. Waiting your new posts. Thank you...
Posted by: Devremülkler | January 10, 2011 at 04:13 PM