How Do Formula 1 Teams Rank On Social Media?

I am a big fan of Formula 1 – I love the drama, the competition, the nerdy technology – it’s quite a bit like social media!

As Formula 1 travels the globe, there are plenty of opportunities for social media channels to show fans some of what goes on behind the scenes. Of course, it also presents plenty of scope for promotion of those crucial sponsors. Commercial activity can range from branded pages and contests to a driver-branded version of Angry Birds (yes, really).

With the British Grand Prix just around the corner, I thought it would be interesting to assess the performance of the Formula 1 team’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, and see who is ahead of the pack.

Formula 1 teams on Twitter

We put the primary, team Twitter accounts from each team into PeerIndex to create the following ranking:

Ferrari are out front, and Caterham are close behind despite their weaker results on track.

Ferrari’s Twitter feed makes for interesting reading, as each Tweet goes out three times – in Italian, English and Spanish. That’s commitment to the fanbase and provides a really good example of taking the international audience into account when using social media.

The Facebook Formula 1 ranking

When it comes to Facebook, we are less interested in total fans and likes than we are in engagement. In order to score the teams equally, we have created a rough ranking that takes their “people talking about” metric divided by the total fans.

While they are getting lapped on Twitter, Mercedes AMG are dominating with their Facebook page – posting a variety of content and at a regular rate that doesn’t lead to overloading their fans.

Marussia once again punch far above their on-track weight, however with the smallest page on the grid, their engagement levels perform well with relatively low numbers of people talking about them.

It should be noted that Ferrari’s impressive number of fans is due to being the page for the iconic brand itself, as there is no F1 specific page.

The most surprising result is last-place McLaren – they have one of the largest pages but are failing to engage their fans, and just before the home Grand Prix. From examining their page, it appears that updates are few and far between (in one case, no posts between 8-20 June) which goes to show the importance of nurturing your audience if you want them to interact on Facebook.

Image credit: nic r on Flickr