Mercedes continue to lead Formula 1’s social media landscape

With another championship battle going down to the wire between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, it is no surprise that Mercedes continued to benefit massively on social media during 2016, analysis of the leading three social media websites show.

Hamilton is the second biggest motor sport star currently
Across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Lewis Hamilton is the second biggest motor sport star out there currently. With a combined audience of 11.62 million followers, Hamilton is comfortably ahead of his nearest rival Fernando Alonso, who reaches 5.37 million accounts. In front of both Hamilton and Alonso is the MotoGP superstar Valentino Rossi, who reaches 21.53 million accounts. Rossi dwarfs Hamilton’s and Alonso’s numbers on Facebook, with 13.10 million accounts ‘liking’ Rossi through that service.

Marc Marquez and Jorge Lorenzo are both ahead of Alonso overall, with a reach of 7.76 million and 6.80 million accounts respectively. From a social media point of view, MotoGP has more superstars than Formula 1 currently and with neither Rossi, Marquez or Lorenzo retiring any time soon, that picture looks set to continue. It is one thing that Formula 1 has struggled to do: build superstars on social media. The reason for that is MotoGP’s large audience of Facebook, which Formula 1 is only starting to replicate (see below).

> September 2016: In conversation with Ian Wheeler (part one; part two)

Away from the MotoGP and Formula 1 comparisons, Nico Rosberg bows out with 5.26 million combined followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Losing three of the five biggest names on social media in 2017 will hurt Formula 1. Jenson Button in fourth can reach out to 4.17 million combined followers, whereas Sergio Perez who sits in seventh reaches out to 2.12 million combined accounts. That’s a sizeable difference. It takes time to build up the younger stars which is why the older stars are still up top. But that is where FOM and Liberty Media come into play by working with the teams, in the same way Dorna did with MotoGP’s outfits to build up a strong social media presence.

Red Bull utilise the power of Facebook Live whilst Mercedes use Rosberg’s exit to generate hits
Facebook Live is becoming increasingly important to reach out to new audiences, something Red Bull have exploited in the latter half of the season. More and more teams are using these tools, but clearly Red Bull are doing something right in this space as their combined audience jumped by almost a million accounts between August and December, jumping from 8.08 million to 8.95 million, an increase of 10.9 percent. Red Bull’s Facebook videos have a lot more views and interaction than Mercedes despite having a lot less ‘likes’. No other team can boast that activity aside from Mercedes, and it is clear fans are liking the antics of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen… for now.

Nico Rosberg’s retirement sent shock waves across social media, with the BBC reporting over two million unique hits for its article on the subject. Whilst the news itself generated attention that Formula 1 would never usually see in the off-season, Mercedes capitalised on it brilliantly from a social media standpoint. A spoof advert appeared in AUTOSPORT Magazine, which in turn led to several ex-drivers and media personalities ‘applying’ for the role via Twitter!

It is difficult to stand out from the social media crowd without a coherent social media strategy. You get the impression that Formula 1 is really starting to get the handle of what content works on social media and what doesn’t. When looking into greater detail, it’s interesting to note how the follower profile differ between MotoGP’s leading riders and Formula 1’s leading drivers. The overriding conclusion is that MotoGP skews firmly towards Facebook with over 60 percent of its social media audience coming from that platform. In comparison, Formula 1’s social media is much more ‘thinly’ spread out between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Are casual fans more likely to ‘like’ superstars on Facebook and monitor their activity there, rather than create a Twitter account and follow them via that medium? As previously mentioned on this site, the grower in this space at the moment is Instagram, which is eating slowly into Facebook’s market share where Formula 1 is concerned having gone from a combined following of 8.57 million accounts in December 2015 to 19.13 million accounts in December 2016 (all teams, drivers and official F1 included).

MotoGP has the largest presence overall
The official Formula 1 accounts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have a combined audience of 7.34 million, up 14.4 percent from August and up a massive 211.5 percent on December 2015. This time last year, their combined following was just 2.36 million, although the large increase is due to their Facebook migration back in March. Nevertheless, the numbers should help Formula One Management (FOM) see how important social media is to the Formula 1 brand. In Abu Dhabi, FOM did their first #F1Live broadcast on Facebook, which was a success story (more on this in the next few days).

However, the official MotoGP accounts across social media are followed by a combined audience of 17.28 million people, thanks to a large Facebook following, as noted above with Rossi, Lorenzo and Marquez. Behind MotoGP is NASCAR, which is helped by a strong Twitter profile. MotoGP, NASCAR and Formula 1 are the ‘big’ three motor sport series and this translates across to social media.

At the other end of the spectrum, a combined audience of just 433,000 people follow the official Formula E channels, which puts it in line with the World Endurance Championship and the British Superbike Championship. The other point to note down the latter end of the table is the very small profile for both GP2 and GP3, showing why Liberty Media desperately need to integrate both series’ into Formula 1’s overall offering as they are firmly treated at the moment as a ‘bit on the side’.

Lastly, Roborace. A combined audience across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram of 2.24 million having never turned a wheel in anger during a real race. Fake followers? I think so…