As I noted in last week’s debut blog for The Twitter Outlook, I shall be keeping an eye on the F1 drivers and teams Twitter pages over the forthcoming months, noting the biggest increases and smallest increases, as well as a top 10 list for drivers and teams.

Drivers – The Top 10
01 – 924,908 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 786,750 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 465,148 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 396,429 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 320,846 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 184,362 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 147,418 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
08 – 142,257 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
09 – 141,951 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
10 – 123,817 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)

Drivers – Biggest Increases
01 – 26,579 – Fernando Alonso
02 – 8,335 – Lewis Hamilton
03 – 6,561 – Jenson Button
04 – 6,431 – Bruno Senna
05 – 5,288 – Felipe Massa

Drivers – Smallest Increases
01 – 358 – Charles Pic
02 – 433 – Timo Glock
03 – 463 – Jean-Eric Vergne
04 – 734 – Heikki Kovalainen
05 – 779 – Nico Hulkenberg

The Top 10 in the Drivers chart is the same as last week, but it looks like Pastor Maldonaldo will move up into 8th past Heikki Kovalainen, the latter only recording an increase of 734 followers in the past week, the fourth lowest of the pack. Unsurprisingly, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa also made heavy gains, Alonso made a gain of 26 thousand, and may break the 500 thousand follower barrier this weekend with it being the Spanish Grand Prix. Bruno Senna is also set to break the 400 thousand follower barrier, becoming only the fourth F1 personality to do so.

Teams – The Top 10
01 – 260,259 – Ferrari
02 – 183,034 – McLaren
03 – 124,282 – Mercedes
04 – 107,703 – Red Bull
05 – 102,196 – Lotus
06 – 71,331 – Caterham
07 – 62,731 – Marussia
08 – 61,048 – Force India
09 – 55,177 – Williams
10 – 49,091 – Sauber

Teams – Biggest Increases
01 – 3,925 – Ferrari
02 – 1,767 – McLaren
03 – 1,671 – Red Bull

Teams – Smallest Increases
01 – 289 – Marussia
02 – 319 – Williams
03 – 420 – Toro Rosso

In the teams list, the biggest and smallest gains are exactly where you expect them to be, so no big surprises here.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 7th May 2012.

One of the things that I will be doing in this broadcasting blog is looking at the social media side of things, as I feel this encompasses broadcasting, in that broadcasting nowadays also covers social media.

The Twitter Outlook is a post I shall do once a week (there or there about), and the purpose is quite simple – to list the top ten F1 drivers’ and teams’ with the highest Twitter followers, as well as those with the biggest increases and smallest increases. In the rare occasion I will maybe note if any driver or team actually loses followers. Losing followers is incredibly rare, although I recall in the football Barcelona losing several thousand followers when Chelsea beat them to reach the UEFA Champions League Final.

Every F1 team has a Twitter account, while the only three drivers’ not to have a Twitter account are Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen.

Drivers
01 – 918,347 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 778,415 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 438,569 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 389,998 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 316,482 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 181,923 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 145,326 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
08 – 141,523 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
09 – 140,571 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
10 – 121,987 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)
11 – 109,995 – Paul di Resta (Force India)
12 – 99,592 – Narain Karthikeyan (HRT)
13 – 71,341 – Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
14 – 67,348 – Vitaly Petrov (Caterham)
15 – 66,804 – Timo Glock (Marussia)
16 – 64,216 – Nico Hulkenberg (Force India)
17 – 47,753 – Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber)
18 – 36,938 – Romain Grosjean (Lotus)
19 – 23,710 – Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)
20 – 17,048 – Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso)
21 – 10,310 – Charles Pic (Marussia)

The drivers’ list in some places there are surprises, but the overall top few in the pecking order should not really be a surprise. The two main British drivers’ of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton inevitably lead the way, with Button very close to breaking 1 million followers, and will probably do so in the next few months. Behind them, is Fernando Alonso. Normally, that is not surprising – but the fact that he has only had a Twitter account for one and a half months and already jumped up to third and amassed over half a million followers means that he will probably end up breaking 1 million at some point this year as well. While Alonso has his Spanish army, Bruno Senna and Mark Webber follow behind with their Brazilian and Australian armies respectively, both with only 300 thousand people following their activities. One of the reasons as well I think these five have many more followers than the rest is that they tend to tweet regularly which is important for keeping the ‘audience’ in contact and building the follower list.

Moving outside of the top 5 – and you have a driver per country essentially (Mexico, Germany, Finland, Venezuela) before you get to Pedro de la Rosa. Looking at his Twitter, he doesn’t seem to tweet a lot, so this surprises me. I think it will probably be because he is Spanish and therefore has ‘the Alonso effect’. The same applies with Paul di Resta and the effect surrounding Button and Hamilton. Behind di Resta, you dip below 100 thousand and once you get below Karthikeyan’s Indian army you’re left with a cluster of F1 drivers’ – 9 drivers below 75 thousand. For those wondering why Felipe Massa is down there, he, like Alonso, only joined Twitter in late March, thus I expect him to clear 100 thousand sometime soon. It shall be interesting to monitor this list as drivers’ have good or bad races.

Teams
01 – 256,334 – Ferrari
02 – 181,267 – McLaren
03 – 123,449 – Mercedes
04 – 106,032 – Red Bull
05 – 101,231 – Lotus
06 – 70,884 – Caterham
07 – 62,442 – Marussia
08 – 60,587 – Force India
09 – 54,859 – Williams
10 – 48,315 – Sauber
11 – 44,168 – HRT
12 – 38,210 – Toro Rosso

Moving to the teams, and Ferrari on top shouldn’t be any surprise considering the huge worldwide appeal they have, not only in Europe. It also shows with as a brand Ferrari is important to Formula One. Behind them, you have the other important brands above 100 thousand – McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Lotus. Someone is probably going to point out Red Bull’s other Twitter account Red Bull F1 Spy. I could have added 106,032 to the amount for that Twitter, but it maybe that nearly all of the Red Bull F1 Spy’s followers follow the other account so I could get a false result, which would defeat the purpose of this. Behind the main 5, you have Caterham in 6th who seem to have a loyal following from their Team Lotus days. Like in the drivers standings, you then have a cluster of teams, none of which are major brands. The only team likely to advance up that list is Williams, but only if they show the results on the track.

I’ll keep an eye on the Twitter followers every week as I said above, and post updates on here. Comments and thoughts, as always are welcome.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 30th April 2012.

The new link-up between the Sauber Formula 1 team and Chelsea football club that was announced earlier today was one that surprised me. Link ups between F1 and football teams have happened in the past. Most notably, Group Lotus (who owns the Lotus F1 Team) and Norwich City announced a tie-up last year, and Tony Fernandes is chairman of both Queens Park Rangers and Caterham Group.

I think with the latter two tie-ups, both firms benefit equally as neither is extremely well known or extremely good in their field – ie. Norwich are not on Premier League winning level and nor are Caterham. Chelsea, however, are much more well-known as they compete around Europe in the UEFA Champions League competition. Although Sauber compete all around the world with F1, I think that in terms of awareness, Chelsea have higher brand awareness than Sauber. The social media statistics would support this.

Facebook
9,850,154 fans – Chelsea F.C. (9 million)
0,019,470 fans – Sauber F1 (19 thousand)

Twitter
886,527 followers – Chelsea F.C.
48,923 followers – Sauber F1

Google
24 million hits – Chelsea F.C.
4 million hits – Sauber F1

While Sauber may benefit financially from this, I don’t see them benefiting elsewhere from this. Are Chelsea fans, who are also F1 fans going to switch their allegiances to Sauber because Chelsea support them? I don’t think so. At the same point, I don’t forsee Chelsea fans consuming Sauber products, or vice-versa. At 09:00 this morning, this was the amount of Twitter followers both Chelsea and Sauber had:

884,429 followers – Chelsea F.C.
47,380 followers – Sauber F1

So Chelsea’s has increased by 2,098 followers (or 0.023 percent), while Sauber’s has gone up by 1,543 followers (or 3.25 percent). For anyone who wants to have a look, Sauber’s sponsors are listed here, while Chelsea’s are listed here. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t think Sauber or Chelsea fans go out with their sponsors in mind, thinking “Chelsea have Samsung as their sponsors’, therefore I am more likely to buy a Samsung television”. I would give an example from Sauber’s sponsorship page, but I can’t think of an example, because nothing on that page appeals to me. I imagine there must be something more than financial benefit to both brands, otherwise they would not have entered this partnership. I won’t claim to be an expert in this area by any means, these are just my opinions on the matter without any “hard facts” before them to prove or disprove.

Before I close this blog, I should probably note why I’ve blogged about this on a broadcasting blog. For me, broadcasting encompasses and includes social media trends as well as other activity in this area, hence my blog on this subject matter.

Comments and thoughts welcome!