Lotus Race to Pole Position in Formula One Social Media Ranking

This week, ahead of the first race of the season, we launched the first ever index ranking Formula 1 teams according to social media performance. Lotus top the league, ahead of Williams and Red Bull who claimed second and third places respectively.

Ahead of the opening Grand Prix in Australia this weekend, The F1 Social Media Index is a league table of the 11 teams involved in the 2013 FIA Formula One World Championship, ranked according to the best use of social media by their official club channels.

The table was compiled by measuring the performance of each team, based not just on an algorithm, but research from a team of nine people who looked at eight social networks, as well as a panel of four judges who presided over the results.

The F1 Social Media Index, which we produced with partners William Hill, was four months in the making. It follows the success of the sport.socialmediaindex.co.uk, which earlier this year set a benchmark of social media success in sport.

The scoring methodology included both quantitative data from a two-month analysis period and qualitative research from a team of 11 people from Umpf, William Hill and Opta.

The first element – which accounted for 65% of the total score – was a full analysis of each team’s official club social media channels from 01 August 2013 to 30 September 2013 and took into account the breadth of official club social media channels (including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Vine and YouTube) as well as blog activity. The scoring included percentage engagement levels, percentage community growth as well as multimedia content posted on Twitter and Facebook, including video, images, audio, official apps and external links.

The second element (35% of the total scoring) was the judges’ scores, where four judges marked each team and the combined total was averaged to give a score.  Finally, ‘Black Flag’ penalties of 2.5% were accrued for poor social media practice, including duplicate content, idle periods of community management as well as repeated spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Winners Lotus achieved fantastic engagement rates and were commended for their unique tone of voice. The output of behind-the-scenes content seemed to resonate with their followers and was hugely influential in creating such high engagement figures.

Michael Sheehan, Social Media Customer Experience Manager at William Hill, said: “Lotus F1 Team are deserved winners of the Formula 1 Social Index, they have mastered the art of being clever, witty, interesting and most importantly, engaging.

“The key to Lotus’ success seems to be that they deliver content that isn’t shown on television or printed in the press. Instead, they show behind-the-scenes footage and information that fans want to see, which clearly resonates with their passionate fan base.”