IndyCar Social Breakdown

It’s easy to see how much of an impact that IndyCar has on the state of Indiana come May, but this was a tradition that evolved long before social media was prevalent. Now, with the surge of social media, IndyCar is able to use many social properties to their advantage to widen their platform. The four social platforms that are shown on the very top of the official IndyCar website are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube. Instagram is their most popular social, and one thing I noticed is that Instagram is the only social that uses the true IndyCar title; the Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are all under the name “Indy Lights”. The Instagram features a lot of portraits of individual drivers and includes important scheduling updates in their feed or in more immediate means through their stories. The Twitter and Facebook accounts are good places to find scheduling information as well, but they post a lot more articles that showcase happenings within teams or the behind the scenes info of big events. But, these articles do have decent fan engagement on their posts, as the typical IndyCar demographic is somewhat older and is more likely to connect on Facebook rather than Instagram. The Youtube account is a very accessible place to find race highlights and even live streams of the actual events. They haven’t been extremely active lately, but that could also correlate a lot with the racing off season. Right now there is more switching occurring amongst teams than actual racing, so the platforms that cover news like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can be more active. Overall, looking at the four main IndyCar properties, I would rate Instagram first, Facebook second, Youtube third, and Twitter last. This ranking doesn’t necessarily correlate with their followings, and instead is by the information they provide to the IndyCar demographic. Their Instagram has the most following and interaction; Facebook has a lot of IndyCar users that may not follow but will interact; the Youtube account is a good resource to watch races; and their Twitter is mostly bland information and articles.