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And thank you steve for getting Perronard (sp.?) early on in the show for an update. He always has great insight but last night you could see the compassion he has for the guys....
Thanks Steve for another good one.
The Shop
An important part of my job as Online Editor at TWMX is to find new methods to pull views to the TWMX website. I've been at this for seven years now and there have been many changes to the way people go to websites, because in the overall numbers, very few enter a website through the traditional URL homepage "front door" and instead through a link shared on Facebook-Twitter-Instagram, where people spend the majority of their online time. Vital is unique in that it has a message board for people to land on, but even here there are links to content that is back on the mainpage that you wouldn't see unless GuyB/Michael/Grant/Klinger put there in front of you here. That's a big reason why GuyB jokes for you to hit the homepage every now and then, because odds are your missing something they've posted.
Steve is a very close friend of mine, I have the utmost respect for what he does for moto, we often share rental cars and go to dinner at the races, our wives are good friends, etc, and the work he puts out is top notch. However, and I would tell this to his face, some people here act like he's the only person reporting on the sport and they look down on other sites (ours tends to be a favorite to bash for a few of you here for reasons I still don't understand) for "not putting out content." That's flat-out wrong on so many levels, because TWMX-Vital-RX-MXA-Dirt Bike has something new going up on the site or other channels all of the time. It's insulting to the rest of us that do this for a living when the common idea is that only one person is carrying the weight of the sport. I will fully agree that there are some people in moto media are only in it for the press pass to hang out with riders, but the people putting in the real work do it because we enjoy sharing the background information we see with fans like you guys. (As for the RBSR media deal, we had a bike and rider ready until it became clear that racing would interfere with his current situation with WADA, so we shelved it and put our efforts into other projects.)
I understand that what I said might not make sense if you're not involved in the digital guts of it the way I am, and for that I apologize, should have explained it a little more clearly. But I stand behind my statement that we all need to come together to do something to make the sport grow in new ways. We as fans are lucky that there are multiple well-run series to watch, talented riders to cheer for, companies investing in the sport, and some media guys to share what's happening, because other forms of motorsports don't have the same package that we have.
Hit me up if you want to have a deeper discussion about what you'd like to see and hear as a fan of the sport. I love to talk about moto and want to know more about the people that enjoy it, too.
Your idea is to cater your social media to a attract new participants/fan, which theoretically sounds great, but glorified high fives don’t sell parts, they don’t sell bikes, and they don’t keep dealerships open. The oldest stand alone Yamaha dealership in the country just closed it’s doors last month, no one from any media outlet covered that, and I would consider that a major loss for our industry.
As a whole, our industry is doing a horrible job of attracting new fans and participants. A more prevalent social media presence isn’t going to help that. You have to change that at a local level. Ride days for new riders, Poker runs for Dual Sport rides, local races that create an experience (like day in the dirt and the 125 dream race), supercross and moto watch parties at the dealership, service classes to teach people the correct way to work on bikes, demo days (I applaud Yamaha and KTM for what they do).
Chasing glorified high fives might help your social media numbers, but it dosen’t help at the local level.
You outlined something very important - most media outlets are regurgitating very similar stuff, and fighting over the pieces.
Industry media has always had saturation coverage of Pro racing, but it seems to have really gone off the deep end in the digital age. As noted, our traditional outlets have terrible metrics compared to accounts that just feature average joes on dirt bikes. The motocross media that shifts their focus away from full-time Pro coverage, and more towards culture and tech at the grassroots level will have a huge advantage if done right. It's ripe for disruption.
In the phone call the other night I stated how we need to find a way to show the common person that motocross is not just skimming whoops and hitting triples, and that there needs to be media content that shows just an average person or family riding. It would be a good way to show this is not an activity limited to just the elite few. As much as it was criticized, that is what the Toyota Make Up To Mud segment was this year: a way to show women there is a place in motorcycling for them.
Let's look at the road market: Ducati spends millions to fund MotoGP teams, partly in a way to develop a reputation as a "leader in technology," but then they try to appeal to new and lesser skilled riders with bikes like the Scrambler. Off-road seems to go the other way, though and puts most of their emphasis on how you can buy a similar bike to the ones Roczen race on Saturday night. There are full ranges of lower performance/lower mechanical responsibility/lower cost bikes like the CRF-F line from Honda, but those bikes receive a fraction of the attention or advertising that the CRF-R bikes get. So with that said, should the marketing agenda of OEMs change from performance to new rider accessibility? It's worth considering.
As important as someone buying a bike is, that's not the only way that someone new can invest in the sport. Buying tickets, watching races on television, coming to websites, all of that helps the motorcycling industry in its own ways. It would be great if they bought a bike, but if they don't, we can't consider that a total loss. As long as someone continues to put their dollars in motorcycling, that's a win.
We all like to clown on people for wearing Fox or Alpinestars shirts but not knowing about moto, but in reality, we should be happy they invested even a little bit of money in something that we like.
I agree with you that the industry as a whole needs to do a better job of pulling in new participants and that we should do things to offer them a place to ride (TWMX has the SLAM Fest and Race Series, which bring in hundreds if not thousands of people to the track on a weekend), but I disagree that a more robust social media presence would be detrimental. This is why we use social media as a megaphone to tell people that events like this are going on. It's not cost effective or sustainable for a small organization, like a local track or club, to run traditional advertisements on television or the radio (which you can argue people tune out off anyways), but social media is a free and growing platform that anyone can take advantage of.
We need to come up with new event styles for the common rider, I totally agree. I'll spend the next three days at Glen Helen for DITD and it's my favorite weekend of the entire year because it's a time to spend on a bike and hang out with my friends, but tied into the race are events like Meatball's Hell On Wheels deal that offer a place for a guy to ride an old or unique bike. There is a winery in Temecula, Doffo, that hosts MotoGP viewing parties on race day and they fill up their viewing area each time. Someone at a local level with a bar/brewery/restaurant anywhere in the US should do the same when SX starts in January.
I think you might think that all social media is just for likes, but let me explain it how we as a media site have to use these numbers. A "like" is counted as an "impression" and that is a very crucial online metric right now. Advertisers want to know how many impressions an outlet attains with each month or each post, because that is a direct reflection of how much the content is being seen. If they like the message that the outlet puts out and the impression numbers it receives, they are more apt to invest with advertising dollars. This is why you're seeing more sponsored social media posts, because brands are seeing the reach of media outlets (a media outlet like TWMX-RX-Vital typically has more social media followers than a brand) and want to piggyback off of that. Seriously, you might not think that a "like" results in any parts, bikes, or tickets sold, but that's simply not true and anyone involved at an industry brand would tell you otherwise.
It's worth noting that some of the most important criteria in the Supercross press pass application for 2019 are the social media followings an outlet has on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
It's unfortunate that dealerships and other things are going away, I feel for any business that goes through it, but the harsh truth is that they made mistakes somewhere that caused them to lose momentum and sustainability. I'm originally from STL and I've seen a number of small family-owned shops go away, but bigger shops are popping up and seem to be thriving. Would the dealership level be better as a whole if every shop was as big, well stocked, and advertising as much as a place like Chapparal? That's debatable.
And I do not feel one ounce of embarrassment for what I said Tuesday night or now. I believe in everything I say and stand behind it; embarrassment comes when one doesn't fully stand behind what they do.
However, using social media as a medium of measure for advertisement allocation for a company is a shakey practice at best. As pointed out earlier, a good portion of that data can be fudged. IG announced just this week they are going to begin deleting accounts and removing likes from influencers and companies that use 3rd party apps to solicit likes.
https://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-deleting-fake-likes-follows-third-party-apps-2018-11?r=UK&IR=T
Keep in mind at one point a few years ago Ken Roczen had a little over 2 Million followers, today just over 1.2 Million due to IG deleting fake accounts. It will be interesting to see what their most recent go at controlling the actual “real” impressions will produce.
By no means is social media a bad thing in terms of letting people know what’s going on at their local track or club, but using it as a means to measure that amount of engagement the sport is having is questionable at best. Ticket sales, bike sales, gear sales all tell the tale, and they are hurting.
Social Media will always play some role, but for our industry, I’m not sure if more of it is the answer as it’s so saturated. Why not bring the gear to the big local races like Answer is doing with their grass roots tour? Why not have more ride days like Fly does? Why not have a support truck like FMF does at many large amatuer events? Put your money back into the local scene, where your core base is. Where the people are actually spending the money.
Steve/Pulp, now Keefer... they put all other moto outlets to shame because of 2 simple things. 1) They put out original content. 2) They genuinely like and care about what they produce.
Transworld and others get shit on all the time because you guys are a glorified "re-post" button.
If you understood why MMA started 20 years ago, and UFC was bought as a bankrupt company for 2 million and sold for 4.2 Billion, you'd understand what Evans was getting at.
You'd also get why this sport is the haves and homeless. There is few in the middle.
Evans simply didn't know how to get his message out. But he was on the right track.
MMA has gone from a niche sport to a major player and the most popular combat sport in the world at the moment. So im not sure why your even comparing it with sx and mx, Our goal should be F1 or MotoGP as they are the top dogs in motorsport.
Pit Row
And everything is always in flux (A trillion dollars in FAANG stock disappeared in the last few months- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.) All businesses have shelf lives- remember when MySpace was a leader?
I get the relationship between advertising dollars and the "impressions" used as a
yardstick on social media. But look what that has given us - the Kardashians and whole
shit load of Instafamous idiots. And before that we had Tila Tequila.
When likes and followers are the commodity, it is a race to the bottom for the lowest common denominator.
Like a junior high school popularity contest; it's just pandering to the masses with sugary candy.
pulling big numbers? I'd like to see that! I recall a while back a dude racing rally cars and he took
an old BMW (I think?) and built it himself and did a full grass roots effort in one of the lower
classes and from what I remember, he developed quite a following!
MMA has had 10 events with 1mil+ since 2015
I'm far from being an insider and I'm just a number cruncher for my day job but I think the industry looks right past a vital asset in the pits, John Tomac. Steve did a pod with him where John says there's things moto could learn from the bike industry and vice versa. Maybe guys talk to him that I don't know about but that guy has to be a plethora of knowledge.
In the show, Steve sounds like he's been burned too many times in the industry and doesn't want people to leach off of him and I can't blame him for that. But I agree Anton, time to collaborate and get everyone on the same page to grow the sport.
Also, when these big companies come in, do they not see a return on their investment, or do they look at us and think it's an unorganized shit show?
I used to live the transworld shadow videos and stuff like that. To be honest im not a fan of the insty banger videos and much rather deans, haakers and deegans vlogs.
I think a vlog where they give a fan a go pro and access through all the pits giving a fans perspective of what its all like.
How cool would it be to have a random fan doing track walk, truck tours and geeking out over all the stuff we normally would.I think it would get huge views. Hopefully deano continues to do his vlogs during race season like haaker did last year.
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