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Social Studies: NBC Sports' Luke Smith On Crafting F1 Content For U.S., Global Audiences

NBC Sports’ Luke Smith (@LukeSmithF1) serves as both F1 writer for the company’s MotorsportsTalk.com and manages its F1 Twitter account (@F1onNBCSports). The London-based Smith has been with NBC Sports for three-plus years and says there are two major challenges to putting out content for a racing circuit that is not preeminent in the U.S. Smith: “One is the time zones and the other is pushing F1 to an audience where it is not the main auto series. With time zones, for example, it can be a challenge sometimes to be tweeting out that we have this session on and it’s three in the morning. You understand that it will be difficult for people to set their alarm and crawl out of bed at that time. What is overwhelming is the number of fans who do that. That shows how much F1 is growing in the United States.” Smith and F1 this past weekend wrapped up a successful event at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, which he said is his busiest weekend of the year.

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follow: Lewis Hamilton on Snapchat. I can’t think of another sportsman who gives fans such an insight into his life.
Favorite apps: Instagram.
Average time per day on social media: For as long as I’m awake. I always have my phone with me, and when I’m on my laptop, my Twitter and Facebook apps are always open.

Being in Austin:
One of the biggest things for the U.S. Grand Prix, like races in Canada, Mexico and Brazil, is the friendly time zone. Those races start in the middle of the afternoon, whereas many of the races in F1 are in Europe, so the usual start time in the U.S. is 8:00am (ET) on a Sunday. For the U.S. race, we wanted more of a U.S. angle on our Twitter feed. We did more stuff on the ground, more behind-the-scenes pictures. It’s always a big, big weekend for F1 in America.

Gearing posts toward U.S. or global audience:
It’s important to strike a balance. Since we are an American company, we have to be American-centric in terms of content for our viewers. But with the Twitter account, people from all over the world can view it and use it for information, so you have to bear that in mind. If a race is happening in the middle of the night U.S. time, like in Japan, we still have to give full coverage and lots of tweets, because people from all over the world will be reading.

Learning to tailor content to U.S. audience:
It’s about highlighting F1 and motorsport's success and strong points. Take the Monaco Grand Prix. It’s a world-famous race and a race you won’t see in any other series. It is also knowing the audience you are catering. I’m from the U.K., and a lot of U.K.-based broadcasters and websites provide a deeper understanding of what F1 is for their viewers and readers. But when I’m on Twitter, it’s important to know that people who may following the account don’t know exactly what F1 is. So the account is giving enough information so that the knowledgeable reader will be satisfied, but not overloading the casual fan.

Preferred posts by F1 fans
:
Video is the best. Normally, the video tweets and GIFs we put out are very well received. Video is what people like to see because with an F1 car, there is so much that can happen, and sometimes you can only show it through video. An example is from last year when there was a car that rolled over in a practice session. You can tweet there was a car that rolled, but that can be received in any number of ways.



If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com

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