NASCAR Senior VP & Chief Communications Officer Brett Jewkes (@BJewkes) loves how social media sites such as Twitter help "take the helmet off" the racing circuit's drivers and thinks the platform was tailor-made for the sport. "Social media is an extension of what we've always been known for, which is unrivaled access to the athletes. Because of the sponsor partners, fans before social media ever came around had a richer personal connection to the drivers."
Balancing his voice with NASCAR's message:
A lot of people struggle with that. The vast majority of what I share is information about our sport or amplifying what someone else has said or highlighting a driver. But I have a lot of followers who may not be a hard-core NASCAR fan, and I like to post about the teams I love.
The pitfalls of Twitter:
I know of a ton of really good people in our sport that would be fantastic on social media. But they just get trashed when they're on there and they see others getting crushed because sports is about passion and there's no way you can make everyone happy. They're avoiding being on the platform and that's a shame. I worry that in the future really important people avoid the platform rather than deal with the nonsense.
Benefit of being a late-comer to social media:
I was listening mostly for tone and content. But I try to keep it informational rather than over-the-top promotional.
How NASCAR is different on social media than other leagues:
We don't have a lot of on-field competition from Monday to Friday, so there is so much consumption of news or whatever it may be. It's critical for us to keep them engaged during the week.
Admiration for other entities' social media presence:
Golf Digest does a great job of keeping content out there that makes me interested to link back to GolfDigest.com and that's what great brands do. In our sport, we don't have anybody better than Dale Jr. It took him a long time to get on Twitter and then almost overnight he was the best there is. The reason he is the best, in my opinion, is that he is so authentic.
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