Key Takeaways

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The Mountain Bike industry can find content opportunities on Facebook in Q1 2022 from:

Red Bull Rampage: 

• Product Feature: Partner with athletes to use products while competing and utilize competition content to promote these products. 
• Hype Video: Create hype videos to explain how the competition works and to increase event viewership. 
• Event Content: Share clips from the competition event, including course previews, athlete interviews, and competition highlights. 

MTB Community:

• Relatable: Share short-form content that aims to entertain, humour or engage with mountain bike enthusiasts of all skill levels. 

Bike Tech:

• Innovation: Share new technologies or innovations in the sport. 

POV Race: 

• Exhilarate: Share POV footage that captures the chaos and extreme elements from competitions. 

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Data Collection Methodology

1. Measure & Categorize. Sample a large number of social posts to find ones that are significantly outperforming the average.
2. Identify Top Themes. Identify the themes that are resonating most with the audience by sorting the themes by their aggregated performance metrics.
3. ‍‍‍Measure Saturation. Identify content themes that are already oversaturated with a heavy posting cadence.‍
4. Identify Whitespace. Look at the data and find the content themes that are both resonating with the audience and not oversaturated with a heavy posting cadence.‍
5. Repeat For Each Platform. Repeat the analysis for every platform that matters to your brand and audience to find platform-specific opportunities. 

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Facebook content the audience has been the most interested in Q4 2021 includes:

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While the majority of Facebook content in the mountain biking space has focused on:

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The mountain biking Facebook content whitespace opportunities include:

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Content to avoid due to low attention and high competitor saturation in the mountain biking space include:

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Whitespace Opportunities:

#1. Red Bull Rampage

Annual Freeride MTB Competition. Red Bull Rampage is an invitation-only freeride mountain bike competition held in Utah. Top performing videos featuring this competition included: 

• Top Runs
• Thomas Genon’s run 
• Carson Storch’s course preview
• Red Bull’s event hype video
• Pre-competition interview with Jaxson Riddle
  

Tactics to Implement:

• Product Feature: Thomas Genon rode Canyon’s new Torque bike at the competition prior to it being released. Canyon later used his run video to help promote the release in December.
• Hype Video: Red Bull launched a hype video three days before the event started which explained the competition and had a CTA to watch the event live.
• Top Runs: After the event, Red Bull shared a 4 minute video with clips from the top runs which generated 9.9M views. 

9.1M Views

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9.9M Views

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#2. MTB Community

Relatable Mountain Biking Content. Videos are either relatable, entertaining or humorous to mountain bikers of all skill levels. Top videos in Q4 2021 included: 

• A protective grouse on a biking trail
• Opening a beer with an endo
• A 3-year-old learning to mountain bike
• A rental property feature designed for mountain bikers
• Faffing
  

Tactics to Implement:

• Video Length: These two videos (shown on the left) are only 33 and 19 seconds long. Make sure your videos are short and engaging.
• Engaging Captions: Asking a question or asking viewers to tag their friends in the video caption encourages viewers to leave comments, which helps to improve the video's organic reach.

3.9M Views

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219K Views

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#3. Bike Tech

Featuring Innovative Mountain Biking Tech. Mashable posted a minute-long video on Facebook in November showcasing a chainless bike prototype. The video was was shared 36 times and in total generated over 43M views. GMBN Tech explains how the innovative Effigear gearbox system works. 

Tactics to Implement:

• Tell Story With or Without Sound: The video on the left is effective at capturing the viewer's attention with or without sound by using text overlays that explain the features of the video. The video also offers additional value if viewed with sound on by using intriguing music. The video on the right uses auto-captions to help increase accessibility.
• Mobile Friendly: The videos ratios are 1:1 and 4:5, and can be easily viewed when scrolling vertically. To increase mobile-friendliness, the video on the left uses close-ups of the subject and text in contrasting colours, with a legible font*.

2.1M Views

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436K Views

*Source 

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#4. POV Race

Point-of-View Video Footage from MTB Races. Top videos were filmed using a GoPro on the helmets of the two professional mountain bikers during the 2021 Red Bull Campo event. The footage shows the chaos and extreme elements of the competition. 

Tactics to Implement:

• Raw Footage: The raw footage in these videos captures the exhilaration and danger of these races, including many crashes. 
• Point-of-View: To get the best footage of a race, shoot with a GoPro on a competitor's helmet.
• Music: Adding music to the video makes watching the race more exciting and invigorating.

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Content Bucket Definitions

• MTB Fails: Crash clips of MTB riders trying difficult tricks and having less than desirable outcomes.
  

• Bike Builds & Upgrades: Anything about bike builds, modifications or upgrades. 
  

• Epic MTB Stunts: Professional mountain bikers doing stunts or difficult tricks on trails, parks, or obscure places. 
  

• MTB Hacks: Informative videos sharing quick and useful mountain biking hacks.
  

• Crankworx: Videos include course previews, competition highlights and athlete interviews.
  

• Jump Tips & Tricks: Videos aiming to educate viewers on how to do jumps or improve their jumps on their mountain bikes. 
  

• Bike Challenges: Creators participate in creative, entertaining or competitive bike challenges. 
  

• Worst MTB Advice: Videos bust common mountain advice and myths. 
  

• Red Bull Rampage: Videos include race highlights, course previews, and athlete interviews. 
  

• MTB Community:  Videos that are relatable, entertaining or humorous to mountain bikers. 
  

• Bike Tech: Showcasing the latest technology in the mountain biking world. 
  

• Bike Reviews: Creators share their opinions after trying different types or brands of bikes. 
  

• MTB Saves: Video clips of MTB riders saving themselves from crashes or falls. 
  

• Enduro World Series: Competition highlight videos, course previews, and athlete interviews.
  

• MTB Lessons: Mountain biking 101s for beginners to learn online.
  

• POV Race: Video footage taken with a GoPro while competing in an MTB race.  
  

• Professional Feature: Videos featuring professional mountain bikers including biking highlight reels, quotes  and interviews.