A NASCAR social media experiment with Instagram

Social media often asks people to CLICK HERE! or VOTE! or REPLY! It’s a call to action, whether asking a question (“What do you think about this?”) or just showing off good seats at a concert (“Check out my picture!”).

People retweet and favorite and like and share — but they’re often prompted to do so.

So what happens when content is presented without any call to action? I tried a small social media experiment last week on my Instagram account just for fun (certainly not scientific in any way).

During the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour, I took virtually the same pictures over and over again — a different driver each time, but in the same location — and posted them with a generic caption. In order to avoid a fan base trying to influence the results, I didn’t mention I planned to track the amount of “likes” for each Instagram photo.

The photos were spread out over several days, so I let them sit on the account for a week before writing down the final totals. Here they are:

1. Kasey Kahne — 173 likes
2. Dale Earnhardt Jr. — 168
3. Kyle Larson — 136
4. Clint Bowyer — 135
5. Tony Stewart — 132
6. Denny Hamlin — 127
7. Brian Vickers — 125
8. Jeff Gordon — 114
9. Jamie McMurray — 111
10. Brad Keselowski — 110
11. Carl Edwards — 107
12. Jimmie Johnson — 106
13. Kevin Harvick — 98
14. Ryan Newman — 94
15. Kurt Busch — 93
16. Joey Logano — 92
17. Austin Dillon — 89
18. Danica Patrick — 88
19. Matt Kenseth — 81
20. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — 79
21. Kyle Busch — 78
22. Greg Biffle — 69
23. Paul Menard — 64
24. Michael Waltrip — 63

I’m certainly not suggesting this list reflects the current popularity of Sprint Cup Series drivers, but I was surprised to see some drivers so high on the list (check out Kyle Larson in third!) and others lower than expected (Matt Kenseth 19th?).

Any theories as to why the list shook out this way?