A message for DriveTribe, from the little guys...

Every Tribe Leader will be only too familiar with the intriguing layers of mystery that surrounded DriveTribe pre-launch. It was this mystery that intensified our curiosity and made us all stand to attention whenever any information was drip-fed through social media. Clarkson & Co’s first video in which they spoke about DriveTribe was a particular source of excitement, as Jeremy had some advice for leaders on how to get the most amount of people engaged with their tribe: “you’re going to have to be interesting; you’re going to have to be funny; you’re going to have to be factual and knowledgable”.

These few lines were spoken like a recipe for success, and post-launch I’ve seen many established leaders give near-identical advice. But, and I do apologise to abruptly deflate this ideal-world bubble, the advice that great work will bring about success is, most of the time, an empty and misleading load of bollocks!

On social media, quality only really accounts for less than 1% of what makes someone successful. Many other factors have a far greater influence over how large your following will grow to be, and this results in an unfair inequality between popularity. After all, if quality really did result in success, we wouldn't be living in a world where such atrocities as Justin Bieber and Kanye West exist.

All of the people who've given the advice that the best work will rise to the top all have something rather important in common: they're all already successful. With all due respect, it's very easy for the successful to give out such advice when they're already where they are. Success is much like money; you need money to make money; and you need success to be successful. Their success at present will only result in them becoming more successful as time goes on. But that doesn't help those who aren't successful at present.

Speaking of money: many of the successful leaders aren't short of a bob or two, meaning they have the funds needed to invest in making the kind of material that stands out. In fact, there are tribe leaders who only have a large online following because of the effect their bank account has had on their videos. The impact a Euro-Millions win would have on my tribe is the difference between me writing this blog and me posting a video entitled "Bugatti Chiron - Driven on the Limit". Doesn't take someone with much of a brain to work out which would be more successful.

Given the fact that there are people on DriveTribe that can afford to utilise such lovely amenities as Ferraris and Porsches, how are the little people who don’t have those resources supposed to compete? It’s okay telling people that their quality of work will result in them becoming successful - but people don’t know how good something is until they’ve clicked on it. The fact is people aren’t going to click on a well-written article by a small timer when they can be watching a video of Mr Rich flaunting his extravagant lifestyle.

Of course, anyone who knows how social media works knows that there is a way unknowns can gain popularity fast: it’s a system called follow-for-follow. The idea is fantastically simple: you follow someone as long as they follow you back. You may think this is a brilliant idea to help small tribes gain members - but there’s a fatal flaw. If people are only following you because you’re following them, they’re not following you because of your work, so you might as well not bother posting anything at all. I’ve seen many tribes already that have an impressive amount of members, but no feedback on any of their posts: a classic sign that they’ve been partaking in a spot of follow-for-following.

When DriveTribe was first announced to the eager world of budding Clarksons, it was made out to be a marvellous vessel for unknowns to use to express their passion and talent so they could hopefully gain the success they deserved. Now however, it's hard to see how this is possible. It’s not just the fact that we’re competing for attention against tribes that can easily put their hands on the sort of delicious resources that act as a magnet for success, it’s that whenever I receive an email from DriveTribe informing me about some good tribes, or whenever I see them promote a blog, it’s work that belongs to someone who was already mightily successful before DriveTribe. And not to take anything away from them, but really and truly, they don’t need quite that much promotion.

Promoting some of the very big tribes I find is like promoting toilet paper; who doesn’t need bog roll? What I’d like to see from DriveTribe is some support for the smaller tribes to help get us off the ground. Just because we don’t have many members currently doesn’t necessarily mean our work isn’t great, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t work hard.

Speaking on behalf of myself, I've worked for months since I found out I'd been accepted as a tribe leader to prepare as many blogs as possible, and I'm bursting with far more ideas that will keep me busy for well over a year - but when the work that I've posted already hasn't even resulted in my members reaching double figures, it's not very heartening.

I know we're only at the beginning of our life here on DriveTribe and there's still plenty of time for the little guys to flourish, but I think in order for that to happen more efficiently, DriveTribe need to show some of the smaller tribes the kind of promotion they've blessed the larger tribes with. After all, it would be a tragedy for great content to be out there remaining virtually undiscovered in dark and lonely corners of this community.

Written by: Angelo Uccello

Twitter: @AngeloUccello

Tribe: In Search For Speed