In this guide, we cover useful tips, tricks and general knowledge on how you can build your SimGrid Community from its very first follower to its 100th and onwards to its 1000th.

It’s easier than you think. You just need to care for your community. 

Introduction

With more than 500+ SimGrid community hosts on the platform now, you are all seemingly fighting for the same space, the same drivers, and the same followers, making it look like it’s a tough road to grow your community. But we can all share here.

Building Followers

It goes without saying, the very first thing you need to do is share your new SimGrid Community profile with your own members. 

If you have a discord community, established or otherwise, this is a quick win with a very simple announcement post. If you have an established driver base, you can quickly get your first 100 followers with ease. 

Another way you can help build your community is by enabling one of our functions from the website when creating your new events and championships:

The ‘Followers Only’ function, which restricts registrations to followers of your community only whilst the event is still publicly viewable. 

This means that any new driver signing up for your event or championship must follow you first, this is a top tip and good community practice if you do not use this function already.

Be An Active Community

This may sound simple. Be an active community. Are you as active as you like to think you are?

You will struggle to build your community if you only host one championship every half a year for the same 50 drivers. You are not allowing the other 50,000 SimGrid members to join you, follow you or race with you, meaning your followers can’t grow. 

A tried and tested method by some of our more popular communities is to host ‘one-off’ or single events every other week, or as often as possible. 

A fresh registration process, allows a fresh bunch of drivers to find you, join you, engage with you and now race with you regularly. 

If possible, host a big endurance event once in a while, because this will mean upwards of 150+ drivers could need to follow you. I call this a quick win. Host 6 endurance events throughout the year and you are touching 1,000 drivers who potentially need to follow your community host profile. 

Expand Your Offering

It wasn’t long ago that SimGrid was a hosting platform solely for ACC on PC. This has now expanded to include, iRacing, rFactor 2, Autombilista 2, Formula 1, Gran Turismo & Forza Motorsport, for all PC & consoles. 

This means you have new opportunities to become a multi-host community yourself. We give you the tools and technology, you just have to utilise it. 

Hosting races on new games means you open yourself up to a new pool of drivers who can potentially race with you. After all, drivers more than ever are looking for variety. 

Share Your Community With Others

A great way to show people your SimGrid Community is across social media. 

If you already have an active following on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X etc, there is no harm in putting out a social media post asking all of them to follow your new community. 

The age-old saying goes if you don’t ask, you don’t get! 

Another effective method at SimGrid that I have seen used by several top communities is collaboration. Plenty of times you will see communities teaming up to collaborate on an event. 

This is a great way to expose each community to each other’s followers and a great way to help each other build your communities together.

Finally, Host Great Events

With great event hosting comes word of mouth, the most powerful tool on the market today to help build your community. 

In business we call this word-of-mouth marketing, in this instance, triggered by a driver’s experience with you.

If they love what you do, your methods, your rules, and your racing, they are bound to tell others about their experience and invite them along to race with you. 

So make sure you bring something that everyone loves, something that is different from the rest, something that makes the drivers want more. 

You can do this by ensuring you are keeping your championships fresh, and making sure you host great one-off events. 

If this is an area you think you could improve, then we recommend you read our ‘How To Help Yourself When Hosting Events Guide’