William Blankenship, a 604 late model driver, now has 25,000-plus followers on TikTok (see his account here). He originally joined the social media platform in 2019 to see what all the cool kids were doing. Now, he’s got a sizeable audience.
“I got [a TikTok account] as a joke, and then I got to see some [videos of] race cars and trucks,” Blankenship, 18, of McMinnville, Tennessee, said. “I thought I could do that. So, I started posting videos.”
One of those early videos resonated with TikTok users.
“The first TikTok video that took off, I was by myself in the shop,” said Blankenship. “I put a wrench on a bolt, and I zip-tied the wrench to the bolt, and I ratcheted it together.”
Blankenship mixes that racer ingenuity with his personality.
“I like to do comical stuff,” Blankenship said. “I got ‘class clown’ as [my] senior superlative [in high school].”
His antics on TikTok has made him somewhat of a local celebrity, as he found out one day when he walked into the restaurant that sponsors him, Prater’s BBQ in McMinnville, Tennessee.
“I had just made a TikTok [post] before I had left [to go to the restaurant],” said Blankenship. “I heard [my post] in the background. One of [the people in Prater’s BBQ] looked down at their phone, looked back at me, and then looked back at their phone. They recognized me from the video. At first, I thought it would be someone out of the state [watching my TikTok videos], but I never figured it would be someone local in my small town watching my videos.”
Blankenship cautions those who think only teenagers and twentysomethings watch TikTok. (For more on that, see “Willie Mullins: Defying Stereotypes”.)
“Now, just about everybody has got TikTok,” Blankenship said. “My dad’s got it. His friends have it. I’ll go somewhere to eat and you’ll hear [TikTok] in the background.”
Sponsors notice social media posts. That not only includes what racers post, but also the number of those who see it.
“[My sponsors] talk about how cool it is to be on TikTok,” Blankenship said. “When I first got TikTok, I didn’t tell my sponsors, and they were scrolling through it and saw my car on there.”
Blankenship offers advice for those looking to starting posting on TikTok.
“Post good content — don’t overdo it,” said Blankenship. “If you post everyday [and it’s not good], they’ll just start scrolling past it. It tends to do better viewership-wise, if you want to view the stuff rather than oversaturating with videos.
“Have something to say. Don’t be like we just ate lunch today. [Instead,] have lunch and say something interested happened.”
William Blankenship hopes you heed his words of wisdom and join him on TikTok and other social media platforms.
“The more [racing] people do [social media], the more people will learn about racing [and] grow our sport,” Blankenship. “It will grow your account, it will grow my account, it’ll grow everyone’s account.”
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
