David vs Goliath: how brands punch above their weight on social media

(Article originally published on our sister site endurance.biz in May 2025.)

For endurance sport brands activating on social media, it may be a challenge to catch the attention of existing followers or entice new followers to your brand’s social profile.

Getting engagement on the likes of Instagram or TikTok isn’t always straight-forward. A post needs to feel authentic and must be compelling in some way if it is to rise above the mass of clutter that can be found on online.

Metrics

To help interpret what is resonating, a key metric to look at when comparing posts on social media is post interaction. This measures the average interactions on posts per follower, per post. This metric differs from engagement, which is more positively influenced when a profile posts more often.

In summary: engagement shows the effectiveness of a profile while the post interaction rate shows the quality of individual posts.

The benefit of using post interaction rate is that it shows how successful each post is in getting users to engage with it. With this metric, you can compare the quality of posts from profiles of all sizes.

Via our new members.endurance.biz site, we’ve been taking a look at some smaller brands in particular that have been punching above their weight. The dataset on members.endurance.biz features large brands – such as Le Tour de France, Spartan and IRONMAN that have followers in excess of 1 million – as well as a wide variety of events, gear, and training & tech brands with a much smaller reach.

So, what brands and what types of social posts have managed to catch the attention of athletes online? Each month on members.endurance.biz, there is a ranking of the top 200 posts. Here, subscribers can sift through a wide variety of posts to see what is really resonating.

We’ve picked a few that caught our attention…

Off-road riding with EKO

ÏIllustrating how going on-board via bike can grab our attention, French apparel & accessories brand EKOÏ showcased some impressive bike handling skills via a point of view (POV) video.

Getting a NOBULL haircut

Keeping it simple and keeping it personal and approachable, apparel brand NOBULL worked with Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel and barber Vic Blends for ‘A fresh cut and a no bullsh*t conversation.’

Age is just a number with New York Road Runners

With 14.5K followers on TikTok, New York Road Runners (NYRR) is a larger brand in terms of follower-base, but it has built its base rapidly on TikTok, with lots of engaging content. In a recent post, NYRR showcased a 79 year old New Yorker finishing her first half marathon.

How to use members.endurance.biz to track top performing posts

By viewing the top performing posts, you can see which posts are resonating most with athletes. Remember that the top posts will change each month.

Scroll through the top performing posts areas in all the online dashboards to understand what types of posts are doing well.

Use the ‘Top 200 Posts – Filter and Sort’ area in the online dashboards to sort according to (1) the number of reactions or (2) the post interaction rate percentage. Pay attention to large brands (with a large social following) as well as smaller brands to see what is generating the most traction online.

You can also use the filter function to look up posts based on keywords, hashtags or profile name.

Click on individual posts in the dashboards to view the original video / imagery / text. Check out the comments on the original posts too, to get a sense of why that post has resonated.

Check out competitors, as well as brands in entirely different areas, to understand how large and small brands are engaging with their audiences online.

Having viewed posts in a given month, make a note of some creative ideas for the types of posts that would best fit with your own social strategy. This might involve: leveraging your own sponsored athletes, impactful photography, competitions, etc.

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