High Beaming the Automobile Content Space

“I have always been asked, ‘What is my favourite car?’ and I’ve always said, ‘The next one”, said Carroll Shelby, American automotive designer. Cars have become an integral part of people’s lives. Not only has it become an important part of the transportation system, but it has also become a determining factor of a person’s social status.

Faisal always had a profound interest in cars. “Since my childhood, automobiles were the only things that fascinated me. When I was in school, I started writing about cars on forums and one fine day, opened my blog about cars. This was way back in 2007, I could never imagine that this could be monetized one day and I purely did it out of my love for cars,” said Faisal Khan, better known as Fasbeam.

He started two channels – MotorBeam and Faisal Khan, the latter’s name was obvious but for MotorBeam, he brainstormed for months. He wanted a .com domain only as Faisal planned to convert his free blog into one with his domain name. After trying different permutations and combinations, he got MotorBeam.com.

“I define my content as relatable and informative. I have been fortunate enough to have many videos of mine go viral and it happened much later than I would have hoped for as the automobile category is niche. While there are many ways to make content, I think the most important element of making good content is relatability,” said Khan in an interaction with Entrepreneur India.

He makes a lot of pointers while doing his due diligence before shooting any content for his channels. Faisal does not refer to the pointers to make it seem natural while shooting. He keeps a to-do list of the content that needs to be shot and ticks them off one after the other after he has finished shooting.

Khan stated he avoids working with automobile brands since he likes his creative freedom while making videos. However, some brands allow him his creative freedom which according to him works very well. He is looking to venture into new verticals to push his content to a new audience while entering a new segment apart from his video content.

Khan emphasizes the usage of seatbelts. He promotes to be always buckled up regardless of whether he is driving the car or is a passenger, to ensure his followers understand the importance of the same.

“Currently all platforms are focused on short format content so one should make slight tweaks with their videos for different platforms while keeping the essence largely the same,” advised Khan.

He has realized it’s best to ignore and avoid trolls while taking criticism seriously and learning from it over time. He has invested in a couple of startups. However, he did not disclose which startups he has invested in.