🍯 1,000 True Fans
🐝 4Bs of Community Building
💞 Serve Your Community
🍯 1,000 True Fans
In 2008, Kevin Kelly wrote an influential blog post, 1,000 True Fans. He argued, “Instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller hits, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans.”
Kelly continues, “A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing.”
It was an intriguing idea that keeps growing in value. AI generated content is clogging our social channels and making it harder and harder to cost-effectively reach your customers.
Developing true fans shifts the focus to the people who truly matter. You don’t need to reach thousands of followers. You need fewer followers who really care.
It’s incredibly liberating to shift the lens from likes and followers to fans. It empowers you to focus on creating real connections based on real shared values and interests. This is essentially community building.
Look at brands you admire, and you will likely spot a community. Harley-Davidson, LEGO, Wikipedia, Apple and WordPress all have dynamic user communities. These are true fans who proactively engage with the brands they love.
One Stat to Watch
76.6%
of consumers wish their favorite brands had a community, according to research from Tint.
🐝 4Bs of Community Building
Invest in your community and it will reward you. The 4Bs guide the necessary behaviors of community building.
Be Present: It’s your community, don’t get lost in the crowd.
To have any impact in your community, you must be active and present. Make a point of initiating conversations to remain a vocal and active member of your community. Your role is to lead and demonstrate your firm’s capabilities, values, and insights.
Be Opinionated: Strong opinions make your brand interesting.
Share your company’s point of view throughout your community:
- What does your company believe in?
- How does it add value to your clients?
- How does it solve problems?
Participate honestly and share your thoughts. Balanced, washed out, and boring content never makes an impact. Let your personality shine through your content and your interactions.
Be Generous: Help others make an impact in your community.
The more people who are engaged and contributing to your community, the healthier it will be. Take a proactive stance to help people get their voices heard, questions answered, and profiles raised.
When you serve your community it will give back to you in multiples.
Be Everywhere: Make your brand highly visible in your community.
Go where your customers are. Engage them online, and engage them in the real world. Look for as many areas as you can to build and scale relationships with your community.
💞 Serve Your Community
There is a fundamental difference between marketing and community building.
Marketing is all about your company and your brand. It’s about promoting the brand and finding new prospects and customers to sell to.
Community building has the opposite focus: it’s not about you, it’s about everyone else.
The value of a community is in its people. It’s in the connections, the relationships, and the opportunities to learn and share with others. It’s in the opportunities to organize and work with a disparate group of people to do something greater than yourself.
Growing a community is always about the people, and it requires a shift in attitude. You don’t own the community. You are a member of it. Yes, the group may be deeply linked to your brand and your people, but the second you start treating the community as a marketing platform, those relationships can dissipate.
Once a company overcomes this mental hurdle, the potential is immense.
By focusing on community building, you are focusing your company on developing, nurturing, and scaling relationships. These are the connections that grow your brand. They are the people who interact with your company and your people, and when they come across someone who needs your expertise, they will refer your brand first. That’s the power of community. It scales your reach far beyond any traditional marketing tools.
🤔 Thoughts on Today's Issue?
We’d love to hear your feedback. Reply to this message with any thoughts, comments, or ideas for future issues.