The number of your fans is not what you want it to be.
The people who are truly dedicated to the entertainment you make probably is a smaller group than you hope, but it is probably also bigger than you might imagine.
You’re not going to serve them, and they’re not going to support you if you don’t know where they are. So, let’s get them all together in one place. Then, you can…
- measure
- increase
- connect
- serve
- listen
Gather to impact
You might be working on a great project right now, and that project might end. You gotta have everyone together so they can move over to the next project. You can also set up more services around your current project.
Let’s say you have a TV show about goats for goat owners. You have some fun behind the scenes footage that you don’t want to put on the TV show. You need another way to serve your fans those extras. The TV show ends and you set up a goat food delivery service that saves goat owners tons of money. Wouldn’t you want your fans to be the first to know?
Gathering places
There are pros and cons to different ways to gather fans…
| Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
| email list | 1. you own your list 2. once people are enrolled, they’re more likely to participate 3. no algorithm change is going to disrupt you | 1. may cost money for big lists 2. not everyone opens emails |
| Youtube | 1. there’s a social discovery aspect 2. you can form super deep relationships 3. built in monetization platform | 1. most of your subscribers might not see what you’re making |
| 1. super easy for someone to like your page 2. built in monetization platform 3. you’re where people are anyway 4. you can be aggressive without being too annoying | 1. you’ll most likely need to pay to get all your fans to hear you. 2. lots of integrated tools for building audiences and making ads based on audiences | |
| Patreon | 1. your fans are committed. you won’t have any lookie-loos or accidental patrons 2. they will all hear you | 1. expensive buy-in for your fans 2. you have a major responsibility to provide them lots of entertainment |
I like email
I like sending fun emails to fans. With Boobietrap, it costs us $50/mo to have our list of 4000 emails. We sign up people who attend our shows and people unsubscribe if we’re not serving them, but we try to make sure that every email we send out is a service.
This doesn’t mean we have 4000 fans. We have a lot less than that, but we have direct connection with the people who are true fans. We can give them awesome stuff and they can give us awesome feedback about what they want.
Gather thru decisiveness and directness
Make a commitment to one gathering place. Then, direct everything toward that when you make anything for fans. The call to action is always the same thing and you’re always telling them why. “text me to get bad photos of my dog” “all my best jokes come out on twitter first. Follow me there”
Being everywhere equally is an escape
Letting your fans scatter everywhere is an escape. It’s a way for you to not face the facts and not work on doing something important for your people. It’s a great way of letting yourself imagine that you’re more successful than you are. Unless you’re the CEO of Netflix, you probably don’t have the bandwidth or team to maintain true service to your fans in multiple gathering places.
Get them all together, serve the shit out of them, you will get fulfillment and so will they!
If you have less than 50
If your base of true fans ( who will tell others / who will buy $100 worth of stuff from you / however you measure it ) is small, try to make a bigger impact on them. If you have the bandwidth to text them each personally every week, booyah! do it! What if your list grows to 75? Then you’ll change. Right now, make as much individual impact on each fan as you can because they’re the embodiment of the value you put into the world.
Fans are not everything
It can get daunting to look at the actual number of people who are on your side. Remember that even though these are your easiest people, your best people, the people on your mission, they are not the only people who want what you offer.
There are lookie-loos, bargain hunters, buyers, researchers, snobs, community members, all kinds of different people who are available to connect with new entertainment — and possibly be converted into your fans. The easiest way to convert those folks, comes back to gathering and serving your true fans in the first place.