While it is important to make sure you have an ever-growing professional network, you must still remember the little guys and gals. In many cases, fans can be more helpful than even the best music manager or music-booking agent. But amongst us mere mortals lurk the musician’s greatest treasure: the SUPER FAN! Times have changed with the proliferation of Internet access across the world. People are consuming more music than ever before yet there are fewer “big name” artists and hits out there. This is because people are spreading their attention over a greater range thanks to the increased access to hordes of artists and bands. Now instead of the reliance on multitudes of screaming fans, some artists are finding it better to focus on a niche of fans and building more personal relationships with them.
Take the band Pomplamoose for example. They garnered millions of views through their Youtube videos for certain cover songs they did, but their musical sound is still not what would be considered “main stream.” Instead they have a more fine-tuned niche that enjoys their sound. This helps them to stand out more from other groups in regards to that niche. Instead of being the proverbial little fish in a big pond, they made themselves a big fish in a much smaller pond.
So let’s take this and look at it from a “needs” standpoint. How many super fans would you “need” to feel like a success? Ten? Fifty? A thousand? The number you want and the number you need may be drastically different. A super fan buys more merch, promotes your music and shows to their friends and social networks, and attends all your shows in a certain geographic area. They are basically a street team that pays you! So if you have ten super fans in a certain city and you bring your fancy new shirts and CDs to a gig there, they will be most likely to buy both. If you offer the shirt and CD as a $20 package deal, then those ten super fans will be paying you $200 that night.
Now let’s take it up a notch. Let’s say you have 1000 super fans eagerly awaiting your CD release on iTunes. The album is finally available and you announce it on your website, Facebook, Twitter, etc…. Most likely those 1000 super fans will be the first ones to buy the album and then talk about how great it is to their friends. In turn, some of the super fans may garner you even more album sales. So right there you’ve had a great initial sell just because you took time to cultivate a stronger relationship with the “super fans.”
How Do You Identify Your “Super Fans?”
Obviously, this is easier for bands that do not play many shows. They will be able to recognize the same people who come again and again since they will have fewer new faces to remember. For those of us who try to perform actively multiple times a month across a much wider geographic area, this tends to complicate things more. What about the artists who sell their music and other merchandise online? They may have many super fans that they never even see.
For starters, examining your social network sites is a good way to find out who your super fans are. Obviously as “super fans” they will be following you on these various networks. Facebook Insights already lets you examine statistics on your Fan page. Youtube has video statistics for each video as well as your overall channel analytics. You can use services like Hootsuite or FollowerWonk to analyze your Twitter followers. If you run your own standalone website, then setting up Google Analytics let’s you see where you traffic is coming from and how much traffic you’re getting. Using a well-crafted search query with Google Alerts can let you know when your fans post about you on other sites.
Aside from doing that, you just have to pay attention to those fans who you always see coming to your gigs, wearing your shirts, and posting about you online. There are no social network tools that will notice every “super fan” you have. This is why you must still strive to build a relationship with your fans. The stronger the bond between your fans and you as the artist, the more they will support your efforts.