I came across an interesting article on branding fansites. The article argues that fansites are themselves social networks where people with common interests come together to engage in fandom with others.
So how can your brand benefit from its fans online? The solution is not to barnacle onto existing social networks, but to create your own — either building it yourself or using any of the various solutions in the marketplace. By doing this, you’ll attract your brand superfans — the people who will actually want to interact with your brand. These superfans will do more than you ever imagined, without a dollar of marketing spend. Your fans will find you and stick with you if you let them do what they want to do: celebrate and go crazy with your brand. Take, for example, how fans of FOX’s popular show Dollhouse recently played an integral part in the show’s renewal by orchestrating campaigns on the Official Dollhouse Fansite and creating fansites like www.SaveTheDollhouse.com. FOX’s ownership of the fansite allowed the network to interact with the show’s supporters and gain greater insight into the show’s popularity, eventually influencing their strategic decision to bring the property back.
It’s clear why this matters to brands and should matter to you: your biggest fans are your most valuable and authentic social marketing vehicle. If you invest in a true relationship with them, you’ll be able to move and react quickly to their ever-changing needs, and even ask them for help. It doesn’t take much to keep them happy – just creating a special and honored place and engaging in honest dialogue. When you invite them in, you unleash their willingness and desire to recruit other fans that will gush and rave online with them. Just look at Starbucks’ MY Starbucks Idea campaign from last year, which by the way, is still going strong with the coffee community. Starbucks built an environment where their fans and customers could come together and discuss ways to improve the already immensely popular café experience. Starbucks fans have submitted, discussed, and voted on somewhere around more than 60,000 ideas since the site went up. That’s impressive online engagement, to say the least, for a company who hasn’t been top of mind when it comes to successful internet campaigns. No matter what industry you’re in, when fans beget fans, you’ve got a recipe for continued success.
I agree that fansites can be used as a social network – not only in terms of the integrated tools like Twitter or Facebook, but the sense of community and passion that is shared amongst its users. Tools such as Twitter can enhance that sense of community (through increasing the reach of your site) but I don’t believe they are currently enough in themselves (although LifeStreaming is becoming ever popular). As the article suggests, your fansite should be a destination in itself, just as Myspace (for instance) is for other reasons.
I also believe it’s important to be a fan yourself – enjoy what you do and the topic your fansite is built around. Fostering genuine relationships and interactions is important.
I should point out – the above article states that Fox owned the “Save Dollhouse” fansite – as far as I’m aware this is not the case. Fox do have an official Dollhouse site, but they were not active in save the show campaigns.
Source: Media Post
Photo: Sagar Patil
