Ignore
There’s a difference between not interjecting yourself as final authority into every discussion, and completely ignoring your fan base. It’s the old cocktail party metaphor. These are your guests, but not your audience. They want to know you’re at the party, an occasional hello, and they want to see that you’re listening and weighing in where it matters. Showing appropriate care to upset customers is important, but don’t just focus on the negative and ignore the positive contributors, or they’ll feel like they don’t matter and won’t come back.
The Stats: We looked at a random sample of over 2,000 comments across 20 brands and found that when the brand interacts, fans are a full 425% more likely to create additional positive comments within the next ten days.
Lump
I’ll admit it, I’m not great with names the first time I meet someone. I still can’t stand meeting someone for the fourth time, after we’ve chatted in some depth, and having them look me right in the eye and introduce themselves like we’ve never met. Whether it happens online or in person, it doesn’t feel good, especially for a fan that strongly identifies with your brand. Try to keep track of your very best fans, remember what they’ve shared, and respond with some context that shows you’ve been paying attention. You’ll be surprised how far it goes. Also, having an informed sense of the different types of superfans you have can be really informative, from understanding how to motivate them to planning a balanced and effective content strategy.
Hand out megaphones.
Because nothing says authentic, valuable conversation like a megaphone. I hate the megaphone as an icon for anything advocacy or word of mouth related. We have a very strict no-megaphone policy for anything Crowdly design or copy related. Yelling and talking are two very different skill sets, put the megaphone away or you’ll quickly end up with no one to talk with. To that point, don’t expect your fans to be mini-megaphones you can strategically distribute and have them yell your canned message at their own particular group of friends. Many marketing purveyors might offer the claim of mini-megaphones at a per action rate, but you’re buying yellers, and usually those willing to sell at the cheapest conversion price. Great if you want noise, but if you’d rather be heard, respect your superfans enough to encourage them to share in their own voices.
Any superfan no-nos you’ve seen, either managing a brand or as a fan? Let us know in the comments below.