The Four Kinds of Fans

One of the biggest questions circulating at DIY Days Philadelphia last Saturday was, how do you spur your fans to actually do something? Once someone has joined your Facebook fan group, friended you on MySpace, or started following you on Twitter, how can you actually get them to buy a ticket, a DVD, a download, or some merch?

An important starting step, I'd suggest, is to start thinking about four different kinds of fans.

1. The Impulse Fan. The impulse fan sees a video you've made, or hears about your band from their roommate, and signs up to follow you on Twitter or joins your Facebook group. This fan will never do anything else -- ever. They are good only for your ego: yesterday, you had 1000 followers on Twitter, and today you have 1001.

2. The Prospective / Occasional Fan. The prospective fan is someone who can be lured out to a show or screening, or convinced to buy a new CD/DVD, but with some effort. You may need to dangle free samples. You may need to offer a free ticket to a pre-release, top-secret, underground album listening party. You may need to mention that there will be free, limited edition t-shirts given to the first 25 people who show up. The prospective fan can be activated, with a little creative strategizing. They can be "converted" into an occasional fan, showing up every once in a while to your events or buying a book or digital album download every couple years. And they may even be transformed over time into a True Fan.

3. The True Fan. Kevin Kelly defined the True Fan as "someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name." A True Fan will follow what you're doing on your own site, your blog, your Twitter feed -- wherever you choose to communicate. You shouldn't ignore their care and feeding, but these fans have already been activated.

4. The Super Fan. The Super Fan is a True Fan who is willing to help you out in some way. In Fans, Friends & Followers, the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule says she has a super fan who built and helps manage her Web site. Cartoonist Dave Kellett talks about super fans who have given him a lift from the airport in their city to a local event, or have been willing to accept shipments of books on his behalf and cart them to a book signing. Jonathan Coulton says that super fans have helped him find a great concert venue in which to perform. Super Fans, if you ask nicely (and offer them copious thanks and credit) will post flyers for you in their city, or point you to the best bar for a post-screening cast party.

I don't purport to have discovered all of the keys as to how you activate Prospective / Occasional Fans. But two things are certainly essential: making them feel part of your circle, and that you're grateful for their support. Incentives and discounts and give-aways can help. So can events that feel special, secret, unique, limited in space, or invitation-only.

What do you think the typical breakdown is between these four types of fans, for the typical artist? Just to throw something out that you might think about, I'd suggest:

- 25 percent Impulse Fans,
- 50 percent Prospective / Occasional Fans,
- 20 percent True Fans, and
- 5 percent Super Fans.

I welcome your comments below. If you'd like to read another take on different types of fans, here's a blog post from music industry guru Jason Feinberg.

All Your Questions, Answered

I had fun today doing a live Webcast (which will eventually be on iTunes) about building an audience and a business model in the digital age. It was hosted by PermissionTV, and they took a number of questions via Twitter. (I also gave away a couple copies of Fans, Friends & Followers to a few lucky viewers.)

But we didn't get to all the questions during the hour-long Webcast, so here are some quick takes on other questions. (Please add your thoughts...)

Q. bobwoolsey: What is the best way to get advertisers for programs?

A. If you can sell ads or sponsorships to companies on your own, that's going to let you pocket the most money. Otherwise, you can have Google or another ad sales firm (like Brightroll, Blip.tv, or ScanScout) place ads in or around your video and cut you in on a portion of the revenue.

Q. kellyannlive: Is there a good balance between providing valuable content for your "fans" and letting them run the show?

A. I think this will be different for everyone. Some people, like Matt Hanson with 'Swarm of Angels', seem to enjoy creating content in collaboration with the community. Others will want to pick specific tasks, like when Jonathan Coulton invited his fans to submit a solo for the song 'Shop-Vac.' How much you want to let fans do is entirely up to you.

Q. marcaross: do blogs still matter?

A. Obviously, I think so. There are some people I enjoy hearing from in bursts longer than 140 characters. Blogs are also indexed by Google... which is not as true with messages on Twitter and some social networking sites.

Q. jonarcher: Wondering what the difference is b/n #kirsner's FF&F model and the 1000 True Fans model.

A. I like Kevin Kelly's "1000 True Fans" idea, although there has been considerable debate about the sorts of artists it will work for. With my Fans, Friends & Followers research, I certainly was trying to explore the same terrain as Kevin -- how does this new relationship with fans work, and how can you earn a living? -- by talking to people I identified as pioneers, and analyzing some of the lessons they've learned.

Q. MichaelKolowich: @scottkirsner Can you comment on need for good production values in web video? Do they matter? Someday, a "flight to quality"?

A. I think Web video is always going to have an aesthetic that's different from broadcast TV, in part because it needs to grab your attention in a short period of time, and in part because lower production values can feel more intimate and authentic. So far, the number of pixels doesn't seem to have mattered much -- but decent lighting and sound are always nice. Lately, I have been thinking that if we start watching Web video on our TV sets in a couple years, that will change and HD will be important.

Q. bobwoolsey: What is the easiest way to get to the book?

A. Google works, or you can visit this page to find out how to buy it as a paperback, PDF, or Kindle download.

Great Reading from the Times

In late November, the NY Times published a special edition of its Sunday magazine called the "Screens" issue. There's so much in there.... a great piece by Kevin Kelly on "screen literacy," a piece about Netflix's recommendation technology, and interviews with David Lynch and Jennifer Aniston. Also an A.O. Scott piece about whether the movie theater is endangered.

Here's the explanatory intro:

Every fall the magazine publishes a special issue about Hollywood, a celebration and investigation of that unique experience called moviegoing: sitting in a dark theater for two hours with a few hundred strangers and being entertained by flickering lights and amplified sound. This year, we’ve stretched the issue to reflect a new reality: when you watch moving pictures these days, a theater is the last place you are likely to be. Cable, YouTube, DVDs, DVR, news briefs in the elevator and cartoons on your cellphone — through a variety of media, we now consume fragmented narratives on multiple screens. From a 16-second panda-sneeze video to 60 straight hours of “The Wire,” this is the way we watch now.

And in today's paper, Laura Holson has a piece headlined, 'Who Needs a TV? I'm Watching on a Laptop'

Just as more and more people have abandoned land-line telephones for their cell phone, it seems that the next trend is abandoning your home cable connection (and TV) for laptop video viewing.

The Difference Between a Fan and a Friend

Lance Weiler organized a few roundtable discussions at SXSW this year, outside of the conference itself; audio and video will be posted on the From Here to Awesome site at some point.

They were held at the offices of B-Side Entertainment. I'm not exactly sure how to describe the focus of the conversation, which lasted about two hours and included about 20 people packed into the conference room at B-Side. It touched on financing and fandom, contracts and deals, marketing, patronage, and new distribution avenues. (The roundtable I was part of included Brian Chirls, Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, Tommy Pallotta, Scott Macaulay, Brett Gaylor, Isis Masoud, David Garber, Slava Rubin, Danae Ringelmann, and Scilla Andreen, among others I didn't really know.)

For me, the most interesting threat of the conversation was about fans: how you accumulate them, and how the nature of fandom is changing. (We started by summarizing Kevin Kelly's excellent essay 1,000 True Fans.)

I tossed out the idea that "fan" is starting to feel like a vestige of the (good) old mass media days. In the age of Facebook and MySpace "friends," is anyone happy to simply be a fan anymore?

"Fan" feels like such a passive word. They're supposed to join your fan club, read the fan club newsletter, and buy tickets to your movies when they come out. They're consumers, pure and simple -- a ready audience when you need them.

The new fan -- or friend -- or "peer" (the term that Susan Buice proposed) wants to be more connected to you and your work. They want to hear first about your new project. They want to have input to it, or help shape it in some way (Brett Gaylor is allowing "friends" of his documentary project Open Source Cinema to edit some of the sequences.) They want to respond to your YouTube videos, comment on your blog, tell you when they think you're selling out or full of shit. (Some "friends" those are!) They want to give you ideas and be credited for their ideas. They may even be willing to help finance your next project or pre-buy the DVD through sites like IndieGoGo or IndieMaverick. They'll help promote it when it's finished, embedding clips in their blogs or Twittering their friends that they're on the way to the premiere.

What's amazing about the Internet is that there are the tools that let you communicate with this "friend base" and ask them for help.

What's even more amazing is that people are willing to offer help, if it's asked for in the right way (and rewarded in the right way, with recognition and perhaps more tangible trinkets.)

But what's scary is that it's still hard to tell which of your "friends" will actually *do something*, like turn up in a theater and buy a ticket, and which ones are simply compulsive about creating new connections, adding you to their own ever-growing roster of friends. And I think it will be challenging (perhaps scary) to manage some of your friends who want to be more than just friends ... like sending you the script they hope will turn into your next movie.

I'm not suggesting "friend" is definitively the right term to be using. (I still think of a friend as someone who intuitively knows when you need to be taken out and bought a beer, and who knows about large swaths of your history.) Peer is pretty good, as is collaborator. Patron feels too passive, like someone who's just bankrolling a project.

But finding a new term for the people who support creative endeavors seems to be an important step in moving beyond just thinking about them as fans.

SXSW ... 1,000 True Fans ... HBO's 'In Treatment' ... Movie Production Costs Keep Rising

Just a few links before I head to Austin on Friday morning for the SXSW Film Festival.... I'll be heading up two panels, one on Saturday called Digital Cinema for Indies, and one on Sunday called Animation and Digital Effects on a Budget.

- Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired, has a wonderfully thoughtful essay titled '1,000 True Fans.' Here's part of the opening:

...the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation. The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist's works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.

Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?

One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

- Michael DiBasio is cheesed that HBO seduced him with free episodes of 'In Treatment,' then turned off the tap. I'd argue that HBO is going to have a very hard time offering its content online in any form ... whether paid downloads at iTunes, or ad-supported streams ... because its biggest revenue stream is cable and satellite companies, who want that content to be their exclusively. (Why else do people pay $100 a month for cable, except for HBO and Showtime?)

- The average cost of producing and marketing a studio movie in 2007 hit an all-time high, according to the Wall Street Journal (based on data from the MPAA): $106.6 million. Releases from studio "specialty" divisions, like Fox Searchlight, was $74.8 million, a big jump from the prior year. But it was also the best year ever for the US box office, led by Sony Pictures' 'Spider-Man 3.' The studios raked in almost $10 billion (and that's ticket sales only -- no home video.)