Some of these items will apply better for larger acts, some items will work for any act. Some may work for you, some may not… not yet. Some these can be done with little effort, some will take some web development, some might even require some significant development. Some of these have successfully worked for me over the years. The point is to create a list of items that would cover a wide range of acts and abilities.
The end result of all this will hopefully be more Facebook likes, Twitter followers, email list subscriptions, more sales and more traffic to your website… more fans!
Here are three more things that this time focus entirely on creating a environment where fans are always contributing to your website and you are obtaining new content without any expense. These will work for any size band, unsigned or international star.
2000 Things to Generate 20,000 Fans Challenge
12. Wish Your Fans a Happy Birthday – I love this tip so much I am posting it by itself. Marcio Teixeira made a very simple suggestion that fit perfectly with something else I was working on, wish your fans a Happy Birthday. We all love it when someone recognizes our birthday. I am also always impressed when every year Southwest Airlines sends me a birthday card. No other business does that. A very simple action that always makes me think just how much I like Southwest Airlines. You need to do the same with every one of your fans. I already hear the comments… how! We have 1000s of fans I can’t write every one of them personally. Here are two tips on how you could do it.
1. As part of your sites user registration ask for date of birth. Then get yourself a developer to write a simple script that every day looks for birthdays that day and sends out a email message. You should have a little admin that allows you to change the birthday message as often as you like. Don’t send the same message out for months. In that message you could even include maybe a discount on a purchase in your store, or maybe a link to download a special mp3 file. I keep saying this, but trust me… your fans will love it that you thought enough to send them a message.
2. I REALLY like this idea… on Facebook create a Facebook ad campaign. When you are building the ad you can set up who you want to target, meaning who in Facebook do you want to see the ad. Set it up to target only users who are connected to your Facebook Page AND on their birthday. That targeting means only fans who Like your Page and on their birthday will see the ad. Yep, Facebook lets you only display a ad on someone’s birthday. Create the ad with a short personal birthday wish and link it back to a special birthday page on your website where they can get a discount or a free download. This is only going to work if you have enough fans on your page. If you have 50 fans Facebook is going to say the target audience is too small. Once you have built up a nice fan base on Facebook try this out. Yeah you will have to spend a little money on the ads… but it is a great investment to really win over your fans.
I would love to hear from you, got any things that worked great for you? Leave me a comment.
These tips and tricks are all pretty awesome, but I was wondering if you had any geared towards bands who are just starting out and might not have the fanbase (yet) to apply most of the strategies you’ve mentioned so far…
This is a pretty awesome project though 🙂
Pierre.
Pierre, some of what I already posted would work for new and young bands…
1. Reply to every Tweet that mentions you. – definitely can be and should be done by all levels of bands
2. Let your fans lead you – What did you get for KISSmas. – this would work, just listen to what your fans (even small numbers) are talking about and respond
4. Select a fan of the week. – definitely would work
5. Share what is on your iPod. – definitely would work
6. Share the stories behind your songs. – definitely would work
8. Do a Twitter interview. – also works
12. Wish Your Fans a Happy Birthday – even with one fan you should be doing this
I am very much trying to keep in mind all levels of bands when doing this. Sometimes you might have to take the idea and tweak it a bit to fit your situation.
Yeah I’ve read those; thanks for everything 🙂
Many more coming, so just keep checking back. And if you have any specific questions just let me know.
How can we find out the birthday of our fans on the fan page? Facebook doesn’t have that facility to see fans birthdays, right?
Facebook Ads will do it automatically. You have to create a ad and target the ad to people who are already connected to your Page and on their birthday.
I am trying to create a facebook ad targeted to users on their birthday (more general though and not just our fans) but it says the reach is only 20. How is that? It won’t let me create it with such a narrow reach but I don’t know why it’s so small? I’ve made the options very vast…
Tracy, without seeing your options it is really difficult to speculate what might be the problem.
Wow! Favorite/most unique idea so far. An artist could even record themselves singing happy birthday and offer it as a download. It won’t be individualized, but still cool.