Your Three Communities: Connecting with Community #3: Ambient Fans

In this 3-part series I have been talking about an artists 3 separate communities and the fact that you need to think about how you approach each one differently.

Here’s a quick recap:

Community 1: Are your Super Fans (http://arielpublicity.com/2010/04/29/your-three-communities-part-1/)

These are fans who are primarily Your Live Audience. You know them by name. If you play out live, they attend your shows regularly, and buy many things you offer  (not just music). If you have a street team they are on it and they evangelize strongly on your behalf.

Community 2: Are your Engaged Fans (http://arielpublicity.com/2010/05/05/your-three-communities-part-2/)

These fans are your Active Online Audience. They are newsletter subscribers, , blog readers, video watchers, RSS subscribers, active Social Media engagers who frequently comment & engage with you on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

This last installment focuses on:

Community 3: Ambient Fans

These fans are your Passive Online Audience and they are your social media friends who are aware of you via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm etc but don’t actively communicate with you and may not have even heard your music (yet).

18 months ago Clive Thompson wrote a fabulous article for The New York Times Magazine entitled: Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

I think it’s a must read and in it Thompson talks about a term that social scientists coined: Ambient awareness. This is for YOU (yeah, I’m talking to you – because you think that the mundane things people “tweet” or status updates on Facebook are meaningless and even painful – Who cares if I’m eating a tuna sandwich? According to Thompson (and I concur) people do care…. Here’s why and this is my favorite part of the article:  “Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives…This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating.”

The key to converting Community 3 to Community 2 is sharing relevant information mixed in with the simple and seemly mundane.

I was giving a guest lecture at NYU a few weeks ago and my dear friend and colleague Judy Tint said: “I hate all these people who just update stupid things like “COFFEE” – I mean who cares?”  I started smirking because I have created the coffee tweet on many occasions…

“ I tweet about my coffee all of the time,” I pointed out to Judy. She paused, “Yes but you also tweet interesting articles and blog posts about the music business, updates on cool places to eat, shop, and visit as well as I get to pretend I’m with you when you travel the world.”

Ahhh…  Granted, Judy is already in my Community 1.  Therefore I am relevant to her…. My coffee tweets don’t bother her in the least but I bet if I never shared other things she found relevant she would not pay attention to me at all.

So, you may be asking: What constitutes relevant?  If it is relevant to you its’ probably relevant to your 3 communities.

How To Engage Community 3

Step 1: Pay attention!

On Twitter You first must follow people who follow you back.  It’s the polite thing to do because it says I am equally as interested in you as you are in me!

Artist Question/ Objection: Do I HAVE to follow these people? I Don’t care about them.

My answer: YES.

If you don’t care about potential fans and getting into a relationship with you them they should not care about you.

Artist Question/ Objection: But I can’t manage looking at Thousands of updates I will miss the ones I care about…

My answer: I understand. But in this world of two way communication that is now here to stay forever this is the new paradigm. And luckily there are some fabulous applications for managing and screening out the good stuff from the river of overwhelm.

Tips for managing the noise / capturing the Gold

For Facebook & Twitter: Create lists!

On both of these platforms you can create lists so you can look at exactly who you want to look at at any given time.  Lists act as a filter. You can create lists of the people you most care about, or group by cities, genre of music, or social circles.

When I am in Los Angeles I click on my LA lists and follow them and relevant information pops up consistently.

I also curate lists on Twitter based on the music festivals and conferences I visit. I also group by countries and categorize by interests.

I have a lists called: Musicians I know, friends and family and ones for the board members of the organizations I serve Sweet Relief and Soundctrl so I can keep up to date with my colleagues in those circles.

Filter with Tweetdeck

With Tweetdeck you filter your streams by keywords and  keep up to date with crucial conversations and things that interest you.  And when you see something that interests you ENGAGE – comment on it, snap a photo and share it personally with just one potential fan, “favorite” something or retweet a funny or relevant tweet.

There, you have filtered out the noise and you are bringing Community 3 closer to being in your Communities 2, and 1.

Final takeaway: Engagement with all 3 communities is crucial and each will take a different strategy but keep in mind: Studies show, (if you’re talking from a sales perspective), that it’s 10 times easier to keep a customer than it is to make a brand new one. So, consider all 3 communities as separate pools of customers. You must dive in and play in each pool order to get a game of Marco polo happening.

As you go reward each community by bringing them to center stage. Give them MP3s and videos.  Engage them in IM chats.  Hold contests for them and acknowledge them openly in front of your followers and fans.  I promise they will reward you deeply for your effort.