[socialmediaisbs]

Ok, there's a really long answer to this. I'm happy to send you (and everyone reading this) a free .pdf of my book that St. Martin's Press put out, but here is the tl;dr version

1. The 1,000 True fans thing doesn't work. You need (eventually) 200,000 people who like you and your product / website / app / whatever to visit your thing twice a day. (That number comes from a successful mall developer in the US who runs multiple hundred million dollar properties. The 1,000 True Fans thing is sort of like The Long Tail book in that, it's great on paper, but not so much in reality.

2. I hate to say this, but it's all about the brand. WHY are people going to take their (increasingly) limited time away from something that they love to spend it with you. Yes, quality and consistency are key, but if you don't have the proper distribution, you can have the best stuff in the world and it won't get you anywhere because nobody knows you exist.

You have to develop something that is unique to you, that also is attention getting to other people. (I know, easier said than done.) Then, you need to position that something using other people's platforms and resources (media outlets, connections) to grow your audience. This has been true since the beginning in the Internet era, by the way. (Almost) everyone grew rapidly by using someone else's platform and audience to get there.

3. Finally, you should know your 200,000 people backward and forward. The first 1,000 you should know by name. What they like. What they don't like. What problems that they have. How do they spend their time. Where do they get their information from? And then engineer everything you produce around that, so that the next 199,000 that are like the first 1,000 think you're talking directly to them and not some vaguely defined general audience.

Email for the free .pdf book: [e-mail]

[Leftium]

Can you elaborate on point #1 (or point to the appropriate place in your book?)

One of my friends told me about "1000 true fans," and it seemed reasonable so I didn't question it. Now I'd like to hear the other side.

[socialmediaisbs]

For sure. So, 1000 True Fans has been around as a theory forever. But the tl;dr version from the book is that it only works in extreme circumstances. So for example, if your audience is incredibly wealthy. Or if you're not selling a product but just looking for page views or email subscribers. Or if you have virtually no overhead on a project and can turn a profit with every user that signs up.

But ...

1. People don't share how we often think they do. They can be selective. So the idea that you just need 1,000 and that 1,000 is going to love and share your stuff actively is kind of bogus. Maybe 100 of them actually do it, then the 900 others either sometimes (or not at all) pass on your stuff. So you need way more than 1000.

2.There's rarely such thing as a true fan (except, again, in rare instances.) Customer loyalty today can be gone in a second if you say or do the wrong thing. So there's an assumption you're going to maintain all 1,000 overtime that doesn't hold up. That means the alleged multiplier effect of having the first thousand doesn't (always) exist.

3. You might get 1,000 loyal people, but they don't have a ton of money or resources or whatever to sustain doing the thing you want to do. 1,000 enthusiastic people who show up at your band's free show is great, but when only 25 of them show up to a paid gig, that's a whole other story, and this happens a lot more than you'd think.