Retention, Part Four: Fansites are Media, Too

By Sanya Weathers

When you’re marketing and promoting a product, it’s easy to get caught up in the whole “what can they do for me” mindset. After all, you need to justify your budget, and get the most bang for your buck in terms of product placement and visibility. That’s why it’s even more important to have a community professional handling part of your media strategy, because pound for pound, fansites and other forms of amateur media deliver the biggest bang for your buck – but only if you’re approaching them with a “what can I do for you” frame of mind. Community people (good ones, anyway) specialize in that frame of mind.

How is this retention? Your big media superstar is not emotionally attached to your product. He takes his goody bag, he writes his article, a hundred thousand people see it, he’s done. Your fansite guy, on the other hand… you treat him with respect, and he’s an evangelist. He cares. He is emotionally invested in other people playing “his” game. He doesn’t just write a one-off that gets a lot of attention. He writes content that help other people to enjoy the product more, subscribe longer, and bring in still more players.

Amateur in this sense means “not paid,” and is not a reflection on quality. Remember, the Olympic athletes are amateurs. Fan-written content has the potential to be just as good as the professionally generated stuff, and tools/videos developed by the fans will be better than the professional stuff. They’re developing material that people like them will enjoy, and they are doing it with a single-minded devotion no mere flack or flunky can generate.

Besides quality, the big thing to remember is that an amateur’s website feature is just as likely to go viral as the campaign you paid tens of thousands of dollars to have developed. More so, since people will champion an authentic fan-made creation over a corporate product.

Finally, an important thing to remember with amateur media is that some of them will go pro. The quirky news site of today is the 1.5 million hit a month behemoth of tomorrow, but the editor won’t forget who treated the little site with respect.

Here are the basics:

–    Make it easy. Have your fansite kit (with graphics and content) on your site as soon as you go live. Provide contact information for fansites looking for information. When you promote a fan-written article or tool, mention that anyone else looking to write an article or produce a video should feel free to contact the community manager.

–    “And” not “After.” Don’t give information to the fansites after you’ve handed out goodies to all the big dogs. Plan your content releases with the smaller sites on the schedule from the beginning. Include them in your strategy.

–    Don’t discriminate. If you’re having a press day with handcrafted martini hour and steak dinners, don’t have a blogger day with stale crackers. Have a media day with nachos and beer for everyone. The big media guys don’t care that much and the bloggers will never forget it.

–    Remember to ask “what’s in it for the fansite?” Exposure? Exclusive content? Recognition for thousands of hours spend developing the wiki? Contests? Your ad dollars so they can afford their bandwidth? Whatever itch the fansite has, scratch it. They aren’t doing this for money, they’re doing it for love. Love doesn’t cost you anything, so why not give it to them?