When starting a business, or even just starting social media for your business, there is no one more important to your success than superfans.
Everyone has superfans. Even if it’s your mom, your dad, your cousin, your best friend, your college roommate, your babysitter, or your spouse. Someone you know has seen all that you’ve gone through and wants you to be successful. And they’d help you, if they only knew how.
Here’s an example of a superfan who helped launch what was, among other things, one of the most successful business ventures of all time.
Freda Kelly was a 17-year-old legal secretary who lived in Liverpool. Friends invited her to a lunchtime show at the Cavern Club featuring a local band. She became a huge fan of the band immediately, and caught all their gigs after that. The band was The Beatles, and their manager Brian Epstein eventually hired this familiar face as a secretary to handle their growing stream of fan mail.
This was in 1962, before their first single came out, and at that point The Beatles could have easily become no more than local favorites. But Freda remembers that she and all the girls in Liverpool bought the “Love Me Do” single the week it came out even if they didn’t have a record player because they so passionately wanted The Beatles to have a hit.
Imagine that – buying a product you can’t even use because you believe in the maker so much. That is the mark of a superfan.
Now, we know how very big The Beatles got. Their music changed popular culture, like no band before or since. But if you rewind back from those career heights, before the fame and the movies and the hit records and the stadiums filled with screaming fans, it all started with their local fandom in Liverpool, who were rabid and persuasive.
London was not looking to Liverpool for rock’n roll bands at the time. And America was not looking to England for that, either. But that all changed when The Beatles sparked a musical and cultural movement called The British Invasion.
Without that first tipping point, without those superfans, without those girls ponying up their pin money at Merseyside record shops, the rest may never have happened.
(Freda’s superfandom changed her life as well, in ways you can see in a 2013 documentary called Good Ol’ Freda. She became the president of The Beatles Fan Club from 1962-1972, and witnessed firsthand many of highlights of the band’s career.)
Freda Kelly is the perfect example of the superfan who changes everything just by supporting what she loves. She and those like her are the whisper that started the avalanche.
Who will start your avalanche? Who are your superfans? And how can they spread the word about you?
It’s up to you to show them how. Here are some ideas from Social Media Examiner for helping your superfans help you raise your business’s profile on social media:
Peggy is the founder of The Social Eye, a social media agency for optical businesses. She led social media efforts at ZEISS Vision US for 4 years, and prior to that created digital marketing for the tech and music industries. She has far too many pairs of eyeglasses, but can always find room for one more.