“The Rise of Galactic Republic and the Fall of u/thibson34”
This is a not tale the mods woulds tell you. Over on Reddit, there was a peaceful sub dedicated to the defense of their childhood nostalgia. When the Star Wars prequels came out, they were meet with out rage from any fan above the age of 15. But the children loved it. Those children are now approaching 30 and finishing college.
They forged a safe space from the OT fandom over on r/prequelmemes. Where they could discuss the biblical imagery of Ewan Mcgregor’s heavenly beard, or detail the evidence of behind the Darth Binks conspiracy. Through the years the subreddit has grown close to 2 million members.
Not only is it a fairly active reddit community but they follow orders well. At the start of June a user challenged their teacher if they could get 10,000 signatures to switch the final movie from Romeo and Juliet to Revenge of the Sith. Well just one post to r/Prequelmemes later and over 20,000 signatures were deployed.
[Man I wish the Star Trek subs had this level of fandom. But Trekkies are a different sort]
I don’t participate much in fandoms or communities. I barely enjoy my company, I also have friends irl whose ears I can bend. But I get it, they bring people together and more often than not the fans just want to spend a few more minutes soaking in the community and nostalgia.
One tip I hear often in my marketing research regarding art is to do fanarts. With the hope that you’ll get a lot of exposure. While the gains are remarkably low, they are gains none the less. I’ve heard this in regards to writing as well but more for finding a solid community as your not going to convert your Ghostbusters fan-fic to your original amazon release. The numbers are just too low.
Now I’m not a great artist, I’ve only been at it less than a year. And with my amount of focus at my disposal it’ll be at least five or six til I’m past 5 on the dunning-kruger scale.
But I could replicate u/thibson34 strategy with ease.
I can’t say if marketing was his intent but it’s what u/thibson34 did. Sometime in February they became a General Grievous project where each day they would add a unique light-saber and arm to General Grievous. I only browse reddit by best and so anything from prequelmemes that is under 1k up-votes doesn’t show up. So for the first month I knew nothing of u/thibson34’s efforts. But soon his efforts started paying off and he made it to the front page of the sub repeatedly getting top post for the day. The final form was 66, a significant number for the fandom.
Apparently u/thibson34 didn’t like the official discord for reasons unknown and began to promote his own discord. Which has 6K members almost 5 active at time of writing. But it was his ban from from the subreddit that lead to such growth. For over a week the sub has discussed nothing but the banning of u/thibson34. Banned of course for promoting a personal discord. Which has lead to the explosion of the discord’s pop.
In marketing the best thing someone can do is talk good about your product.
The second best thing they can do is talk bad about your product.
The worst thing they can do not talk about your product.
U/thibson34 has successfully converted 10% of the active users from the fandom to his discord. If he had a product he’d probably get sales with a floor of 500 and a cap of 2 thousand.
So to simplify this strategy for fandom acquisition
Step 1: pick a fandom
Step 2: prepare for a daily release for that fandom
Step 3: release daily, hang around for discussions and talks
Step 4: start putting CTA after the fandom has signed on and you are nearing your end.
(CTA like follow my twitter, IG, join discord, FB group etc.)
Step 5: create drama for drama’s sake. Drama Llama
If you remember the forgotten month of may 2020, you might remember a Sailor Moon redraw challenge to celebrate the 25 anniversary of our favorite sailor scout. Which drew thousands of artists from amateur to pro. Rather hard to stand out in a crowd like that. Much less convert any CTAs.
But what if you had 7 redraws, and labeled them 1 of 7, 2 of 7 etc. Now your twitter and Deviant-Art will convert followers to see the rest of the your series. People love collections.
Yes they came for the fandom but they sign up for the promise of 7 of 7. And now when you start advertising your original content, you’ll have an audience already. It’s not what they signed up for but it’s free real estate and it might convert better than screaming into the dark.
With Love,
HngyHngyHppo
Hope you all have been well…
hngyhngyhppo 