Don't forget to feed the fans

A lot of us start out with a vision – a grand idea and a smart strategy, perhaps even a noble mission of change. It’s the thing that sparks us and gives us the energy to create. In service to our vision, we build organizations and startups, and we launch campaigns and communities.

But once that’s done and we start to have momentum, our (hopefully numerous) fans have other ideas. They start to have a sense of ownership over what we created, as well as expectations about what we will deliver next. In reality, it’s no longer just about what we want, it’s about what they want too.

And they want fan service.

You see it all the time with musicians. Artists create albums and gain a loyal following. People fall in love with the sound. They become fans. And the fans want more.

But sometimes artists want to evolve. They are on a creative journey. Sure, the label might want them to make more of the same music and to feed the fans. But the artist believes that the true fans will stay with them on the journey.  So they gamble. They take a more “artistic” route, eschewing the ‘tried and true’ for bold and unexpected.

Sometimes they win and the fans join them on the creative journey, deepening their relationship and growing together. But sometimes they lose, and the fans rebel (or even worse, they stop paying attention altogether).

Fan service is a tricky thing. Too much of it and you can lose your creative voice; too little of it you can lose your fan base.

Every organization has a vision of where it wants to go and what it wants to create. And the same goes for every leader. But each organization and leader also have fans who demand to be fed.  Smart leaders realize that fan service needs to be part of their ongoing mission, and they incorporate it into their strategies from the beginning. 

Before it’s too late.

Because fans can only stay hungry for so long until they find someone else to feed them.

So next time you think about developing that new program, launching that new product, or releasing that new “album", it’s worth asking how it will serve your fans as well as yourself.

Doing so might make the difference between your fans being fed, or fed up.

Choose wisely.