How to build an audience of 1,000 true fans for your products

💎1 is much greater than 1,000,000

I’ve learned that just because you have someone’s attention, it doesn’t mean they actually give a fuck.

It's pretty easy these days to cater to a broad spectrum of people to grab the most amount of attention, via SEO tricks, Facebook ads, or viral content.

However, if you want people to perform an action for you, like buy your product or share it with friends, then they have to give a damn about you, your product, and your business.

A “true fan” is someone who:

• reads all your work
• buys all your products
• pays attention to your progress

With an army of 1000 true fans:
💸 Advertising costs decrease
👂 They organically share your work
👥 They also recruit others to join the tribe

🤓4 ways to do this

1. Impact > Impressions

Shift your mindset from “How can I reach more people?” to “How can I have a meaningful impact on the people I currently reach?”

2. Ship products/features early & often

No one can be a fan of yours if there's nothing for them to admire. Give people something to admire by sharing whatever you make.

The more you share, the less anxiety-inducing it'll be. And you also improve over time because you'll receive feedback from others.

3. Acknowledge that it will take a long time

The majority end up quitting along the way. Those with the most grit and stay around the longest, see the most success.

The basic “winning formula” is to building your audience is being consistent (over time) + being authentic + putting out quality work.

And don't forget to build your email list along the way! #EmailIsKing

4. Do not do the things with which can be scalable

You've probably heard it a bunch of times before 🙄but, yeah, the truth remains. Fastest way to build an audience is to do it as slow as possible.

• Have a conversation with as many users as possible via social media DMs, email, Slack, phone call, or in-person (for ex: connecting with happy & upset users in customer support).

• Consistently give quality stuff away for free (for ex: educational content relevant to your industry via an email newsletter).

• Provide joy through delightful, little surprises (for ex: doing a lottery where the winner get a free premium account of your product).

You won’t get to 1,000 true fans via social media ads and SEO hacks.

📚 Conclusion
We can essentially sum up how to build a fan base into 4 dead simple steps:

1. Make stuff that people enjoy to use/read.
2. Ask those people why they like your stuff and how you can be better.
3. Once you know what they like and how you can improve, do more of that.
4. Repeat.

🤗 Thanks for reading!
If you found this found this post useful, I write about similar ways to improve your product skills at The Product Person. You can get these posts straight to your inbox by subscribing here. And, you can get daily tips on Twitter. Have any questions? I’ll be in the comments.

-Anthony