How to Build Fandom with Influencers
Fandom is no longer a story only for idols, pro baseball and esports. It has become a very familiar word, and surely some of you reading this are devoted fans of something. Brands want the same thing. They want to build a fandom and keep that relationship going for a long time. Fans stay in the relationship, cheer enthusiastically, and spend money, because their involvement keeps getting deeper.
So what can influencer marketing do for a brand's fandom building? Is it even possible to build a fandom through influencer marketing? There are many questions, but I want to start from the most basic one. Are fans and followers different?
An influencer's followers may be fans, or they may simply be people who know them and keep watching. If you define a fan as someone who actively participates, not every follower is a fan. In terms of depth of relationship, it is closer to a ladder. There are people who don't know the brand, people who know it or have bought once, and people who respond repeatedly. Above them are people who recommend it to those around them, and people who see the brand as part of their identity. Most followers sit on the second rung.
Building followers and lifting people to the fandom at the top of the ladder are different stories. An influencer doesn't build the fandom for you. They only open the space where a fandom can begin, and carrying it on after that is the brand's job. This piece is my view of how influencers can be used when you set fandom as the goal, organized as a method: the order in which to work through that process.
Why start with influencers?
To build a fandom you first need people to gather. This is exactly where new brands and brands coming in from overseas get stuck, because they have no one to talk with.
Influencers already have those people. They are followers who gathered around the same taste and have listened to this person for a long time. It is a place where trust and fit have already built up.
But one thing needs to be clear. Those followers are fans of the influencer, not yet fans of the brand. You can borrow a fandom, but a borrowed fandom has to be returned when the campaign ends. So working with an influencer doesn't end with borrowing a fandom for a while. It has to go as far as connecting some of them to a direct relationship with the brand.
Five steps to build a fandom
I organized the method into five steps, and noted the influencer's part in each. The examples come not only from influencer campaigns but from brands that built the same structure first. It is not a straight line you pass through once and finish. It is closer to a cycle in which the base for the next step grows as participation builds up.
1. Build the base: make first contact where taste matches
First decide what value the brand can offer and what people can talk about. Showing in what situation the product is used and what changes is easier for people to add their words to than listing product features. The lower the barrier to participation, the better.
People of the same taste are gathered there, so they are likely to match the brand's taste too. At this stage the influencer introduces the brand in their own language in front of people who share that taste. This is where "fit" works the most.
Gymshark noticed that the subscribers of the fitness YouTubers they watched were exactly their target, and started by sending clothes to them. It later grew that into the "Gymshark Athletes," inviting only people whose values matched.
2. Find supporters: look for people who respond
Look at the depth of interest rather than follower count. People who leave questions in the comments, who save and revisit, who post their own reviews are candidates for early supporters.
An influencer's audience is where this response shows up best. People you couldn't see by running only the brand's account show up beneath the content.
Notion followed Facebook groups, Twitter and Reddit, found users who were enthusiastically spreading the word about the product, and recruited them directly as ambassadors.
3. Connect supporters: bring them over to the brand
Build a touchpoint where the people you found can keep meeting. A dedicated hashtag, a newsletter, an open community, a brand channel: any of them works. The relationship lasts when not only brand and fan but fan and fan are connected.
The influencer's part is to be a stepping stone. Inside the content, they invite people into the brand's space by saying "let's talk more over here." This is the point where the borrowed fandom crosses over to the brand.
Sephora opened "My Sephora Storefront," where shopping pages and purchase links made by creators connect directly inside the Sephora site and app.
4. Grow fans: build together
Ask for the fans' opinions, and show those opinions being reflected in products or content. Content that fans make themselves, such as reviews, challenges and idea suggestions, is the material for this stage. "Your participation actually makes a change" works far stronger than "please promote us."
Here the influencer is needed not for a one-off collaboration but for repeat collaboration. Their role is to share the fans' stories and to help set up the stage for fans to take part.
Notion let ambassadors try new features first and reflected their opinions in the product. The ambassadors held meetups on their own and ran the official subreddit.
5. Promote and reward: recognize contribution
Introduce contributing fans by name, give them a chance to try new products first, and give them roles inside the community. Rewards can't replace the relationship. If you hand out coupons and stop there, people leave the day the coupons end.
When an influencer introduces a fan's contribution on their own channel, the effect of recognition becomes much bigger, because it comes through the mouth of someone the fans trust.
There are also things the influencer doesn't take on. Looking after the people who became fans, recognizing their contributions, and keeping the experience you promised are the brand's work. That is why you can't hand the whole fandom over to an influencer.
How do you tell whether it's becoming a fandom?
Views and reach aren't signals of a fandom. A fandom has to be read by depth of behavior. Look at whether the same people participate repeatedly, whether the quality of comments is changing, and whether the number of people who create content themselves is growing. Then check whether return visits and repeat purchases, voluntary recommendations and brand search volume follow. Finally, look at how these changes connect to conversion and retention, to customers arriving by referral, and to customer acquisition cost.
The standard for judging whether a campaign succeeded changes too. Not whether it went viral once, but whether repeat participation and voluntary contribution grow over time.
What to ask before you start
Before you look for influencers, how about asking this: "Once the campaign ends, do we have a place in our brand to keep talking with these people?"