A panel that seems to also have a film / tv bent – but with basic principles that I may find helpful.
Burnie Burns – Rooster Teeth Productions – red versus blue community founder.
Scott Kirsner – CinemaTech
Brett Gaylor – RiP: A Remix Manifesto – opensourcecinema.org founder
Jonathan Coulton – Jonathan Coulton – singer songwriter checkout spiffworld.com where he does videos using WOW characters
Natasha Wescoat – Natasha Wescoat Inc – fine art and illustration.
Markos Moulitsas – Kos Media – a political blogger.
Scott is moderating – he writes books and plugged them hard!
Publish a song every friday – some get picked up and I realised the power to access your stuff should be as easy as possible. Find out what the audience likes / doesn't like.
I would go to popular things / sites and I got involved in every one possible because the traffic was there. Selling paintings on eBay was starting place. Ebay introduced lots of new people rather than repeat customers.
A narrow niche that was not covered elsewhere. Providing content you can't find elsewhere. Branding – I chose the orange theme to stand out. Got lucky with sites being shut down and the audience relocated to his site. [There were no liberal sites that gave safe haven to left wing progressive thoughts at the time].A space for discussion.
A consistent level of release – people have 5-10 bookmarks and they rotate them but you must be putting out stuff regularly to capture this tendency.
Ratiofrom visitors to contributors is 80:20 rule. We got early participation but this is a high expectation that users will take the time to edit stuff. We made the calls to action simpler and had a series of clear calls to action.
communicating back to fans is important but there are so many channels and so many ways people like to get stuff (RSS, Twitter, MySpace, emails) It doesn't cost anything except time and effort to be on those channels and communicating using them. If a new channel comes along why not decide to have a presence there? Be available when people want to tune in.
Check out the audience before deciding to participate in a forum. Schedule time communicating to people on these platforms. You have to keep speaking to the audience.
People who pre-ordered the DVD became sponsors and got free stuff as well. 40-50% of my revenue is people buying music online. This is high because the audience is geeks.
marketing is usually market manipulation but this panel is doing what they love and making it available for customers. I commission polling in order to expand the Kos brand into the outside world. This gets picked up by the regular news channels and is not "just a blogger". I do the marketing for my community and myself. some people buy Google or Facebook adverts. A good publicist is important when you do a big launch e.g. film. They maintain relationships with the mainstream press and are valuable for navigating the landscape.
How do you influence the audience to spread the word? Find something to get them involved in. A project – what you want us to do next, giveaways, trivia contests, They feel part of the experience and they spread the word. Involvement is key. Emotional vesting. Give them the tools to do it.
