PRO TIP: Your job as an artist is not to get people to connect with you. Your job is to create the art that gets people to connect with other people.
This month is all about ‘Building A Tribe + Starting A Revolution’. We’ll be diving into Chapters 3 & 4 of the (Un) Common Sense Curriculum and discussing these ideas at length at this month’s events.
Get a taste of what we’re covering with this excerpt from Chapter 3.
When you think about building a fan base in today’s world, you must realize that people are not just purchasing products; they are buying into the brand or a belief in the people behind the product. We don’t simply buy a Supreme t-shirt or Beyonce hoodie because we needed a new shirt or hoodie. We buy those things because of what they say about who we are. Most purchase decisions we make are the end product of a story we tell ourselves about who we are. Are you the kind of person to be the first one in your friend group with the newest pair of Jordan sneakers? Are you the kind of person who only uses Apple products? Are you the kind of person that only smokes papers? You get the point…
When you look on the business side, whether it’s tech, fashion, music, or even sports, the most successful companies go beyond just creating an audience to sell to. Instead, they build a community around their product. Okay, now you might be scratching your head thinking “What’s the difference, aren’t those two the same thing?” If so, you would be wrong. There is a subtle but important difference between an audience and a community, and it’s all about communication. The flow of communication, to be more precise.
Every community is an audience, but not every audience is a community.
Activity:
It’s important to know who your potential customers / fans are before you meet them. This goes deeper than knowing their age & where they live (that’s called demographics). What’s more important is understanding their interests and how they see the world (psychographics).
In business, compiling this information is called creating a customer profile or buyer persona.
Start your own customer profile by naming your tribe and describing your shared culture. List its symbols/logos, slogans/sayings, and what that tribe believes in.
MEET MY TRIBE
We do things like:
Make art, create content, sell products and throw events.
We spend time at places like:
Networking events, conferences, book stores, studios, music venues, art galleries and boutiques.
Online, you can find us:
Watching YouTube tutorials, documentaries, interviews of successful artists/brand owners, posting on social media and reading tech reviews.
We say things like:
“What’s the budget?”, “That’s not on brand”, ownership, aesthetic, engagement rate, marketing rollout, monetize, value exchange, impact.
Our core principle is:
Get paid to be yourself.
A symbol that represents us is:
The record button.
WE ARE:
Creative Entrepreneurs.
Topics: Resources
