In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a Lady Gaga fan. I’m not impressed by her music, and I have done such a good job of insulating myself from her omnipresent visage that I couldn’t pick her out of a line up. So it was a shock to me to hear that she has hit more than 11 million fans on Facebook.
Compare this to the number of fans others have garnered on Facebook (as of July 7).
President Barack Obama: 10,108,408 fans
Taylor Swift: 6,501,378 fans
Miley Cyrus: 3,637,107 fans
David Beckham: 3,072,364 fans
LeBron James: 2,483,798 fans
Sarah Palin: 1,802,508 fans
The Oprah Winfrey Show: 1,655,310 fans
How? How can someone who has yet to have the number one album on the U.S. Billboard Charts be the reigning Facebook Queen?
Two words: Little monsters.
“Little monsters” is her pet name for all of her fans and she addresses them constantly on her Facebook page.
Endless thank yous to my little monsters, my family, and my friends who’ve stood by me. And thank you New York City, for sticking by me too.
-Lady Gaga’s Facebook Page – July 6, 2010North American monsters, the Summer leg of the Monster Ball begins in just a few weeks! Score a pair of tickets to the show closest to you from ArtistDirect, click below to enter now! Only one week left to enter!
-Lady Gaga’s Facebook Page – June 11, 2010
When she became the first person to get 10 million Facebook fans, she made a 28-second video thanking her little monsters. I have no idea if her affection for her fans is genuine, but one certainly gets the feeling that it is.
What separates Lady Gaga from the others mentioned is that she has created a Facebook community, not a Facebook page. Lady Gaga has made her page all about her fans. Even when she is promoting a tour or a new video, she has found a way to include her monsters into the post.
I never thought that I would say this, let alone put this in a blog post that will be digitally preserved forever. We can learn a lot from Lady Gaga.
1. When you create a community online, your fans and followers become more active. The more active a person is, the more often they will come back to your Facebook page.
2. Address your followers. I’m not suggesting that you call them little monsters or have a nickname for them. However, if you post conversation starters rather than mundane statements, your fans will interact with each other about the topic. This will extend the post’s shelf life because others will be riffing on what you wrote.
3. Acknowledging your fans and thanking them after a successful campaign or an award goes a long way to building brand loyalty. Publicly linking your achievements to your followers gives them a sense of product ownership product.
