Sam Ford has a great article
on
10 Things Corporations Can Learn from Pro Wrestling.
My favorite is the lesson on community.
“Your Audience Uses You
as an Excuse to Build Community.”
You are an excuse.
Your audience is looking for a reason
to build community.
My most recent story, Released,
mentions animal rescues.
It is a small part of the story
yet I’ve received hundreds of emails
about pets being rescued or adopted.
These readers were looking for an excuse
to talk about this subject
(of course, I’ll be featuring the stories on my site)
My dear mom is a Toronto Blue Jays fan.
She doesn’t live in Toronto.
The reason she’s a Toronto fan
is because she likes being part of that community.
It isn’t about the sport.
It isn’t about the team.
It is about the fans following the team.
It is that feeling of belonging.
You can encourage
an emerging community to grow
by providing your audience tools
(a chat room, a blog, conferences).
Thanks for the link to the Fast Company piece. Glad you found it of use. I think there are a lot of comparisons among pro wrestling, sports franchises like the Blue Jays, and soap opera fans, which I have likewise spent a lifetime studying. These stories, and their corresponding fan communities, have long carried the promise of a multigenerational fandom that was here before you ever came along and that will exist far longer than you, which has traditionally been very appealing. In the case of soaps, as ratings decline, that promise is showing cracks, especially with the recent cancellation of Guiding Light. But I think the traditional appeal has much in common.