Fanducer Flywheel

Turn your fans into producers

Friendship funnel machine - recap

Last week I published Friendship Funnel Machine: the potential podcasters have to spark friendships amongst their fans by setting up digital butt funnels.

Recap in case you missed it:

Fans (people) crave relationships and connections.
New and interesting friendships usually follow this formula
(Common Interest + Shared Experiences) X (# of Interaction Opportunities) = New Friendships
Podcasts are automatic interest sorters. Because most podcasts cater to niche audiences, if I were to pluck two random fans from a single podcast audience, those two fans would have 3+ things in common. [Part 1 of equation satisfied]
They also provide their audience with at least one shared experience in that their fans all listen to the same podcast every week. [Part 2 of equation satisfied]
But, most podcasts ignore the last part of the equation - facilitate opportunities for their fans to interact with one another [# of interaction opportunities - failed]
To do this, podcasts should be setting up digital butt funnels. One way to do that is to leverage the Fanducer Flywheel.

You’ll have to keep reading to understand how they can do this in a way that doesn’t feel like a lame ice-breaker game from your first day at school.

In this article, I’ll show how to put in motion the Fanducer Flywheel. The benefits include:

Digital butt funnels that encourage fans to connect with one another.
Saves you, the podcast host, time and effort by outsourcing content creation to your audience for the price of, on the house (free). A cure for content creation burnout.
Builds a strong community with a shared purpose (that can be monetized)
Attracts new fans and grows your podcast audience

Introducing the Fanducer Flywheel

Fanducer definition: part fan, part producer. A fan of a show that is simultaneously responsible for its production and is an active participant.

Outer Wheel: Creating a base of fanducers

Open a channel for your fans to contribute to the podcast.

Step 1: Audience participates by contributing clips, questions, stories, artwork, etc.
Step 2: Praise and give feedback to the top fan contributions.
Step 3: Inactive fans compete for praise and become active participants (fanducers) for a chance to be featured and recognized on the next show.

Outer wheel repeats. Soon your podcast will establish a base of fanducers.

Inner Wheel: Activating your fanducer base

Step 1: Give legitimate producing responsibilities to your fanducers.
Step 2: Features are created by the empowered fanducers who have now been given a shared purpose by you, the host.
Step 3: Audience grows as new fans show up because of the enriched community-built feature set.

Inner wheel repeats. A Shared Purpose Community grows as this self-perpetuating wheel attracts new fans and turns them into fanducers which in turn enriches the show.

Summary for Podcasters:

Go from content creators to being content curators when you:

Open and promote channels for fans to participate
Praises fan contributions
Give legit responsibility to your fanducers

Outcome: free content generation and a thriving, loyal community w/ shared purpose.

#1 Example: No Agenda show

Hosted by Adam Curry (the Podfather) and John C. Dvorak, No Agenda really invented the Fanducer Flywheel, I’m just doing my best to distill the concept so that others can emulate it. Here are examples of how they get the outer and inner wheels spinning.

Outer wheel examples:

1. Open Channel for Participation. Here are all channels that Adam and John have opened to allow fans to participate in the production of the show:

Email and social media accounts - fanducers can submit audio clips, questions, opinions, and their expertise on a topic to Adam and John directly.
Artwork Generator - allows fanducers to submit artwork which John and Adam will use for the cover art of the show for each new episode. The artwork is also used for specific chapters of the show that can be viewed on Podcasting 2.0 compatible apps. This turns the show into a multi-medium experience.
Chapter Suggestions - fanducers can submit chapter suggestions that are upvoted by other fanducers. The standout chapters are then published as part of each podcast episode so that listeners can skip and choose the content they want to listen to within each 3-hour episode (available on Podcasting 2.0 apps).
Troll Room - fanducers created and host a live stream of the show along with a chatroom (aka the troll room). The host(s) will frequently ask the 2k+ active fanducers in the troll room for answers to questions or names they can’t remember.
NA Meetups - A centralized site for hosting and attending No Agenda meetups in your local area.
Community Code - a Gitlab repository so that fanducers can build features that enhance the No Agenda show experience for all.
No Agenda Shop - fanducer artists can submit their work to this site and if it’s selected and put on a product, they get a cut of the proceeds.
Thousands of top fanducers in their field of expertise globally, contributing content

A full list of open channels and ways that No Agenda encourages its listeners to become active participants here.

2. Praise Contributions. The hosts (John and Adam) call their active audience members producers, not fans. Examples of how to praise and recognize contributions to keep the flywheel spinning:

“Ahh, we need this” - John acknowledging a follow-up note on millenial work ethic from one of their millenial fanducers. [link to clip]

“Once again thank you for your time, your talent and your treasure for producing No Agenda” - Adam praising his fanducers for helping to produce the show. [link to clip]

“The NewTangClan was good. The HillCountry one was okay. Very nice. The one I liked the most was the little one by Nesworks called Non Gouging Relief 33 is a little pill bottle holding a sign..so cute. He does good work generally speaking.” - Eventhough they only choose one piece of art for each show, the hosts take time to call out the top contributions for that week and give the fanducers usernames a shoutout. [link to clip]

Inner wheel examples

1. Responsibility. Now that a base of fanducers has been established, the hosts take things to the next level by trusting their fanducers with meaningful responsibilities.

“And I think that the idea now is just there's a couple of drugs coming up, which I'd love some of our producers to take a look at what Merck is developing.” - Adam asking his fanducer to look into new drugs being developed by Merck Pharaceutical [link to clip].

2. Features [full list]. Because John and Adam trust their fanducers with legitimate responsibility, the audience returns the favor by building meaningful features. All of these features are built, hosted and maintained by the No Agenda audience members:

Butt Funnels Examples (increased interaction opportunities amongst fans):

No Agenda Meetups - this is the bridge between the online world and the real world. This fan-created site facilitates connections between fans by geographic location.
Troll room (live stream + chat room) - fans can interact with one another and get to know each other.
Private Social Network - unlike Facebook group or something similar, fanducers feel more comfortable interacting and sharing details about themselves on this private social network.
Community Code - fans that like to build software can interact and work together to build additional features for the show. This
NA Social Network, building features together.

#2 Example: Your Mom's House podcast

Your Mom’s House - hosted by married comedian couple Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky, YMH has a couple of open channels to facilitate feedback loops from their fans.

They ask their audience to participate by giving them a prompt. Here is a specific example they called “The Big Titted Challenge”. [link to clip]

The Perez Hilton Podcast - Hosted by Perez Hilton and Chris Booker, they cover pop culture and show biz trending topics every week.

The hosts allow their fans to participate by having a dedicated call-in number and then they select a few voice messages to review at the end of each show.

What other examples of podcasts do you know out there that are using the Fanducer Flywheel to create positive feedback loops with their audience?

Leave a comment below or send me an email patrick@pattynever.com and I'll feature it in my upcoming tweets and articles.