Mike Abasov

This is so awesome, there is no way to underestimate its awesomeness.

Micro-reward your fans! The easiest way is to say “thank you,” but there is so much more you can do with minimum money spent. Here are some ideas:

• Share traffic. Give links to your fans’ websites on your blog or newsletter. A little promotion for your grateful customers shows them that you care, which reinforces their evangelism. And, as you remember, turning fans into evangelists is one of your goals.
• Send them swag. Well, first of all, having swag, such as stickers, pins or t-shirts is very good for promoting your business. If people decide to wear your stuff, they are also ready to talk about you and promote you. Send your fans a small package of treats, and they will feel appreciated and become able to sneeze about you. HootSuite does this with their HootKits, and the results are amazing. Just check out many pictures on flickr:
  

Do you have any other ideas about micro-rewarding your fans?

You have probably heard about 90-9-1 principle. The “one” part of it states:

1% of users are “creators”, driving large amounts of the social group’s activity. More often than not, these people are driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads, and activity.

Personally, I look a little bit deeper into this one part, the part that creates content and spreads the words, the part that Seth Godin would call sneezers.

I believe that there is another 90-9-1 principle that can be applied to the 1% of the audience:

90% of creators are random observers. They create content, because they find you interesting or are members of your affiliate program, etc.

9% of creators are fans. These people create content, because they like your product a lot and use it, and want to share their experiences with others.

1% of creators are evangelists. These people are awesome. They love your product enough to write about it all the time, create fan blogs, groups and communities. They will go on forums and defend you; they will give you the best feedback and know your company throughout.

Your strategic goal is to find your random observers, appreciate their work to turn them into fans and treat your fans like superstars to make them evangelists.