# Superfan. Supersuccess.

We’re all fans of something or other. And in a world where personalities, music and videos rain down on us constantly, we begin to identify with particular ones, whether it’s a TV show, a YouTuber, a musician, an actor, etc. From common interests and a love for the material, a fan is born. Now, there are many levels of fans. Some just buy CDs or watch movies and call it a day. Others pass the casual fan barrier and attend concerts or watch their entertainer’s TV appearances on talk shows and call it a day.

At the top of the fan stratosphere, there are superfans. These individuals consume themselves with everything about their favorite entertainer. With Twitter, YouTube and other instantaneous viral broadcasters, these superfans begin to create banded communities, or fandoms. Some members within these communities become so followed and listened to that they themselves transcend the role of just a superfan into becoming an influencer.

“Influencers are the ones that create trends and superfans are the ones that connect the dots,” says Shira Lazar, the co-founder and host of What’s Trending. “When Tyler Oakley, as an influencer, says, ‘That needs to get more attention,’ people take notice. His superfans make it even more viral because they trust what he has to say.”

Lazar’s show was one of the first curators of viral Internet videos, particularly those originating on YouTube. They create and discuss content by the social media stars of today, the Tyler Oakleys and PewDiePies of the world. What this earns What’s Trending in return are these influencer’s superfans. If thousands of people follow Tyler Oakley religiously, and you talk about Tyler Oakley, you should get those thousands of views, right? What if we get him to come on our show? What if he shares our content? That’s what companies today are trying to figure out: leveraging viewership in the digital age.

This isn’t just a small, niche YouTube market we’re talking about. The ascension of influencers and superfans has become so strong that legendary entertainment corporations, like Dick Clark Productions, which is in charge of producing some of the biggest entertainment events of the year like the Billboard Music Awards, Golden Globes, American Music Awards and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, have now created new jobs to tap into these fans.

Marieanor Madrilejo is the influencer and superfan outreach coordinator at DCP. She discusses her daily role with both markets:

“For influencers, it’s kind of like a two-way street: they promote our shows and we make sure that they’re taken care of and we give them awesome access and we keep them relevant as influencers. With superfans, we interact with them on the daily: answer their questions, we send them stuff, like tweets or an article about their artist--we let them know. We also play games like fill out the MadLibs or guess the emoji lyrics.”

For Dick Clark Productions, this is crucial marketing. To gauge the impact of these superfans, let’s take a look at one of DCP’s biggest shows, the Billboard Music Awards. In the absence of Madrilejo’s superfan outreach, a tweet from the official BBMAs Twitter account about Aussie punk band sensation 5 Seconds of Summer received 17 retweets and nearly 30 favorites. After reaching out to some of the biggest 5SOS superfans like @5SOS_Updates (277K followers), those numbers skyrocketed: 422 retweets and 758 favorites. That’s an increase of over 2,000%

Some superfan accounts are even larger than the previously mentioned @5SOS_Updates. One particular One Direction superfan account, @STYLATORARMY has 1.1 million followers on Twitter.

Now that companies are picking up on this market, Lazar does not feel threatened.

“We care about the growth of the web and the community. There is a difference from companies connecting to stars now vs. those that have been in it. There’s something there with loyalty. It’s our beat.”