Wester-what?

If you take a look at the social media channels for Westercon 67, it looks more like they are currently promoting Westeryawn.  The posts are uninteresting and only show limited interaction because they are so dull.  Who would want to interact with plain text posts on Facebook that don't say anything that interesting?  I wouldn't.

I propose that before we start trying to expand Westercon's network, we need to overhaul their content.  It doesn't matter if we contact a ton of people and try and get them to interact with the current postings, we will not be successful.  We need to rebrand Westercon first by having them understand who their customers are.

I believe that the people that would enjoy Westercon could be divided into a few distinct groups:

1. Those who are current fantasy, sci-fi, or horror writers.

2. Those who are interested in becoming fantasy, sci-fi, or horror writers.

3. Lastly, the segment that I believe has been wrongfully ignored, FANS.

We need content that appeals to all three groups in order to start driving more people to the event, but however, my post is not supposed to be on how to build content that would bring these people to the Westercon page, it needs to be on expanding their current network.

In all the posts that I've read about Westercon, they hardly mention who will be at the event or what will be happening.  That is a horrible thing to do.  People are not going to go to an event if there's nothing to be excited about, so the first channels that should be used to reach out to people need to be the central pieces, the main attraction, the popular writers that are going to be appearing and speaking at Westercon.  These authors are the heart of the network.  People follow these authors and would probably pay to see them and talk to them, if they knew that they were even going to be at Westercon.

Think about this for a second, Christopher Paolini, the author of the very successful Eragon books came to Provo a couple of years ago.  I, along with hundreds of other people, lined up outside of the Provo library to hear him talk about writing the books, and then had our books signed.  This event was only promoted a couple of weeks before it actually happened, and it sold out.  This is just for one author in Provo, UT.  Why can't Westercon be the same way?  It can be, if we can get the authors on board with publicizing the event.

Authors need to start mentioning now that they are going to be at Westercon.  If they are presenting, they need to mention what they will be talking about and what day they are going to be there.  For now, once every two weeks should be good with posts increasing as the date grows closer.  We don't want to overwhelm people with posts as they might get annoyed, we want to spread awareness, not drive people away.  It really depends on the author as to where they will post.  Are they active on Twitter?  They should post there.  Do they have a million Tumblr followers?  That should be the best platform.  The main headliner, Christopher J. Garcia, has almost 800 followers on Twitter and has tweeted almost 15,000 times.  He should be mentioning Westercon at least once a week now that we are six months away from the event.

As I said before, I think that Westercon's idea of being a professional conference is hurting their attendance.  If they want to interact with the younger generation, they need to be more open and accepting of people who don't see themselves as writers yet, but just as a fan.  This is a key segment to helping build up the convention's attendance while also accomplishing the goal of hooking a younger audience, after all, all writers most likely start out as a fan.

To reach these fans, we need to utilize current media channels on Facebook and Twitter to help diversify the network.  Take the BYU Doctor Who Club, on Facebook, they have 357 members and might be interested in fantasy or sci-fi writers.  Their Facebook page is very active with posts about everything Doctor Who, but if they would be willing to discuss something that isn't related to the show, they might be a good local market to utilize.  I do not think that they would be willing to post super often however unless they could come up with a tie-in to the show.

I think that these two ideas are a good place to start as they will help us build customer relationships by reaching a number of different segments of our market.  Overall, utilizing these networks will help us create a more centralized and connected network that will strengthen Westercon's relationship with its target market.