Our top fans are great for our brand.  Our top fans actively and continually talk about us, show others what we did for them, comment on our sites and spread the word about our products or services.

In fact, a recent study shows that Most Influential Teens Socialize Offline More Than Average and this is a personality trait so we can be fairly certain that this is common at all age levels not just amongst teens.  "Teen social media influencers are hyper-communicators and hyper-purchasers, with 97% spending two hours per day on a social networking site, 95% updating their statuses at least once per day, and 91% having more than 500 friends on their social networks."

According to recent article How to recognize and reward your brand's top fans it's just 1% of the fan base on Facebook or Twitter that provides 20% of the website traffic.  Even more astounding, only 20% of this group influences and they account for about 30% of sales just by recommending your products or services to their network.

Of course, our human nature causes us typically to focus on quantity and amassing many fans, instead of focusing on quality and the 1% that can generate a huge impact to our sales figures. 

Naturally, focusing on the 1% Top Fan Base means we need to be more proactive in several areas.

Identify Your 1% of Top Fans
Firstly, we need to identify this 1% fan base which would be our Top Fans.  You need to figure out who likes to share both online as well as offline.  Of course, the reason why we discuss social media at all is that online, the news can spread even more quickly given the same effort.

Find Out What Your Top 1% of Fans Like to Share
Next, we need to take time to figure out or create appropriate rewards and recognitions that would motivate these fans.  Find out what it is that they like to share - videos, blog posts, tweets, etc.

Recognize & Reward for Sharing
If you've made it this far, you realize that knowing your fans and social community is highly important.  And, particularly, knowing the Top 1% of Your Fan Base is more vital because now we need to know what recognition or reward would be valued most by these fans.  Whether its' B2C or B2B sales items and whether small or large, everyone can appreciate recognition and rewards.

It's engaging people.  It's being targetted.  It's being systematic.  It's creating an Online Marketing Funnel.  Only now, we a very targeted audience, our Top 1% Fan Base.

With this well executed program, we can build stronger ties with our social communities, develop sales leads and reward our most influential customer advocates.