Ryan A Graves.com

This weekend I attended my first Jimmy Buffet concert at Alpine Valley, WI.  In the words of my dear mother, “Everyone needs to see Jimmy at least once”. Jimmy Buffet, like no other musician that I’ve ever seen in my life, draws a very diverse fan base. Based on what I saw this weekend, literally anyone can go to a Jimmy Buffet concert and love it. There is no racial divide, no economic divide, no gender divide and definitely no age divide between the Parrot Heads.

As a blogger I obviously follow my audience fairly closely and like to know who enjoys reading or watching the content I create. Also, it may be obvious that I would like that number of people to grow. If that number grows the purpose of my blogging also grows, not to mention it makes me feel good. With that said, I think I, and bloggers like me, have a lot to learn from Jimmy Buffet. His open and all-inclusive style is one worth emulating. Gary Vaynerchuk is another web personality that masters this open and inclusive style.

Studying how Jimmy and people like him create such a following, I’ve come up with 2 main ingredients that feed this diverse following:

The strongest characteristic of Jimmy’s all-inclusive personality seems to be that he is always happy! Inherently people want to be happy, so when a person is happy and fun others are much more likely to be interested in being around or in this case following that person. There isn’t anybody that is sad at a Buffet concert. People are carefree and on the whole in great moods. If you go to a sporting events or other places where there are large crowds you often see fights and angry people. Even with the inevitable over consumption of alcohol, I didn’t see one fight all day. Jimmy is happy, the mood is happy, and people love happy.

Also, Jimmy’s music also reminds people of vacation, it takes them away from the routine of their “normal” lives and people are attracted to that “get away” feeling. Jimmy knows how to help people have fun; he has completely embraced the tropical mood of a vacation into his personality and musical style. He has done a wonderful job at managing his image in this way. People love doing something different than the norm and a Buffet concert is no doubt outside of the norm. Help create the feeling of ‘getting away’ and people are bound to follow.

So as you blog, speak, or create music remember that if you create a place for people to get away and create a happy aura and a happy mood your fans will increase, become more engaged and you’ll find that the impact of what you create will drastically increase.