As I’ve lovingly gained over 2500 people connecting to me in Twitter (without spamming anyone–quite proud of that, y’know), I’ve learned a lot about what my community of Twitter friends like: they like me. They follow me because I’m their “leader” and they like my ideas, my observations: my valuable content. They follow me because I am leading them toward being successful in marketing themselves online. They are part of my tribe because they feel connected to me.
That’s what Seth Godin is saying in his book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us.
Seth Godin, a brilliant thought-leader, especially when it comes to marketing, has always been ahead of his time. He’s such a potent influence on marketing, customer service and emerging media. It’s almost as though he can see into the future.
This is copied from the widget on Seth Godin’s blog:
A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature.
Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.
And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?
Guess who? Yep. YOU.
As you build your community (your tribe), I urge you to take care of your tribe as though they were related to you. Feed them useful information that’ll help them grow their businesses. But don’t make it all work and no play. Show us your human side, too. We like to see glimpses of your humanity. It makes us feel even more connected because we see that you’re not so perfect, just like us.
Build relationships with us. You won’t be able to do this with all of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends, just like you can’t build relationships with all the people you know in “Real Life.” But you can do it with some of your connections by supporting them, promoting them and introducing them to each other. Be the matchmaker. Be the “go-to” person that people turn to for help; for resources; or for the right person in your network who might be the answer to a prayer.
Embrace the fact that your customers are connected to you because you’re their leader: they trust you. They are really your tribe–AND when you start caring for and feeding your tribe more lovingly-–you’ll begin to see why traditional “top-down” or one-way advertising is dying, along with the old venues that carried those ads, like the Yellow Pages and newspapers.
A Net of Work
It’s not called a Net-work for nothing: the “net” of people can catch work for you by promoting you and referring work to you–but you’ll be much more successful if you be of service to them first, over and over.
Bottomline: You have to open your mind to the concept of tribes if you want to be much more successful in your business and as you engage in Social Media like Twitter and Facebook.
Let me know what YOU think. Please write a comment and tell me your Twitter name, too. I appreciate your time in reading this.
