If you listen to most marketers, growth consultants and business mentors talking about tribe building there’s not a lot of difference in what they say, and it doesn’t sound that complicated does it?
Yet for many business owners, creatives and people who sell themselves in some way (that’s almost all of us BTW), talking about what you sell and building a connected community around you can be a little daunting and is not something that comes naturally to most people. Why? Because your own stuff gets in the way. When something is really important to you, or something potentially exposes you, or is controversial or counterintuitive it is risky to put it out there for criticism, ridicule even, all your vulnerabilities show up and the excuses come out. The result you don’t build connection.
The truth is it takes effort and time to build your tribe, but most of all it takes courage. If you want to get connected you have to show up – consistently. You also have to follow a few basic rules – even if they feel counterintuitive.
Here are my tribe building rules:
Be clear – understand what you stand for and why you are developing this particular community – if it’s just to sell stuff you may need a rethink!
Don’t try to please everyone – think about who you really want to connect with, who you best serve, (this is usually the people you like working with also – it’s your group you get to choose), and think about how many people you really need to connect with – it’s easy to get sucked into the bigger is better trap, engaged and committed is always better.
Be yourself – nobody likes a fake, they won’t engage if they don’t trust you and will switch off if they don’t believe you. If you have done the first two things, this will be a lot easier. Stick to your values, talk about what matters to you and helps the community you are building – this is not the same as talking about yourself and your stuff by the way. You first have to earn that right, and the continue to use it with respect and boundaries.
Now be the more human version of yourself – it’s easy to get into leader or teacher mode in your community and while it might give you some warped feeling of security or credibility it is very bad for community engagement. So be as personable as you can be, don’t put on the formal, professional, jargony, stuffy or conforming version of yourself, just be yourself – talk the same, act the same, use the same humour, be vulnerable, just be appropriate for your audience – which if you’ve focused on who you want to connect with this should be natural. My guide be you for them.
Create emotional contention – most of your connection investment goes in here, time, energy and vulnerability – so make sure you are building around things that matter to you, that you are committed to and happy to talk about. These things should cross over both content and the experience members get from the community. Remember that people are making and emotional investment in working with you, usually long before they make a financial one!
Provide valuable and entertaining content – there is so much content available that your stuff has to entertain and /or add value if you want people to consume it.
Be consistent and available – just to be clear I am not suggesting you are on social 24/7 – you set the rules of engagement, or how to interact, it’s your community, but remember if you want people to spend time in your tribe, you have to as well.
Humans love to belong, to feel connected and part of that is adding value, not just being given (or told) stuff, this is why interaction and engagement are so key to building successful tribes.
It might be your tribe, but you are only one of many moving parts. You might hold the space – whether it is a business, social or family group, people in that space might recognise you as the leader, they might consume your wisdom, they connect with other members and only truly connect with you when you talk about stuff that matters to them – they don’t necessarily care what matters to you.
You are only ever one player in the connection game, People are not connecting with you they are connecting with each other.
Once you get this you are on the way to building a community.
Join the Brave Virtual CoWorking Community here
