Build a Tribe to Last

A tribe is a group of solid and dedicated fans that supports your work and helps your message spread.  Understanding tribes will help you as an author to overcome many of your fears with marketing and self-promotion. With a tribe, your influence and message will travel abroad, and more and more people will magnify your efforts.

Three things are needed to make a Tribe:

1. People connected to other people
2. People connected to a leader
3. People connected to an idea

Tribes cannot exist without people, but ultimately, it is the idea that breathes life to these tribes. If you have read the book Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, you will understand how an idea can become significant enough to cause larger and important change, in the hands of the people who campaign for it. The idea is the focus, and when done right, the leader will serve as the conduit the tribe members use to get a clearer picture of what the ideas is and how they can reach or use it.

Think about “being of service” to the idea you are promulgating so that when you think about promoting your book using your tribe, you will not feel that you are self-promoting. I am sure that you don’t want hawking people to buy your book, as it is demoralizing on your part.

When you have the right people advocating for a mutual idea, all you do really is to educate them, and you- as the leader of this tribe- has something to satisfy their need..

How does being the tribe leader of poets sound to you?  Or early childhood education champion? Or empowered women entrepreneurs?

You see, these ideas already exist; your job is to build a solid, dedicated tribe surrounding these ideas.  We have great examples of tribe leaders in various industries today such as Elon Musk, Seth Godin, Russell Brunson, Nas Daily, Project Nightfall, Peng Joon, and many more..

Think about the niche you have chosen when you started writing your book. What is your book positioning statement? Having clearly established the main message and your book’s target audience will make it easier for you to build your own tribe.
 
Nurturing and Building your TribeYour tribe will create the funnel you need to connect with new readers and build your author platform. Here are six simple steps to build it.  

Find them
Your potential fans are already congregating together in different places. How do you now gather them? You will need to connect with other influencers and collaborate. Hold webinars and physical conferences when possible and offer valuable inputs through sharing. In other words, start networking. Let people know who you are what you are doing. Slowly but surely, and with consistency, you will attract these people to your message, and they would want more from you. Consequently, they will follow you.

Educate them
It’s now the perfect time to start a blog through your website. Set up even a simple website and populate it with relevant content. This is your home base and everyone who finds you online will inevitably land here.  Remember to always announce your website each time you are invited to speak in other people’s platform. Use your website to expound on your ideas and teach what you are learning. Position yourself as the expert.
 
Nurture them
A lot of authors squander their precious time on social media, hoping to get a lot of followers. What you want to build is a tribe of solid followers. Having this goal in mind, you should realize that your email list is your most important asset because it is yours to manipulate. Conversely, social media platforms are highly regulated, and these companies will limit your marketing activities because they want you to pay to get promoted. With email marketing, you talk directly to your fans and they have given their consent to be contacted when they subscribed to your email listing.
 
Involve them.
You do not have to do everything alone. When you have like-minded people on your side, it is easier to convert them to do more than being passive fans. Use the power of leverage: you can achieve more with people. Teach your fans that you expect them to be involved in your work. This is key and the thing people often overlook. Start small with things like participating in your market research or live interviews.  Look at Demi Bernice on Facebook and discover how she involves her tribe in promoting freelancing. In just one year, she was able to sign up more than 4,000 students to her course.

Promote them
Over time, you will see who among your fan base will step up to be among your fiercest warriors. Do not be afraid when your fans step up and build their own tribes. I have always been a believer of the Law of Reciprocity and I see collaborations with the mindset of abundance than scarcity. Instead of fearing to lose your subjects, empower them to use their own voice to magnify your influence. These emerging tribe leaders will have the biggest impact on growing your fan base, so long as you cultivate good relationships with them. Remember that the true measure of a good leader is when he creates more leaders, instead of followers.
 
Sustain them
The quickest way to disengage your tribe is to stagnate them. Give them opportunities to interact with one another. There is a sense of invincibility in numbers; hence, why do you think content creators are in much need of becoming viral? But once the hype is gone, loyalty wanes.  Do not feed your tribe with junk food, give them proper sustenance through worthwhile involvement with the “idea” that all of you have started in the first place. 

---