How to build a large, engaged tribe for your business

A tribe is another word for community, or more accurately a community of your supporters. Regardless of whether you are in business, volunteer for a charity or are keen to promote a cause – you need a tribe. But how do you go about building a big community? There are a few basic rules I want to share with you today.

Be Prepared to Give

Having a large and engaged tribe will increase your sales, but if you try and fail to build a tribe you could alienate people. My first piece of advice is to be prepared to give. You cannot look at tribe building as a marketing exercise. If you want to enlist followers you need to give them a reason to listen to you – to support you. I have been a public speaker and author for years. Hundreds of thousands of people have gone to my seminars, bought my books and read my emails, but I am very genuine in my desire to give to people and help them. For example, in this blog I want to give you quality advice on tribe building. Ask yourself what is the key mission of your business? For example you might sell organic cleaning products and your mission may be to rid homes of dangerous chemicals and show people that they can clean their houses without using hazardous products. To build a tribe you might begin by designing a leaflet outlining your mission and detailing what is in your cleaning products and how they work. The pamphlet also needs the URL address of your blog. On your blog you could write about the dangers of toxic chemicals and how effective your products are. You could also offer further household cleaning tips. The point is, you have to have a genuine reason for building a tribe

Have a Genuine Reason

Successful tribe builders have a genuine and often benevolent reason for beginning a tribe but your reason must appeal to people. If your cause is too offbeat or remote people won’t understand your passion and motivation. In your advertising material and blog you need to clearly state why the cause is important to you and provide real examples of how you can make a difference. No one wants to sign up to a lost cause. Think of movements that have grown organically, such as Clean-Up Australia Day or Earth-Hour. Both these causes – getting rid of rubbish and cutting down on electricity use – made perfect sense to the public, and people were happy to get on board. Did you know that Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007? Then San Francisco copied the Sydney initiative and now ten countries including the US, Italy, Israel, New Zealand and Brazil all turn off their lights for an hour ever year. That is one big tribe! But again, don’t expect people to join your tribe unless you convince them to support your cause.

Spread the Word

Your tribe can exist on and offline. You may start by distributing pamphlets, set up a blog and content on other platforms (Facebook, Instagram, etc…). Also compile a list of email addresses. You might also want to do some public speaking for different groups in your community and when your email list gets big enough, you might want to hold a function in a public hall. It is okay to start small, but make sure you bring along a group of supporters, be they staff, family or friends. Plan carefully what you are going to do at the event. For the first half hour you might outline your mission and your ideas on how you plan to achieve your goal. Again, if you want people to stop using harmful cleaning products you could consider letter dropping or putting a post up on a community notice board. During the second half of the event you could run a think tank. Divide the crowd into smaller groups and get people to think about ways of getting the message out there. It is fine to have fun and chat with the people who attend, but remember you are there for a purpose. Be productive. Set a task and time limit, for example every group has half an hour to come up with four ideas.

Set Regular Meetings

If you decide to keep meeting, set a regular time and venue – 8pm on the first Thursday of every month. You could also consider having guest speakers to your meetings. If you are promoting organic cleaning products invite a scientist to talk about how toxic chemicals are linked to cancer. Be innovative. Would it be feasible to give your tribe a place to hang out? I’m not suggesting that you have an open door policy at your home, but rather suggest a café that people could drop into in the afternoon. If tribe members desire company they should arrive and see if anyone else has turned up. You could also set up a Facebook page for your tribe where they can chat.

Become a Strong Leader

To run a tribe you need to be a strong leader. That doesn’t mean you need to be dogmatic and bossy, on the contrary the best leaders serve their community. You need to lead by example. You have to have a solid track record and follow your own advice. Again I’ll return to my example of selling organic cleaning products. How would it look if you still used chemical products yourself? Aim to practice what you preach. In addition to this you need to have a good relationship with the members of your tribe. You must be a people person and be prepared to listen and communicate. You need to take on board the feedback others give you and establish a meaningful connection. People join tribes or communities for companionship as well as a shared belief in a cause.

Invest in your Self-growth

If you want to step into the role of leader be willing to keep working on yourself, to keep growing. You need to be reading constantly and researching every new development in your area. You can’t just pretend to be an expert, you need to become an expert and across all the new literature in the field.

Train Others

You might also want to consider training ambassadors. Are you in a position to take in university interns and teach them about your industry? Basically you want to win them over to your cause, so they will go out into the community carrying your message.

A tribe is a community of people connected by a cause and a leader. The cause and leader ultimately connects them to each other and, most importantly, enriches their live