There are a lot of thoughts, ideas, and people on social media – and then there’s your small business. With all the clutter, how do you get your message out and most importantly, how do you know you’re being heard? The answer is simple, you build a tribe.
A tribe is the community or following you create with your social media. These people have an interest in your business and actually need your help and expertise. Think of your tribe as a group of your biggest fans.
Why should you care about tribe building?
What’s the point of being on social media if you don’t have any followers? To build a strong online presence, you need fans and followers who are interested in your business and who want to support you. Your tribe has the power to market your business by spreading your message and content to their followers. That’s free marketing!
How do you build a tribe?
For your small business, tribe building is easy. Find your clients on social media and follow/connect with them. Usually they’ll follow you right back. Once connected, engage with them by sharing your content, promoting their content, commenting on posts, retweeting, etc. With social media, you don’t want to be a faceless company that just spouts out content, you need to be personable and engage with your tribe.
What do you do if your clients aren’t on social media? A tactic I use to build tribes is to look into online communities and groups for people with similar interests. Remember, your goal is to find people who need your expertise. What is the problem that your company solves? Who out there needs your help? Find those people and connect with them. You may get a lot of nothing back, but you’re bound to find a few loyal followers who really need you.
What not to do.
I understand that businesses want a lot of Facebook likes and Twitter followers, but that doesn’t mean you should blindly start following people in hopes that they’ll follow you back. If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter but only 125 of them are interested in your content, then what’s the point of the other 875? Sure you have an expanded reach, but those people will most likely never engage with you. They won’t reply to you or retweet your content to their followers because they’re just another number under “Followers”.
Social media is a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re concerned about the amount of followers you have and want the number to rise quickly, you’ll have to be willing to spend some money. Facebook and Twitter offer advertising options that will help you gain followers who are actually interested in your business.
Tribe building is time consuming but the payoff is worth it in the end. If you want your social media content to ring through the ears of the Internet, you need to build a loyal tribe.
Brand well and prosper!
Maddie