Tribalism - Speaking the lingo

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This is another excerpt from my book due out November 5th - “Social Traffic”

Always remember that the people you are marketing to are your online community. They are a community of people supporting your services, attending your events and communicating directly with you. If you want more people to contact you for services, manage their events or to buy your products, then it is important to build initial trust and credibility first.

Secondly, you need to be an active part of the community itself. Participate with the audience, ask them questions, discuss ideas, share thoughts, request feedback. This communication helps people in opening themselves up to you and become more inclined to use your services or attend your parties later on. Also, it is the best way to get a feel for audience expectations and early feedbacks of your events. Credibility comes from sharing insight, discussing thoughts and adding value to conversations. When people start to respect your opinion as a good one, they will become more inclined to becoming your customers.

The escalating online trends in social media, the increase in fancy new gadgets - all of these factors have paved ways for you to communicate with your market on more direct levels. This direct interaction brings you to downright human levels and potentially breaks all gaps between you and your customers. You can talk to them. You can listen to them. You can communicate with them. You can build loyalty. You can build relationships of trust. You can do so much, just by leveraging different tools to form a bridge between you and your customers.

Some people believe that if you want to be ‘accepted ‘ or ‘liked’ by a group of people online - you have to be like them. Shel Israel calls puts it this way: “Humans are tribal by nature. It is in our DNA. It has to do with why we are passionate about sports teams and rock bands. It has to do with why most people want to marry people of their own race or religion and it has to do with the unfortunate human tendency to mistrust or downright dislike people of apparently different tribes.” (Shel Israel http://redcouch.typepad.com)

From my perspective, however, I have seen how the boundary of the concept of tribes strips down and evolves into something much bigger and tolerant online. The subtle anonymity or behind-the-curtains-feel of being online has changed our criteria of tribalism. Instead of race or ethnicity, tribes are formed based on authority, thought leadership and recognition. For instance, experts of a certain niche group are more revered than newbies.

Understanding the dynamics and cultures of a network or group is vital for surviving in it, and the only way to show them that you are one of them is by speaking their lingo.

Join the “Social Traffic” Group here

Watch “Social Traffic” the movie