Tribes in Today’s Marketing

What is a tribe?

Simply put, a tribe is a group of people that connect around a common goal. Tribes can exist anywhere and can be based upon any shared interest, no matter how specific. In fact, you are most likely a member of a tribe or even multiple tribes. You may even lead one. Behind every major movement and successful marketing engine there is a tribe. Behind every major movement and successful marketing engine there is a tribe. Barack Obama leads one in which he can raise millions of dollars in a single day. Steve Jobs leads a tribe comprised of a cult-like following of brand evangelists who hang on his every word during his two-hour product launch event and then go out and do Apple’s marketing for them. Tribes are not always large. Some don’t want to be big. In fact, many are exclusive. The common element around which most tribes form is actually quite narrowly-defined. These tribes are not just for golf, but for those afflicted with a natural slice in their swing; not just for personal finance, but for those obsessed with maximizing the energy efficiency of their homes; not just for shoes, but for those infatuated with handcrafted Italian leather stilettos. Balloon artists, amateur photographers, collectors of exotic southwestern jewelry, Ford Mustang enthusiasts, avid Mac users, city managers engaged in innovative economic development – all of these are tribes that gather. For their members, their interest is an intrinsic part of their identity, and their association with their peers is a point of pride. Anytime people make connections based on a shared passion, similarities in background or a common need for solutions to improve their lives, a tribe is born.

What’s changed

Tribes have always been around. Before the days of the Web, smartphones and Facebook, communities would form based on commonalities and gather face-to-face. Naturally, these tribes were geographically-based, and their numbers were fewer and limited to the most popular interests. Today’s tribes are different. The advent of the Information Age tore down geographical barriers by introducing platforms of persistent conversation and information sharing. Online message boards, which have been around for decades, overcame the limitations of locality and allowed for a tidal wave of tribes to be formed – not just big tribes, but ones that were small and highly specialized. People now had the tools they needed to find others with a shared passion and make an instant connection in the absence of physical proximity. As technology continued to evolve, the Web provided a more robust platform for these communities to take form. Smarter and more relevant searching allowed people to find outlets for their passions through 200 million websites. Website creation tools became more accessible, allowing those with limited technical know-how to create online hubs where their tribes could gather. Add to this new tools for scheduling, collaboration, coordination and real-time communication as well as wifi and the mobile Web, and you have fertile ground for tribes to flourish around any and every common goal and interest.

New types of tribes

In the past few years, the evolution of social media has allowed people to connect in ways that are not based solely on common interests but also on commonality in relationships and geography. When communities form around who their members are, where they live and how they relate to each other, a new dynamic is introduced. The tribe concept becomes even more powerful and pervasive as people forge ties around commonplace goals in their daily lives. For geographically-based tribes, the day-to-day problems of life – from finding the best deli in town to getting a recommendation for a good mechanic to obtaining a reference for a trustworthy electrician – are solved through the formation of tribes based on members’ inherent commonalities. Tribes can form around many different types of relationships. Whether it’s families bound together in a social network or colleagues that develop a web of connections on LinkedIn, the common thread that ties all these communities together is the relationship of their members to one another. in a world ruled by tribes, word-of-mouth is king Communication travels quickly through these organic networks, in most cases crossing over to other networks. Something as seemingly simple as a recommendation for TurboTax software during tax season spreads virally via word-of-mouth advertising from tribe to tribe, as members seek to solve problems in ways that enhance their own lives, the lives of others they care about and the environments in which they live. Thus, in a world ruled by tribes, word-of-mouth is king. Trust is not only essential; it is required.

The old system of marketing

Before the economy was overtaken by tribes of highly interconnected and informed consumers, success in marketing was achieved by the companies with the largest budgets and the greatest capacities to pummel the public into purchasing their brands. If you were selling a product 10 years ago, you would have run expensive advertising campaigns based on interruption, hitting the consumer over the head with your message as forcefully and as often as possible. The objectives driving this type of intellectual spamming were to raise brand awareness, create demand for more product, obtain wider distribution and ultimately apply those profits to more ads in order to fuel this vicious cycle. In what’s left of mass media, this wasteful practice still goes on. Arby’s invested more than $85 million interrupting everyone with an oven mitt to sell sandwiches. Progressive and Geico spend a fortune flashing their brands in any and all media and markets. Nike poured hundreds of millions into endorsements and marketing to sell more Tiger Woods-branded products simply because they could command higher prices. National brands aren’t the only ones guilty of still marketing by interruption and spamming. From law firms to home builders to car dealerships, local businesses in every town dump truckloads of money into carpet bombing the public with ads in local magazines, newspapers and television, shouting their claims that they’re the best, they’ve discounted everything yet again, they have too much inventory and everything must go.

Marketing in a tribe-driven world

Today, trust rules the marketplace. People have many more choices and much less time than ever before. As a result, they invest their time carefully in their passions, in the issues that count and in the things that make a difference in their lives. They have no use for or trust in traditional advertising. Instead, they belong to a tribe, and they follow the movement of its members and leaders. These tribes are formed and move with or without you. Today’s successful marketers bow to the tribe, reforming how they do business, how they develop products and how they grow accordingly. The power and influence you command through the trust you earn from the tribe is unrivaled by any form of advertising. Your membership in the tribe is earned through trust and trust alone. Trust gives you permission to talk about your ideas as well as what you are doing to improve the lives of its members. When you are active and demonstrate honest intentions and selfless motives, you are promoted by the tribe’s leaders. The power and influence you command through the trust you earn from the tribe is unrivaled by any form of advertising. In this way, the tribe is your marketplace.

Getting there

Many companies, particularly local businesses, have a hard time mapping the connection between tribes and their bottom line. In fact, most are challenged to identify where tribes exist or, if they must, start and lead a new tribe. The fact is, any successful act of business creates a solution for a problem or improves people’s lives in some way. Underneath that solution are people who are already talking about all the issues surrounding it every day. Your focus in growing your business should be to identify your tribe and lead it. Weber doesn’t just sell grills; they lead a tribe of grilling enthusiasts. Jeep doesn’t just sell cars and accessories; they lead a tribe of off-roading die-hards. Gary Vaynerchuk doesn’t just market wine; he leads a tribe of a million wine aficionados. Fame Foundry doesn’t just sell marketing and website design; they lead a tribe of entrepreneurs and decision-makers whose passions are focused on business growth. Your passion for your business is your license to lead. You don’t need to be a national brand to be a tribe leader. Your local dentist doesn’t just sell her services; she leads a local tribe of people that care about healthy teeth. She may have only 25 true fans, but when they tweet or post their endorsement for her practice on Facebook, multiplying their actions by the average of 150 connections per fan now gives her instantaneous, powerful and unbiased word-of-mouth advertising to 3,750 people. Eliza Metz applies her life’s passion to leading a massive tribe of yarncrafting fanatics who follow her on her blog, on Plurk, on Facebook and on her podcast. She has earned the trust of its members, who have elevated her to a position of leadership. As a result, when she says she likes something, they listen and move, which translates to sales immediately. Eliza has never bought one piece of advertising; instead, she leads. Your passion for your business is your license to lead. But you can’t just log in, plant your flag and begin selling your products or services. The tribe will banish you right away. The fundamentals of trustcasting prevail in every facet of business growth, and this is no different in leading tribes. In part two of this series, we’ll go beyond the foundational understanding of tribes and cover the steps to identifying, becoming a member of and leading the tribes that are relevant to your business and your bottom line in today’s marketplace.

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8 Keys to a Lead-Catching LinkedIn Company Page

Given the mind-boggling speed of all things social media, it's easy to lose perspective on the passage of time. So try not to choke on your chai latte when you read these words: LinkedIn is now officially a decade old.

Yep. It launched in May of 2003 – when Mark Zuckerberg was still an unknown Harvard freshman. Facebook's predecessor MySpace, now having its midlife crisis and hanging out with rock stars, hadn't even been born. And Twitter was three or four years from hatching.

While logic would suggest that businesses would be the earliest adopters of any platform that’s founded on the concept of virtual networking, LinkedIn has been sluggish in giving brands a seat at the community table.

In the latter half of the 2000s, Facebook and Twitter quickly adapted for business users as marketers chased customers into those exploding communities. LinkedIn, however, didn't even allow companies the ability to post status updates until late 2011.

But in the last year and a half, LinkedIn's evolution has picked up the pace, and newly redesigned Company Pages were rolled out in September 2012, giving brands the ability to market products, recruit new talent and engage more directly with the greater community than ever before.

So if you've passed on LinkedIn to focus on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, now is the time to grow your presence on the network built for business. Here's what you need to know to build a killer LinkedIn Company Page that will capture new eyes and convert new leads:

1. Getting started

If you have employees on LinkedIn, you likely have a Company Page already. LinkedIn creates them automatically via data from a third-party service – probably Dun & Bradstreet, though it's difficult to tell. But be warned. If you have one of these robo-profiles, it's little more than a short description, some contact details and a link to your website, so you'd better take control.

The first step is to establish an admin (or several) with editing privileges. These individuals need to meet LinkedIn's basic requirements, which in summary are:

• They must be a current employee.
• They need a company email listed on their LinkedIn profile.
• The company's email domain must be unique (e.g., jdoe@example.com), Sorry, Gmail won't work.
• They must have filled out their personal profile to a reasonable extent.
• They must have some connections.

If for some reason, you don't have a Company Page, the setup process is pretty straightforward after meeting the above admin requirements. Here's how according to LinkedIn.

Click Companies near the top of your home page.

Click the Add a Company link in the upper right area of the page.

Enter your company's official name and your work email address.

Click Continue and enter your company information.

If the work email address you provide is an unconfirmed email address on your LinkedIn account, a message will be sent to that address. Follow the instructions in the message to confirm your email address and then use the instructions above to add the Company Page.

A red error message may appear if you have problems adding a Company Page.

A preview of your completed Company Page is not available. When you publish the page, it is live on our website.

2. Look like you mean business

Once you've moved in, it's time to hang your open-for-business shingle on the door.

First, upload a company logo. For now, logo size is severely limited and the display quality is poor. It seems that LinkedIn is downsampling logos – removing pixels, and therefore sharpness – to save file space and speed page loads. So focus on keeping logos simple and legible at small scale. For example, compare the readability of the first two automotive logos below with the latter two.

Next to your logo, the banner image on your home page is your primary way to distinguish your brand visually. It's an at-a-glance way to say something about your company, and that expression can take any form you like.

Apple's banner conveys in both layout and message the brand's commitment to minimalist, functional design.

Nike, with its global corporate footprint, had a lot of ground to cover to represent its extensive brand portfolio in such a small space.

MAQS Law Firm is described as "a modern law firm combining professionalism and tradition with creativity and efficiency." Their logo/banner combination definitely says "creativity and efficiency" with a look that's more design firm that law firm.

3. Give 'em something to talk about

Like Facebook, Twitter and most other social sites, the front-and-center feature of your Company Page is an update feed.

It's worth noting, however, that its functionality is little more than broadcast medium, like the news page of your website. As a company, you won't be able to reply to comments or "like" another LinkedIn user's updates. That kind of give-and-take engagement is reserved for real people, like your employees.

So with this limitation in mind, focus your updates on topics that seed conversations and get shared across the LinkedIn community. Post news about your organization or links, with commentary, to interesting content around the Web.

Utilize colleagues to engage further with followers and commenters. Employees are also a great way to syndicate your updates as they share content with personal networks.

Unfortunately, creating engagement this way is like attending a networking event with your hands tied behind your back – it's kinda tricky and what you say had better be really good.

4. Promote your products and services

Nowhere do Company Pages offer more flexibility or marketing power as in the Products & Services tab.

A dozen parameters are available for describing and promoting each product or service in your portfolio. There are basics like description, title and links as well as the ability to identify key contacts, a sidebar area for special promotions and one for YouTube video embeds.

In addition, a header image slider drives visitor traffic to specific services listed below or to external-pointing links, back to your website for example. (This is a great way to build inbound links for you SEO-ers out there.)

To get started, provide a short description of each product or service along with a thumbnail image and link to your website. Believe it or not, this will put you ahead of many of the organizations using LinkedIn Company Pages today.

Once you've got the basics in place, slider images, videos and promotions can turn your Products & Services page into a compelling sales lead tool.

5. Audience segmentation

LinkedIn has built into the Products & Services tab powerful audience segmentation filters that allow you tailor your Products tab to different types of visitors. These filtering options are mapped to data from member profiles, such as company size, job function, industry, seniority level and geography.

6. Promote your groups

If your organization manages one or more LinkedIn groups, be sure to promote them on your Company Page.

If not, groups are a great way to build out your corporate LinkedIn presence and drive engagement with customers or those in your industry. When creating a group, try to focus on a topic or industry niche that lets you position your brand as an authority or that serves users in a way that’s unique to your brand.

For example, a private user group exclusive to your customers would let you gather insights for product development, provide another customer service channel and directly address criticism within a relatively closed environment and in front of your other customers.

Whatever group you run or may eventually run, be sure to let people know about it on your Company Page.

7. Analytics

Built into Company Pages are some pretty handy analytics tools, which LinkedIn refers to as "Insights."

Accessed via the blue "Tools" button in the header of your Company Page, Insights provide a straightforward view into how users are engaging with your brand, including:

• Page views broken down by Company Page tabs
• Update engagement by impressions, clicks, likes and shares
• Visitor demographics by seniority level, industry, job function, geographic region and company size
• Follower identification and demographics, broken down by seniority level, industry, job function, geographic region and company size

If you're familiar with professional analytics tools, LinkedIn's Insights will seem pretty light. But because they are built on user data behind LinkedIn's membership wall, Insights provide detail about your company's LinkedIn engagement that other analytics suites cannot. Ignore Insights at your own peril.

8. A word on Career Pages

If you see a Careers tab on an organization's Company Page, it's because that business is using LinkedIn's paid Talent Solutions services.

Talent Solutions offer powerful recruiting tools that, like audience segmentation, utilize LinkedIn's vast user data to drive more qualified candidates into HR departments. More than half of LinkedIn's revenues come from Talent Solutions, so it makes sense that the social giant would invest heavily in this tool.

If your organization is paying for Talent Solutions, make sure your careers tab keeps those recruiting leads excited about the possibility of working for you. The features are too extensive to cover here, but that's okay. For the price tag of Talent Solutions, you should have access to someone at LinkedIn who can help get you started.

For some Careers Page inspiration, look to companies that are widely known as great places to work. Here are a few to get you started:

Starbucks Careers Page

Zappos Careers Page

Google Careers Page

Inspiration to go

Now that you know what goes into a killer Company Page on LinkedIn, all that's left is to go build your own.

We've avoided specific step-by-step instructions in this article because they are subject to change as features are added or updated. But don't worry. LinkedIn provides guidance notes within the editing areas of Company Pages as well as an extensive help center with setup guides, FAQs, user forums and more.

Still, sometimes there's nothing like seeing it all in action, so I'll leave you with this 90-second snapshot of LinkedIn Company Pages. And don't forget to follow Fame Foundry on LinkedIn for additional digital marketing insights and news.

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