Everyone Wants To Belong To Something Special
The word “community” is no longer sufficient to describe what we bloggers must build around ourselves and our blogs in order for us to thrive. Communities are for generic social sites. Successful bloggers build something more akin to a tribe. A brother and sisterhood of people who feel part of something special.
I’ve seen the tribe effect happen first hand. When we started Content Desk years ago, we didn’t just open up a membership site. We grew our own tribe of followers who felt like they were part of something special. A movement toward building real assets for their businesses rather than throw-away Adsense sites which everyone seemed to be building at the time.
We built a place that certain people wanted to belong to…
…not just a service to help small businesses grow or a generic place where specific training was provided in a cold, non-personal fashion. It made a huge difference in our marketing when members went all over the web bragging about their membership. They were doing it in a way that was passionate beyond how people would rave about good customer service, or the features and benefits of membership.
Friday Traffic Report Has A Tribe of Readers and Contributors…
…and so do all the successful blogs online. There’s your overall visitor count per month. And then there’s your regular, repeat visitors who do the most commenting and take the most action on what they learn from you.
Your core readership develops around your blog because they identify with what you provide them on a regular basis more so than with most other blogs in your niche. These people are your tribe. They are behind you 100%. They support you and help you in many ways that average visitors never will.
They are the largest consumer of your products and services. They are your true fans. And they all feel like your blog is the place to hang out and learn and network more than any, or most others.
How Do You Build A Blog Tribe?
In many ways it just happens. Over time you will pick up regular readers because of your delivery, philosophy, the accuracy and depth of your content, and because they agree with you most of the time. Adding to your tribe is really just a matter of continuing whatever it is that’s been attracting your repeat visitors and the content that’s been getting the most comments and links from other bloggers.
7 Steps to Building A Solid Tribe
- Make your fans feel welcome and like your blog is a place they belong. Reply to their comments quickly and with heart felt thanks for their participation.
- Reward subscribers with something nice from time to time. Give them a free report or extra content of some kind that you only share with RSS subscribers or email subscribers and no one else. Don’t even advertise this bonus to the “outside world” on your blog. Surprise your real followers with gifts and extra little things here and there.
- Find ways to help your tribe members for the good deeds they do on your blog. Go to one of your regular commentator’s sites and buzz one of their posts or pages. Link to them on your blog. Review their blog in a post. There are many creative things you can do to show you appreciate your tribe. Put this one your calendar and regularly find someone who you can do something for in appreciation of their participation. You won’t believe the returns you get from this over time as tribe members start talking more about you and your blog.
- Give your tribe something to brag about. Use features like “Recent Comments” in your sidebar to highlight and link to your contributors. This is just like the long-time members of forums. People are proud of the length of time they have been involved in a tribe and how much more “street cred” they have over newer tribe members.
- Do a “Site of the Day” …or week…or month and highlight one of your more dedicated followers with a review of their work and, of course, a link. You can even point to the review, email them, and give them a custom “badge” to put on their site for being featured on your blog. Most will be happy to put it up and link right back to you for the honor.
- Write pieces for your blog that convey a sense of purpose and belonging among your tribe. Talk about your long-time and most dedicated readers as if there is a special membership, club, or elite level of people in-the-know grouped around your blog. More people will want to “belong” as well, sensing that they are somehow missing out on something cool or important.
- Put your favorite readers’ sites in your blog roll and find other ways to highlight the people who go above and beyond average participation in your blog’s community.
Update: As Kenny points out below, I must have taken subconscious inspiration from Seth Godin’s Tribe post. I remember now reading that one. Pisses me off that he put it better AND did it with far fewer words!
What have you done to reinforce and grow your blog’s tribe? Please share!
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Jack,
Let’s see how Merriam-Webster defines “tribe”: 1 a: a social group comprising numerous families, clans, or generations together with slaves, dependents, or adopted strangers 1b: a political division of the Roman people originally representing one of the three original tribes of ancient Rome 2: a group of persons having a common character, occupation, or interest …
Okay, so let’s go with #2.
And absolutely correct. Long-lived conversations (successful blogs) truly thrive in a Balkan valley of dialects and common interests. Many communities (social sites) simply scan headlines for fool’s gold, titillation, and self-approval.
Thankfully, everyone in the neighborhood of this blog is not a community-ist.
Herb
Herb Pagano Jrs last blog post..Hiking Monts Or Mounts Under The Stars Or In The Rain
Great post Jack, and a useful follow-up to this one from Seth. Would have been useful though, as background for readers, to have linked to Seth’s post, especially as he more or less coined the word ‘tribe’ in a marketing context – unless I’ve got it completely wrong and your post wasn’t inspired by his.
Kennys last blog post..RIP Mitch Mitchell
Kenny,
I wasn’t consciously thinking of that post, but who knows what effect it had on me subconsciously! Godin is always somewhere in my head waiting to influence my writing, that’s for sure. Thanks for bringing him to the surface!
hehe you didn’t link to the original post Jack.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/the-number-one.html
BTW I’m part of your tribe
Love the content here, always solid and this is by far one of the best free resources for web2.0 and traffic information.
Cheers, Tim
lol – I am really going to end up in a ditch! Thanks Tim, you provide an example of how your tribe can protect you from being erased.
Hi Jack
I completely endorse what you’re saying, I bought ‘Tribes’ by Seth Godin two weeks ago, it’s a must read. It’s the first Seth Godin book that I’ve ever read.
Also, I’m a member of SEO 20/20 by Charles Heflin and this thing about ‘Tribes’ is a major part of their ethos and training materials. One of the things Charles says is that some members of your ‘Tribe’ will become evangelists for your product or service and they will promote what you have to offer to their friends on sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter without you having to do anything other than continually posting top quality content to your blog.
This can have a major effect on your search engine rankings and visibility because of the all important links pointing back to your site from authority sites all over the web.
Your ‘Tribe’ effectively do all the promotion for you.
John O’Hara
United Kingdom
Tribute Bandss last blog post..Madness Tribute Bands: One Step Behind
Jack,
I love the blog review and badge ideas!
I use the following plugins to build the sense of tribe:
What Would Seth Godin Do (tracks cookies so after 3-5 times, they are welcomed back right before first blog post).
Absolute Comments – Sends your new commenter a personal “thank you” email for their comment as well as a link to the post. Hmm maybe including a bonus here would be nice!
Intense Debate – Allows you to get comments by email so that you can instantly respond. It is a comment system that adds such functionality as: threaded comments, a reputation system, user profiles, and user/topic tracking across multiple blogs.
Excellent info, Jack.
I appreciate you! Will definitely incorporate these tips to build my tribe.
Dali Burgado
Dali Burgados last blog post..Creating Clarity in Blogging
Jack,
Good points about what to focus on. Getting the repeat visitor percentage higher will ramp up profits. My site stats indicate about 37% repeat visitors and I’d like to get it up to 50%.
What percentage of FTR readers are repeat? What benchmark do you shoot for?
Alexander
alexander -social media guys last blog post..Twitter Do’s and Don’ts
Mine is about the same last I checked. I’d like to get to 40% +. 50% would be pretty incredible – that gets harder as your blog gets more popular and you start reaching more and more people who’ve not visited before.
Tribe is a better term for what we are trying to do as bloggers. A point to look at is that there are tribes inside communities…those tribes tend to stick much closer together
Calebs last blog post..Blog Traffic For Free