How to find your tribe and thrive at it.

Who

First look inwards into your customer base. Are you able to flesh out a set of characteristics that are common? Dig deep into all the resources you have about them, what are their Reasons To Engage (RTE) with you? You want to zero into the group whose RTEs are voluntary, repeated, and consistent. Uncover their motivations, their interests, their hotspots till you are able to have a clear picture of your tribe. 

Where

Where does your tribe operate? What are their digital footprints? Are they a part of any interest groups? Knowing where your tribe operates will guide your own marketing footprint. At some point, you may even decide to host one of such engagement platforms as what Under Armour did with Map My Run. Once you have that picture, you should be able to start identifying tribes beyond your customer base, are there any?

What

What do you talk about with your tribe? There are some natural topics – your brand story, product stories. Then there are extended ones. Say you are a health food brand - some related topics might be: fitness, nature, retreats … the list goes on. Having a pool of topics gives depth to your brand, it also makes your brand real and relatable.

How

Do you leave room for co-creation? How can your tribe share their own perspectives of your brand?  How do you envision your engagement to be like? Spontaneous? Organic? Or guided, structured, timed? Or somewhere in between these spectrums? There is no right or wrong answers. Your organisation’s tolerance for spontaneity will guide the tonality and mode of your engagement with your tribe.