Two nights ago my husband took a nasty fall and split his head open (four inches across) all the way down to his skull. Some almost 40 stitches,
20ish tweets and several hours spent at ER, we made it home.
What does this have to do with relationship marketing? I sent one tweet:
I immediately received tweets in reply in concern for my husband. Several of them were from people I’ve never met in real life, but had cultivated a relationship with online.
It reminded me of a Ted Talk I had recently listened to. Seth Godin did a Ted Talk on “The Tribes We Lead.”
Godin focused on finding, leading and connecting to your tribe.
“The Beatles didn’t invent the teenager, they just decided to lead them,” Godin said. Everyone has a yearning to connect to someone, something, some how. This is how I view many relationships on Twitter.
As I sat waiting for the doctor to finish sewing up my husband’s head, (Oh my gosh, do you know how much head injuries bleed? I almost passed out, but that’s another blog post.) I tweeted our progress and always received assurances from my Twitter Tribe. The people that I have connected with over the last several years were genuinely concerned with my husband’s welfare.
Had I not spent time cultivating friendships on Twitter, no one would have responded to me. Twitter offers an amazing platform to connect with people all over the world in a simple manner.
So I started thinking, my experience is a reflection of a personal experience. How does it translate to business?
If you do a Google search for tribal marketing you receive about 21,500,000 results (in 0.16 seconds). Tribal marketers realize that the most import asset is the permission to offer people the information they want from your company. Brand management is not longer important. It’s not about pushing your company’s product on an unsuspecting mass audience; it’s all about building relationships with people who want you to share information with them.
In today’s marketing age, everything a company does should be revolving around your tribe. Godin says, “Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe.”
So, how do you lead your tribe? Godin suggests that you tell a story, connect with your tribe, lead a movement (your tribe) and make change. As you can tell from the diagram, this is a continually circle.
Two days after my husband’s accident I saw this post:
I have to agree. Our local Twitter Tribe is amazing. They helped me through a tough night at ER. It has been great fun cultivating friendships with this tribe.
