What's your story? Who's telling your story? Who is your tribe? What is a tribe? How are you connecting your tribe?
Using simple social medial tools (blog, Twitter, and Facebook) to connect your community of users.
3. What is a Brand? Brand is the emotional an psychological relationship you have with your customers. Strong brands elicit thoughts, emotions, and sometimes physiological responses from customers. Examine the following logos: "A brand isn’t a brand to you until it develops an emotional connection with you."
4. What is a Brand? Logos are not brands, they are merely representations of brands. "...brands speak to the mind and heart" Benefits of a Brand Branding your organization yields both internal and external benefits. Externally, you create an identity that resonates with the community. Within the business, your brand serves as an internal compass of focus. If you clearly brand yourself, you have an understanding of what you are about.
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7. Who’s Telling Your Story? Engage your community…using Social Media Leverage word-of-mouth-marketing by using social media
16. What is Social Media? “ The online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video.” Source: Wikipedia
Throughout this I make references to “businesses” but it applies whether you are a government agency, a non-profit, or a business.
OK – who, after looking at these logos heard the duck in your mind saying "Ah Flack.“ Simply looking at these logos elicits an emotional response. You had thoughts and feelings about each company. Brand is the emotional an psychological relationship you have with your customers. Strong brands elicit thoughts, emotions, and sometimes physiological responses from customers. Examine the following logos:
Logos are not brands, they are merely representations of brands. They are the entry point and the shortcut to the brand for your mind. Brands are not concrete; they are the thoughts, feelings, and psychological relationships between a business and a customer. And your brand is the foundation of all your marketing activities. Benefits of a Brand Branding your organization yields both internal and external benefits. Externally, you create an identity that resonates with the community. You form emotional relationships with them. That's important because people don't support groups or buy products logically, they do so with their emotions. Within the business, your brand serves as an internal compass of focus. If you clearly brand yourself, you have an understanding of what you are about. You have a self awareness that dictates your actions. All decisions, not just marketing, are made in alignment with the brand. Over time, you build a stronger identity.
You can have an incredible story – but if you don’t tell it then no one will know it!
Today, more than ever it is critical to engage your community Today, Social Medial is he new form of Public Relations
Word-of-mouth-marketing is very important when building a brand. You can leverage word-of-mouth marketing by using social media tools – there are 100s but a Blog, Twitter, and FB will do just fine I put in place the tools, a simple Facebook group page, that has allows almost 900 people to connect with each other – to learn what’s going on, to find climbing partners, to sell used gear – and to help promote things that I present to them. This has resulted in an opt-in email database of about 2000 people – all of whom have an active interest in the outdoors.
This is why you need to know who you are talking to. Figure out who your primary users are and focus your efforts to reach and engage them – in the process you will reach other fringe users too. I call this hitting them with the shrapnel. I focused on active outdoor users: multiple times per month/week, they’re passionate about their sport, they care, they participate, and they engage. For the most part they are ages 34-45. Who gets hit with my shrapnel? Occasional users who run in my primary target circles, those who have an interest in the outdoors but don’t quite know how to get out there and experience it, friends of all of these people. By targeting my key users I leverage my efforts and let them spread the word to the fringe groups – hence the shrapnel.
For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think Deadheads or Parrotheads). It’s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming. Social medial tools are allowing people to connect with other people who share similar interests. The Web can do amazing things, but it can’t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals— people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at his/her fingertips. And so the key question: Who is your tribe? Who is going to lead them? How are you going to give them a voice? What is your tribe? For me – it is active outdoor users who place extreme importance on outdoor recreation, integrate it into their daily lives, and are strong proponents of getting people outside and active!
Leaders are not the same as bosses and manager – anyone can be a leader. No one gives you permission or approval to lead. You just do it. The only one who can say no is you. In other words, you can make a difference if you have something to say, and want to Leaders understand that change is the key to success. And it turns out that employees who are committed to change and engaged in making things happen are happier and more productive.
Anyone can now find or assemble a tribe and lead it. The tools are there to lead the tribes that are forming from Facebook to Twitter to Blogs. - "All that's missing is you, and your vision and your passion," With so many businesses, groups, and organizations competing for the attention of your community, who are becoming busier and more involved, it is a difficult process to break through all the noise and static. So how do you break through and succeed? You let go - and let your staff and tribe followers do the talking. The “conversation” is what is important. Cut that out, and you have a static website or conversation. Have you ever met someone who only likes to talk about themselves and never asks about you – do you ever seek them out in the future? As participation increases, so does content and engagement. And as those increase, so does your community involvement. How can you not give your Tribe a voice and let them speak? If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a “sheepwalker”—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don’t do very well these days.
People form tribes with or without us. The challenge is to work for the tribe and make it something even better. It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them. It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about. Instead of looking for customers or users for your products or services , you seek out products (and services) for the tribe. Find what they want – and if you can’t provide it find someone who can.
This is just a fun visual to demonstrate the power of word-of-mouth-marketing and leverage. This isn’t always me at the top – it could be the leader of the bike tribe, the fishing tribe, or the hiking tribe. There are always tribes within tribes. Connecting these leaders, educating them, and giving them a forum to speak leverages my efforts.
The top portion of this represents traditional media as a one-way street – pushing information on the population The bottom half represents social media as two-way street – the population is contributing to the content. With social media more control is given to the community
Having a website is crucial in promoting your business - having online community tools and features are also critical - but they alone cannot create a community out of thin air. Communication – whether in person or online – must be a two way street, otherwise it becomes static.
How much do you think it costs to have a video created by an ESPN affiliate that will air to an audience of 56 million people and, you get a copy of the video to use as you wish? Any idea? ZERO You can reach local and regional media, clubs, citizens, and more