Today’s post comes from my friend Erin Drury. Erin is the Social Ambassador for Dave Ramsey’s Lampo Group where she is currently working on a recruiting brand campaign for the web development team over there. She is a genuinely curious person who loves all things social. I think you’ll enjoy her perspective of how social media tools like Facebook can dictate how you get in front of people but they can’t take your story. At the end of the day, your story is still yours. 

For a while now, Facebook has slowly been pushing brand pages toward a pay-to-play model. It feels like we’re living out the frog in the pot analogy. I could go on and on about how awful a long term strategy I think this is for Facebook but the fact is that Facebook is where the people are. After all, they have 901 million monthly active users as of the end of March 2012.

While the people may be there whether I like it or not I have come to realize that even though Facebook dictates how I get in front of people, they do not dictate my creativity. They do not dictate my story.

Audience Vs. Tribe
If you think about it, tribes gather around stories. A tribe is really what we want, not an audience.

An audience is ambivalent to your content. They come and soak it up like sponges and then do nothing with it. It’s like they just sit on the counter and dry out. An audience will wait for a free hand out and then get bored and throw it away having little to no appreciation for the product itself.

A tribe, on the other hand, longs for your content. It comes to you seeking it and shares it with their friends, family, strangers, or anyone who will listen. They feel invested in your brand. They stand in your corner and cheer you on wanting you to succeed because they feel like they are on the journey with you. Also, a tribe is more likely to purchase whatever it is you are offering.

How To Build A Tribe
So what’s the best way to build a tribe?

1. Create a story people can get invested in.

2. Allow people to connect with your story.

3. Think about what they want to hear not just what you want to say.

4. Engage them. (It’s a dialogue not monologue.)

5. Be creative.

Case in point: the man I work for, Dave Ramsey, has over a million fans on Facebook and almost 250,000 followers on Twitter. The reason? He built a tribe. Whether he’s talking about his debt-free story or how he built his business, people connect with his journey and both want to be a part of it and for their own story to be similar. His story is worthy of connecting and he engages daily. That’s why it works.

Are you building an audience or a tribe?