In this article we’re going to dig a little deeper into one of the main reasons we believe most people fail to gain any real traction when it comes to building their Facebook group and their tribe.
There are essentially two parts to it:
1, They haven’t got clear on their mission – in other words they don’t have a motive other than making money and promoting their business.
And
2, They don’t have a clear message that they can lead with to let others know why they should be interested or join their cause.
Now if you’re reading this and you’re thinking “I don’t have a mission or a message that I can promote”, I can assure you that you do… you just haven’t tapped into it yet.
As we move through the article I’ll give you a few examples of how this works but for right now there are a couple of things you need to realise.
First of all, PLEASE don’t think that because you’re not 100% clear on this yet that it’s not worth you doing anything with your group.
We always advocate taking massive imperfect action.
Action is what will get you to your goal.
Fine tuning the strategies will get you there faster, and that’s where we come in
Secondly, please know that none of your decisions about your message or your mission are set in stone.
In fact they’ll probably evolve as you grow as an entrepreneur… and they should because your mission and your message will grow bigger with you.
Humans are essentially creatures of habit.
The things that motivated people 100 years ago, heck even Thousands of years ago still apply today.
Part of that base behaviour is that we’re generally attracted to PLU… or People Like Us!
People who have a similar code of ethics.
People who like what we like.
People who hate what we hate.
People who support what we support.
It’s one of the reasons we created the Tribegeeks manifesto, so people can self identify that they belong here.
People are still essentially tribal at their core.
Don’t think so?
Then explain what makes a normally rational adult male (or female) beat the snot out of someone they don’t even know because they’re cheering for the other team.
Or even worse, take a life because that person wore another gangs colours.
OK, that’s a little bit of an extreme case scenario but you can’t deny that people love to have a tribe to belong to and many people are SUPER passionate about it, some even defending it with violence.
It’s where they feel connected and at home, because they share a common goal and world view with the others inside that tribe and we all have it in us to a lesser or greater degree.
As you may know, we kinda got started with Facebook groups whilst selling our own handmade product.
If you want to hear the story of how that went we talk about it in Episode 1 of the podcast.
Inside the Facebook group that we set up we didn’t really talk about our product.
In fact we made the whole group a non selling space, even for us (Doh!).
But what we DID do was make the group all about elevating the niche that we were a part of, which was shabby chic furniture (believe it or not ).
But everyone who loved shabby chic furniture knew that this was a place where they could hang out with other people who were into shabby chic and show off their projects as well as get advice and see what everyone else was up to.
Even though the group was a non selling space, plenty of people still checked out our website and became customers.
If we’d just led with the product and tried to attract people that way we wouldn’t have got nearly as much traction.
That group alone had more than 30k members and that little business regularly saw us earn six figures until we sold it on to do what we do now.
It grew because we made our mission to build a home online for shabby chicer’s to get better at what they do and learn new techniques.
Our message was that we wanted to elevate the standard of the niche and make old pieces of sturdy furniture beautiful again.
And because people knew what we stood for, if they shared that same passion for shabby chic furniture then joining our Facebook group was a no brainer.
They knew we shared a common goal and interest.
Conversely, most people online never focus on what their goal or mission is, so it’s almost impossible for people to know if that group is a group for people like them.
People need to know what you stand for and also what you stand against.
THEN it becomes much easier to attract the right people to your group.
Our mission is to help as many people as possible leverage the power of Facebook groups to build their tribe.
When we stumbled onto the power of groups everything changed for us.
We went from having no influence online and struggling to make any sales at all to being recognised as the #1 in our niche and having other industry leaders reach out to ask if they could work with US.
All due to starting and growing a Facebook group and building a following.
We lead with that message everywhere and we believe in it 100%.
The thing that will help you massively when it comes to building your tribe is coming up with your version of what you do and why you do it.
Why you do what you do is SO much more powerful than just telling people that you have a product to sell.
If people can get behind what you’re doing then they’ll join your tribe.
Especially if you can help them to get what they want along the way.
So if you want to get clear on your mission and your message as well as grow a huge following, come up with answers to the following questions.
1, What do you do? – I mean what are you actually on a mission to create?
2, Why do you do it? – What’s the story behind why you feel compelled to do what you do?
3, Who are you doing it for – Who are you trying to help and save by doing what you do?
Remember, just waving your company flag isn’t enough.
People will connect with you over what you represent.
One of the most beautiful things about building your tribe this way is that when you do, you essentially render your competition irrelevant.
if all your customers want is a product, there’s probably a Hundred or more places or people they could buy it from.
But they’ll come to you.
They’ll come to you because you’ve connected with them on a deeper level.
You’ve served them and given them a place online to call home.
Now they’re connected to the Mothership and as long as you keep showing up the right way, nobody will be able to tempt them away.
Sure they may look at other things but they’ll always come back to you.
We’ve got group members that have become friends and have been with us for close to 10 years.
It’s amazing to watch their journey alongside ours.
If all this seems a little heavy and you need some help figuring it all out, why not check out the Tribegeeks Academy?
We’ve got a whole community of people there that would love to help you as well as live weekly video access to us.
You know what our mission is… you know why we do it, and you know we can help
Let me know what you think or any comments you may have in the comment section below.
I help home business owners and online experts build their Facebook tribe, dial in their message and automate their sales process using organic methods so they never have to beg people to buy.
With online false claims and under-delivery of promised results becoming the norm for many right now, I believe that honest, relationship based business promotion is the way forward for anyone looking to build an online brand.
I’ve worked with thousands of business owners to help them ‘find their voice’ to clarify their message, as well as show them how to make offers in the most natural and efficient way.