Certainly the key advantage to joining a Syndicated Marketing Tribe is building traffic to your site and, hopefully, increasing sales. That’s the goal. My friend Patrick McIntosh and I started a tribe called the ‘DailyCrushers’ and about six weeks ago and already some tribe members are reporting increased traffic volume, up to double the pre-Tribe levels. That’s simply astounding. But traffic volume is not the only reason you should participate; in fact there are quite a few.
What we’ve noticed in our tribe is that a number of benefits are beginning to appear in addition to increased traffic. Once a week our tribe joins together on a SKYPE call and we promote each other’s latest blog posts, articles, videos, etc. We call these calls our “Power Hour”. It’s just a amazing how much interaction and exchange of ideas can occur between our members during these calls. Here are a few benefits I’ve started noticing from our Tribe and its “Power Hours”:
- Accountability. You’ve heard the expression, “your word is your bond”, and nothing is more true than with Social Media. If you recommend a blog post then you are staking your reputation on it, that is, you are staking the reputation of your brand on it. That’s serious stuff, and our tribe holds each other accountable for posting high quality material. If it doesn’t meet the standard, it doesn’t get promoted. This is a nice incentive to continually work to produce excellent content.
- Mutual Support. The tribe members are also great about letting each other know if there are any problems with their blog, like a widget failing, strange things going on with the sidebar, or failure to properly set up TweetMeMe. This helps you keep your blog looking its best for everyone else. Also, if any of us has a problem or needs advice, we’ve got access to a collection of online marketing and Internet experts that can get it solved. Finally, members have each other’s backs. If you’re sponsoring an event or a webinar, the Tribe is great to get in behind and promote it for you. Our friends in network marketing have an expression, “you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself”. This is a major benefit of the Tribe, whether you’re in network marketing, affiliate sales, business coaching or sell your own products.
- Mastermind Effect. I know from my marketing research background that groups of people create a synergy, where the sum of the parts working together is greater than the sum of the individuals working separately (ex. 2 + 2 =6). That’s exactly how a smooth-operating tribe works too. Recently one of our members was experiencing “writer’s block” coming up with a blog post topic. The tribe discussed it and a great topic surfaced. This kind of higher group function can really help you leverage your business.
- Leadership. The tribe is also a great place to hone your leadership skills. When setting up our tribe we went to great lengths to establish that the tribe was strictly a team of equals. At any specific time any member can step in and provide leadership to a group of peers. This happens every week in our tribe, and as far as I can recall, every single member has provided leadership; it’s just a natural outgrowth of participating in a creative group session.
- Stretching Personal Growth. We’re pushing our tribe members to begin creating unique expert training. Each tribe member is developing a 10-minute presentation which will be delivered at a Power Hour. For most, this pushes them past their normal comfort zone. That’s exactly where they need to be operating if they want to grow as a person, as a leader, and as a business owner. The tribe can serve as a stimulus to push its members to raise their standards and to improve themselves.
- Joint Venture Potential. In addition to stimulating personal growth, the presentations during our Power Hour will begin to accumulate into an information bank of training that we can refine, package and sell as joint venture products. We’re ultimately going to be able to monetize our efforts to help each other, and to me, that’s just amazing!
- Best Practice Identification. Over the six weeks since we started our tribe, various members have shared special expertise with the tribe. For instance, one tribe member is Matthew Neer, who is a WordPress and HTML guru. His practices and advice have improved each of our blog sites. Another member, Glenn Arcaro, is a professional television editor, who has provided us with expert tips on making videos for our businesses.
One of the benefits I didn’t mention is that this is actually a lot of fun! I don’t know about you, but for me fun is a real motivator and a great reward for all the work I do operating my online business. I hope you’ll consider joining a Syndicated Marketing Tribe and sharing some of the benefits I’ve found with mine. I’d love to hear from you. Please comment on this post and let me know what you’re thinking. And if you like what you’re reading, please Tweet about it and bookmark the post.
Thanks,
Phil Jackson
614-570-5293
