In a world where technology moves at breakneck speed and business tactics and strategies change every day, its no wonder that marketing tribes or clusters of people involved in all the various aspects of online marketing have forgotten that there are some simple and powerful truths when it comes to effectively and passionately using your marketing tribe to its best potential.

Old Vs New Marketing Tribes

Old sayings like: “Build a better widget, and the world will beat a path to your door”. …is rubbish. That way of thinking is way too outdated and whoever said that didn’t have an internet connection or even a computer. Its more like build a better widget and then blog and create videos and create some tribes around it like a “social media tribe” and joint venture about it and hope that the Widget Store features it and then maybe just maybe the world will beat a path to your door. You’ve got to admit it is quite funny when you think about it but make no mistake there are some serious undertones in that sentence.

See, the world is only willing to reward innovation if they know about it and if they get a sense that the masses will do the same. People (in the context of society / groups) are on average followers and will only follow trends; so it’s incredibly hard to influence this behaviour in a group, which will in turn prompt them to “beat a path to your door”.

With that in mind isn’t it about time to push things up to a totally fresh new level and embrace the simple truths that Tribal behaviour stand for and use those methodologies and techniques to not only create a better business but also a better you.

Tribal Wisdom

In a nutshell, a tribe is any group of people, anywhere or any colour it doesn’t matter, who are connected to one another, and a leader or leaders, and an idea… or better put a vision. This understanding of how tribes work and communicate is largely misunderstood or even worse, people are so programmed into old school marketing that they fear treading into new territory and just end up re-hashing the same old methodologies and practices.

This kind of thinking IS very dangerous and can prohibit your company from moving forward into the digital age, because like it or not, the world is changing and if you don’t adapt quickly you’re going to be left behind. Since the dawn of time the only species that survives the challenges of this world are those that adapt to change and fast too.

Start your own Tribe

Of all the countless hours of reading, studying and research around this topic one theme keeps sticking its head out and that is; if you want to succeed in this business of Internet Marketing, SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing or whatever you need to find an audience or crowd and connect with them and establish deep long lasting relationships that revolve around more than just “making money” and actually make a difference, exchange ideas and share a vision…….your vision…….. or even a joint vision between you and your new partners.

If planned carefully you or anyone can create a powerful tribe in any area you desire for instance; An Seo Tribe, Social Media Tribe, Photography Tribe, Gamers Tribe, Technology Tribe, Gadget Tribe or in this case a Marketing Tribe.

Once you “get it” then you begin to see a bigger and better picture not only for your business but also for you and your family. Imagine a life where you’ve created a successful business and made loads of great friends and contacts to enrich your life.

To conclude Tribes are more powerful than they ever have been. Before the internet, building and creating tribes was hard and. It was tricky to grow, motivate and manage action. With the internet, communication is fast, free and worldwide. In today’s world, politicians can raise $50 Million in twenty-eight days. In the fluid tribal world of today, social media marketing, blogs and a whole variety of other tools combine to add whole new dimensions of what it means to be a part of a movement – a Marketing tribe.

Humans are social creatures. We are wired to share information and learn from each other through a process of “Social Syndication”.

Our decision making process places a high degree of relevance and trust in the knowledge, opinions and feedback from those we consider to be our “social peers”. It is fundamental to our survival strategy. Because our self-preservation instincts are so strong, our reliance on social validation dominates even our most trivial decisions. It is why word of mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising.

How is this Important to Online Business?

This aspect of human psychology has been a driving force behind the rise of Social Media and the proliferation of “social validation” and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, and Reddit.

Search engines are continually seeking for ways to ensure that their output is relevant to their human clients. Therefore it is only logical that they would place a significant amount of weight on data from these sites in calculating their rankings. This makes these sites extremely important to marketers. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about leveraging this behavior in your marketing efforts.

Dancing Elephants – Marketers and Search Engines Respond

When these sites were new, any exposure was thought to be “good exposure”. It takes some time for significant exposure to happen naturally, so early marketers looked for ways to jumpstart the process. Because it is fairly obvious (and very spammy) to continually promote yourself on a single platform, savvy marketers began by blasting bookmarks on as many sites as they could find in order to make their content “appear” popular, and therefore relevant.

This process initiated a dance between marketers and search engines like Google. Just as the search engines figured out the tactics site owners had used to create the illusion of relevancy with tactics like “keyword stuffing”, they have caught on to this “social self-promotion” as well. Today your site will be penalized or even removed from the rankings if the search engines find evidence that you’ve been “stuffing the ballot box” in your favor.

The search engines have also adapted by placing far less weight for rankings on content with multiple, single bookmarks than on content that has been ranked on only a few sites but by multiple people. There is even evidence to suggest that greater weight may be placed on comments from people with a history of bookmarking a variety of content. This would minimize the impact of “artificial buzz” coming from new accounts created by people to pump up their own volume.

The Rise Of The Tribe

Bottom line: Ten people bookmarking a single piece of your content equates to ten votes on that content and that is the kind of “social buzz” that generates SEO benefits. The same ten voting for you on 10 different social sites is even better.

So how do you accomplish this and still have time to produce content in the first place? That is the purpose of the Tribe in social syndication. Build a network of people who you can work with in a group to regularly bookmark each others’ content across 10 or more different bookmarking networks. This is your Tribe. The bigger the Tribe you can create (and effectively manage), the more social buzz you can initiate and all of your rankings will benefit.

The Human Touch Is Better For Everyone

The Tribe Syndication process also has a self-policing mechanism that serves the interests of both Google and the broader online community. Your name and reputation are associated with every flag you raise on the Internet. As a result, you are less likely to promote spammy content or to ask your Tribemates to do so on your behalf. So the overall quality of content available online increases. This benefits us all.

The formula is straightforward:

* Build your Tribe.
* Concentrate on creating content that is Educational, Enlightening and Entertaining – and relevant to your market or niche.
* Support the efforts of your community through social syndication.
* Focus on converting the meaningful traffic that will follow.

The process is simple, repeatable and authentic. After all, humans are social creatures. The Internet will never change that.

Chip Wilson is an author, coach and entrepreneur. After graduating from the Harvard Business School in 1992 he had a successful 15 year career on Wall Street. Chip left the corporate world to help other entrepreneurs achieve financial success and personal freedom for themselves and their families. He believes in the principles of integrity, passion for success and personal accountability. He also believes in the fundamental truth that that each ordinary individual is capable of extraordinary accomplishments.

To leverage Social Syndication and other strategies in your Personal Economy, read more and contact Chip at http://www.chipwilsonsblog.com.