Do you ever feel you’re creating really valuable content, but nobody’s listening? Do you have a story to tell but you’re lacking the audience?
It might be time to concentrate more on finding your tribe and becoming a great leader.
The internet is a noisy place and the hard part isn’t defining your message; it’s creating a community of people who want to hear from you. There will be people out there that have similar interests and passions to you, or want to unite for a similar cause – you just need to find them.
Remember that tribe building isn’t necessarily a numbers game, your aim should be to bring a few people together who want to connect or unite for a cause, slowly these people will reach out and find other like minded people and before you know it you’ll be leading a tribe.
Here are four tips to help you get tribal:
- Keep it real: Be authentic and be yourself, it’s the only way you will build the trust that every great leader should have. I talk a bit about being yourself in this post about “getting your blog on“.
- Keep on topic for your followers: Your tribe don’t care about what matters to you; they care about what matters to them; however if you have done your tribal leader’s job well, the two will ally.
- Be generous: Give loads of free tips away, share your knowledge and share that of other tribe members too. People love to be retweeted, regrammed and reposted, (things starting with “re” are generally good!)
- Respect your tribe: If people take the time to comment, re_______ (gram, tweet, post…. fill in the blank here), or connect with you in anyway, remember to acknowledge their support, we all like to be recognised.
Now for a success story… #gigatownnsn
About a year ago, a group of people began weekly meetings in a pub in Nelson, New Zealand, their aim to win an online and real world competition developed by Chorus, Gigatown, to help educate and inspire New Zealanders about the possibilities that a country connected with ultra-fast broadband over fibre can provide.
The Gigatown competition launched with 50 towns from around New Zealand competing to become the country’s first Gigatown. After a lot of hard work and a whole lot of hashtags, five towns remain, having qualified for the final round, one of those towns is Nelson, the town I live in. Big Kudos to those passionate people that founded the supporters tribe in those early days at the pub!
The Prize:
The winning Gigatown – that’s the town with the most points at the end of the competition – will be ideally placed to become a leading digital innovation hub for New Zealand. The winning town will receive:
- Gigabit connectivity – Chorus will make a special 1Gbps UFB service available in the winning Gigatown at entry level broadband prices
- A Gigatown development fund – a $200,000 fund provided by Chorus and Alcatel Lucent’s ng Connect will support entrepreneurs and innovators taking new services to market over the gigabit fibre connection in Gigatown.
- A Gigatown community fund – this is a $500,000 fund provided by Chorus that organisations in the winning Gigatown community can apply to kick start community related developments that showcase how gigabit infrastructure and UFB can be activated for social good.
Why winning #gigatownnsn will help your Nelson business:
- You’ll be able to improve your customer service by becoming more responsive through increased bandwidth.
- You’ll be able to reduce IT costs by converging your voice, data and video services and benefiting from Cloud based services.
- You can improve the quality of products and services for customers by doing more online.
- You’ll become more efficient, cutting costs by working faster with Ultra Fast Broadband
- You’ll be able to improve collaboration with other businesses and key partners (suppliers and customers) all over the world – with VoIP calls, email, video conferencing, instant messaging, desktop/data sharing.
- You’ll be able to change the way you work by spending less time and money travelling thanks to increased quality of video conferencing
- You’ll be able to make remote working a possibility – allowing you to recruit the best people no matter where they live.
- Winning Gigatown, will attract more businesses to set up in Nelson, which mean more customers spending money in our shops and restaurants. It’s a win win situation!
The #gigatownnsn team have done an amazing job of uniting and building their tribe. You can help continue that growth… Here’s how:
- Go to www.gigatown.co.nz, join up, activate the email from Gigatown (check your junk mail if it’s not in your inbox) and choose Nelson as your town – the town with the most supporters wins 15 million bonus points.
- Sign in at gigatown.co.nz and take the quiz. The town with the most quizzes done wins 7.5 million bonus points.
- Post on twitter, on Instagram, or on the Gigatown Nelson Facebook Page about the competition; about what winning gigafibre could do for Nelson; or about how Nelson could use new technology (a minimum of 5 words and the #gigatownnsn tag scores us points). The town most active on social media wins 30 million bonus points!
- If you would like more information or can help with the campaign/offer sponsorship, please email info@gigatownnelson.co.nz or go to their website gigatownnelson.co.nz
