Be the Centre of Your Tribe by Gihan Perera

A common theme in business and professional circles is the idea of building a "tribe" of loyal supporters around your business. It's certainly a hot topic right now, on and off the Internet. The world is changing to be about community, not authority; villages, not islands; collaboration, not hierarchy.

The Internet has made this happen, but its effects spread far wider. Even if you're a successful business owner already, with unique knowledge, a captive audience and a loyal customer base, you must change.

Google has destroyed the power of your knowledge.

YouTube has stolen your audience.

And Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have taken your loyal customer base.

Your clients and customers now come to you with more knowledge, power and influence than ever before. If you try to treat them the same way you always did, you'll struggle - and lose business to your competition.

So what should you do instead?

First, of course, you need to build a community. This takes a change of mindset, because it's no longer about just selling to individual customers with individual transactions. It's now about fostering relationships with the people who come into contact with your business. Some of them will buy immediately; others will take some time to buy; others might never buy from you but will still enthusiastically refer you to others.

You also need to take a different view regarding your position in your community.

Michael Henderson, a consultant and "corporate anthropologist" based in New Zealand, makes the point that in corporations the leader - or CEO - is generally at the top of a hierarchy; but in tribes the leader is at the center.

So: What would you do if you were at the center of a community?

Here are some things you can do:

Find members who need each other's services, but who don't know each other, and introduce them to each other.
Introduce people with common interests to each other.
Introduce people who work in the same market, but with non-competing areas of expertise, to each other.
Position other members of the community as experts, rather than you being "the" expert.
Empower other members of the community to take on leadership roles.
Find somebody to mentor in the community.
Create a succession plan for yourself, drawing from your community members.

Are some of these basic networking skills? Probably. But that doesn't make them any less valuable. If anything, they are even more relevant now.


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