Five Ways to Find a Tribe

I’ll be unique and call Seth Godin’s Tribes influential.  The book shows that connections fuel today’s economy, and success depends on finding your network.

The problem: I have not found my tribe.  Is it healthcare analysts?  Microsot Excel geeks?  Advice for recent college grads?

I’m not sure yet.  But here are the places which have been most helpful for me to find it.  All familiar platforms, but these features have been the most powerful.

1. Twitter hashtag search.  I’ve had a Twitter account for month but had no idea where to start.  Building a Twitter following seemed like bottling the ocean.  I was tweeting across the internet with no strategy.              Then I focused my energies on one hashtag at a time.  I pick one hashtag for the day and add the most value I can to conversations containing it.  This strategy paid off big — just today, I connected with people as far away as Finland on topics we both care about.
2. Twitter lists.  You probably follow many “tribes” on Twitter.  I follow data analysts, economists, and other groups. When logging into Twitter, it is confusing to sift through the noise of competing tribes.  Twitter groups allow you to curate any Twitter account into a group.  Here you will get a “mini-feed” of all the activity from that list’s users.  You don’t even have to be following that account.  You can set lists to private or public, and view others’ public lists.  This makes engaging on Twitter less intimidating.  It also helps me spot trends within different industries and look for areas where I could provide opinion.
3. Quora.   Post a question on anything from copyright law to online dating, and other users will give you free information.  Readers can then upvote the most helpful answers.  Quora is able to do what even Google can’t — make sure you get the most helpful content, not just the best-optimized.  I’m just getting started on this platform, and a big help was Tom Corson-Knowles’s Complete Guide to Quora.
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4. LinkedIn Pulse.  Another tribe-building strategy is to comment on news stories.  This can be another bottle-the-ocean scenario. There is so much news across so many websites.  LinkedIn Pulse will curate the “best of the web” in various channels.  You can also follow the posts of Influencers, top thought leaders.                                                                I provide value to my existing network by sharing relevant stories to them. And I also grow my network by seeing what others have to say across the world’s largest professional network.
5.  LinkedIn Posts.  I’ve been blogging on and off for the past few months, with admittedly soft traffic results.  Most posts would get only a handful of views.  Someone suggested that instead of trying to generate new traffic, just hitch my content to LinkedIn.  After one post, my readership increased 10x.  Not only this, but my readership base diversified.

I am still in the process of finding my tribe.  But the first step, as Seth Godin also taught me, is to “ship:” get your product out there, even when it’s scary.  If I can provide value through these tools, I will find my tribe.

Photo courtesy of Gratisography.