Written by Jonas Klit Nielsen
This is a post asking for your input because this is the initial thoughts on what I call TribeSourcing. You might read the following and think: ‘What is he talking about? That will never work’ or ‘This is already fully established and just called something else’. But you might also think, that there could be something about it if I could just twist it a bit in that direction etc. And I would really love to get your input – whatever thoughts you’ve got.
I got the idea for the concept of TribeSourcing after reading Seth Godin’s fantastic book “Tribes” combined with our everyday work with social media at Mindjumpers.
Tribes have always been around, but with social media, web 2.0, The Net Generation or The Connecting Era there will be a lot more Tribes, because people can connect easier. One of the examples often used is the fly fishing tribe. Earlier you might have connected with other fly fishing people or joined a small fly fishing group in your local community, but you had no way to connect, share and get inspired by the millions of fly fishing enthusiasts around the world.
As a social media agency our angle is to look at these new possibilities from a marketeer or a brand’s point of view. I am not the first to say it, and it’s giving marketeers all over the world gray hair trying to figure it out: Communication and marketing in social media is hard, and for some brands or products it’s impossible, because there has to be a relevance and maybe even a high level of involvement for people in the brand or product.
Back to the idea behind TribeSourcing. For brands and products the future holds a high level of involvement or some might call it interference with consumers (yes, I used the bad word to describe people), they are in control of the new era, no way around that, and why fight it? What if you could benefit from it?
Let’s say you managed to build a tribe culture around your brand. Some brands have done, and it’s not only Coca Cola. Just think of all the resources in a tribe like that. With the right structured process and tools, you could use these resources to get inspired, to grow and to develop your brand. This is what I call TribeSourcing, getting a large number of people who love your brand to help you with everything from creation and development to spreading a buzz about your brand or products, and this is only to mention a few things – I will write more about the possibilities I see in future posts.
I am aware that some parts of this already exists in some form, that some brands are using co-creation, and that some brands are using buzz marketing. I just think that what we need is a structured and organized system which contains and combines a lot of these possibilities and a system that helps connecting with people in the new era. That is what I call TribeSourcing.
And now please leave me your thoughts on this post, I am looking forward to getting inspired before writing the post “TribeSourcing – the second draft”.
Similar Posts:
- Facts About Consumer Behaviour on Twitter [Study]
- Socializing Your Brand [Infographic]
- “Like” Means Different Things To Different People
