TRIBES

It's become a buzz word in branding over the last few years. Tribes are about melding into or collecting groups of people with similar interests to bounce ideas off of and to become part of your author world. So successful was the evolution of tribes that creating them in publishing circles created a powerful ripple. Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1000 Copies and the founder of BookLaunch.com wrote that, “The concept of author tribes has been the most freeing idea for me as a writer trying to build a platform and figure out marketing. A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.”

If you are a devotional buyer, or a journal junkie, always on the improvement journey with self-help books or always on the hunt for the next best suspense novel – chances are you are – you got it, part of a tribe. This is true because you’ve likely joined a social media group, follow a specific Pinterest group and even seek out literary reviews from selected sources before making buying decisions.

The critical thing for a successful author tribe is to have an idea that those in your tribe connect to and want to connect to because of your involvement. So, the idea of a tribe focused on cookware would be a driving force for a cookbook author, who engages about the quality, how the cookware handled one recipe versus another, etc.
It is the idea and the interaction that ignites your tribe around you, not self-promotion and not consistent posts or emails to buy, subscribe, or join a masterclass. It’s all about building a circle of BFFs around what you do.

​Here are 6 things Grahl suggests in building your author tribe:
Find where people are already showing up and join them.
Start a blog and write regularly.
Setup your email marketing.
Train your community to get involved.
Cultivate your top 1%.
Connect your fans to each other.
(For more visit Grahl at booklaunch.com)