The following six steps are the framework for everything we will be doing to build your tribe. It is the funnel that we will use to move people from first contact into fans that are passionately behind your movement.
In future weeks we will break down each of these steps in more specifics detail and action items.
1. Find where people are already showing up and join them. Your potential fans are already congregating together in different places. Show up in person (or better yet, get an opportunity to speak) at conventions and conferences. Follow people on Twitter and get involved in Facebook groups and pages. Do interviews with other experts in your space. Find where people already are and then get involved.
2. Start a blog and write regularly. This is your home base and everyone that finds you online will inevitably land here. Use it to expound on your ideas and teach what you are learning.
3. Setup your email marketing. Gain access to directly email your fans. This is your most important asset! This is where the people that truly care about what you are doing are going to be. You must move people from being more than just blog readers to email subscribers.
4. Train your community to get involved. This is key and the thing people often overlook. Start small with things like Q&A’s but ratchet it up over time. From early on, teach your fans that you expect them to roll up their sleeves and work with you.
5. Cultivate your top 1%. As you ask your community to get involved you’ll start to see a few people’s names show up over and over. Invite them in to interact with you and start giving them tools to get even more involved. These will be the people that will have the biggest impact on growing your fan base.
6. Connect your fans to each other. The goal is not to grow a large list of disconnected followers. The goal is to build a community. This means they need to interact with each other. Give them opportunities to do this via digital and physical means. Forums, Ning communities, workshops and book signings are all examples of this.
These are the steps you will use to start building your community of fans that will buy your book and help spread your movement.
Homework
Spend some time thinking through each of the six steps and making notes on how you think you can best engage your community in each one.
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