Here’s an interesting and entertaining presentation from Internet marketing guru Seth Godin about Tribes – leading and connecting people and ideas. He argues that the days of mass marketing are over and the new way to affect change and to get your ideas across is through building a community of like-minded people.
In our own small way at PuddleDucks, we try to create and connect a tribe or community of our customers – people who like our products and are happy to spread the word about them to others. Word of mouth referrals have always been our main source of new business. We often read on our new orders that people have heard about us from ” a mother in the park”, ” a family of the beach” , ” a lady in a shop”, “friends”, etc.
The ways we currently build up our community are through the “PuddleDuckers” section on this blog – where customers tell their own stories, our Facebook Fan page, our presence on IGOpeople and by having customer reviews on the PuddleDucks website. As stated in the presentation it’s no longer “a mass thing” and that with only 1000 true fans who believe in your products and are happy to spread the word, you can create and run a viable business.
This talk was given by Seth Godin in February 2009 at the TED conference in Long Beach, California. You can read Seth Godin’s blog here – it always makes interesting reading.
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