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Forming Your Tribe: First Steps

Once You Have Some Blog Readership: How to Start Building Your Tribe

Spreading the word - once you get people reading your blog, what's your next step?

Spreading the word – once you get people reading your blog, what’s your next step?

Once you have your blog going, and have even a little readership established, what’s your next big step?

It’s to start building your tribe.

A Bit of Backstory

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Mourning Dove Press came into being because I had a book to publish.

I knew I was going to self-publish. This was because I wanted to keep creative control. Also, I figured that I would use profits on my self-published book to do more and better marketing; there would be overall more marketing dollars from direct profits than I would have from royalties with a traditional publishing house.

This made sense at the time, and still does.

It particularly made sense when I factored in the growing readership of digital/downloaded books versus the more traditional trade paper books. (About 70% of the books in the personal growth/self-help genre are now digital downloads.)

What I didn’t know was how hard it would be to build a platform; to connect with people, to build that long-term relationship.

In fact, when I was just starting, I didn’t even know that building that long-term relationship was the whole objective.

Personal Backstory

I’d grown up as an academic; intellectually gifted but a little – shall we say – socially awkward. And very much an introvert.

Even when I shifted to full-time entrepreneurship, my role was always to be the “genius in the back room.” I’d come up with the creative concepts, but someone else (usually the company president) would do all the marketing – and would hold all the relationships.

I had a naïve (and wholly unrealistic and completely unfounded) notion that I could publish a book, put a little effort into juicing the marketing engine, and then the book would trundle itself into being a best-seller; providing me with a secure (and even growing) income while I put attention into my next genius-creative project.

wrong

Oh, I was so wrong.

So very, very wrong.

And I spent about a year figuring out how wrong I was.

Three Necessary Stages

After getting it that I really didn’t get it, and then learning how to get it, I needed a year just to rebuild my entire business approach. This was a three-stage process after spending about two to three months at Stage Zero, or the research-and-decision-making stage.

The three business-building stages were:

  • Stage One: Basic (Re-)Build – Taking down the old website, building a new one that incorporated the blog, porting the old blog posts, and starting the arduous (and not terribly fun) process of blog clean-up,; all this took about four months (for three different but related websites, and then also for this one as well).
  • Stage Two: Basic Blog Build-Up – Reaching my (somewhat confused and fragmented) existing tribe with a new blogging approach – and getting back to blogging consistently; I gave this two months of just very steady, diligent blogging – and not even trying to get people to come to the blog until I had a bit of track record re-established. Regular (and intensive) blogging on each of three different blogs each week. About a day’s worth of solid work for almost each and every blogpost, so three days each week went just into blogging. Total time: about two months just focused on blogging, along with updating older blogs and continuing the website rebuild/transition.
  • Stage Three: Reaching Out and Tribe-(Re-)Building – Once I’d demonstrated steadiness and consistency – and made it clear (through multiple related blog posts) what the theme / blog topics were about, it was time to invite people in. I eased off on blogging, and focused on reaching out to people; asking them to join one or more of my Opt-In lists. I’m in this stage now, have been in it for the past two months, and will be in it for some time to come.

So it’s not so much about blogging anymore. It’s about growing my tribes, and – of course – the care and feeding of my tribes.

Knowing When to Switch Focus

I switched my focus from blogging to building my Opt-In lists when I had sufficient readership showing up on my website/blogsite to show that there was, indeed, some interest.

I’d already switched focus on two of my major blogsites.

The two blogsites where I write the most (and which serve as Case Studies for this blog) are:

  • The Unveiling Journey – archetypes, archetype integration, and life-journeys – further developing ideas first proposed in my book, Unveiling: The Inner Journey, and
  • The Alay’nya Studio – body awareness, dance, movement, raw foods (and occasionally, comfort foods), and emotional processing/release work. Also, the Fountain of Youth – how to cultivate, circulate, and use intrinsic (ch’i) energy. This is like the “laboratory notebook” corollary to the Unveiling blog, which is more like lecture notes that expand on a text. Lecture and lab, where life itself gives you the feedback.

These blogs have already kicked in with substantial readership growth over the past few months.

My next step? Doing for you (the readers of this blog) what I’ve done for my other tribes.

The reason that I know the time is right?

See the figure below.

Webstats for the Mourning Dove Press blog - August through mid-November, 2013.

Webstats for the Mourning Dove Press blog – August through mid-November, 2013.

Making Sense of the Data

The figure above shows my for-real blog readership for this blog, taken from Google Analytics. The timeframe is from August 1 (of this year, 2013) through yesterday, November 19. The stats are given on a weekly basis.

You can see that at the beginning – late July and early August – readership was very small. For the second week in August, the total readership was only about ten people, over the entire week.

I kept blogging. (This was my intensive blogging phase.) You can see each blog date with the red diamond on the chart.

Slowly, readership began to rise.

Specifically (see the middle of October), people were finding my site even when I hadn’t published a blog in a week or more. See where the weekly readership is holding steady in mid-October? No blog-writing during that time; at least not for this site. (I was busy doing blogging and working Opt-In lists for my other two top sites, see the links given earlier in this post.)

Then, when I published a new post (October 23), readership spiked.

That was a very good sign.

It meant that I had a little traction.

It’s taken me a month to get back to this site and write a new blog. My attention has been on writing for my other two blogs, and reaching out to the readership base there; building the Opt-ins. (And oh yes, the Opt-Ins have been doubling every month for the sites that I’m actively working – that’s a fabulous rate – takes a whole lot of work, but is so exciting.)

But notice – on the figure above – even after the initial readership spike with the last blogpost, there’s still some follow-up reading. People are finding their way here, and I haven’t been doing anything to encourage it.

No Facebook posting. No sending out the email blasts to my existing (and/or reforming) tribes.

This is all organic, people-coming-here-of-their-own-free-will search-enabled traffic. (Plus perhaps some RSS feeds.)

Thank God for search engines. Thank God for the power of intralinking, and tags, categories, and other little blog-readership-boosting devices. (See my previous posts in this series.)

So my next step?

It’s to do for you (the reader of this blog, right now), what I’ve done for the readers of the other blogs.

Give you an easy-to-find Opt-In form.

(It’s there now. In the sidebar, to the right. See it? Right at the top? Wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I put that in right after writing this post just now.)

Why Growing Your Tribe Is So Important

Building your tribe - the most important thing you can do. Photo: Rachel Doherty. Sourced from: Jeff Goins.

Building your tribe – the most important thing you can do. Photo: Rachel Doherty. Sourced from: Jeff Goins.

When Opt-Ins increase, revenue increases.

And yes, this depends on what you have to offer: a book, an online course, a coaching program, workshops, whatever. You have to have some product or service to sell.

But industry wisdom is: your revenue is in direct proportion to the size of your tribe. Your tribe grows, and (if you’re doing things right), your revenue grows.

But for your tribe to grow, you have to do one critical thing.

Sisterly Advice: Four Simple Words

Four simple words from my sister Ann Marie summed it up: Be there. Be visible.

Four simple words from my sister Ann Marie summed it up: Be there. Be visible.

I was talking about what I’ve been learning with my sister, Ann Marie.

Annie has just had a summer where there were children in-house. Her eldest son. Her grandchildren. (All of them.) A somewhat step-sibling to the grandchildren.

In other words, a full house of kids. Talk about tribe? She had one!

She was living the life that my mother, who had five of us children, had lived while we were young.

I talked with Annie about learning how important it was to feed my tribe.

She said, in the context of having five children to care for all summer, that it wasn’t that a person had to do all kinds of things for them. It wasn’t a matter of constantly engaging, entertaining, or monitoring them.

Instead, the secret was in four simple words.

According to my sister Ann Marie, the secret for tribe management is:

Be present. Be visible.

That’s it.

Not everything that you do or say has to be words of gold.

Just as not every meal has to be carefully-planned and made from scratch. Sometimes, the kids get peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. (Hey, don’t we all remember PB&J? Guess what I just had for breakfast, while writing this post? Yup. It’s faster and easier than cooking. And right now, the focus is on writing this post for you.)

But even though not every meal has to be fancy, there still needs to be a meal. Five kids, every day around noon, each needing to be fed. Sometimes PB&J. Sometimes something more elaborate. But every day, same time, they need to be fed.

That’s why I call it the loaves and fishes strategy.

What Opting In Really Means

When someone “opts-in” with me, that’s a huge gesture of trust. Intimacy, even. It’s a Martin Buber I-Thou moment; not so much a connection, but a willingness to have a connection.

When someone opts-in, it’s more than saying, Yes, I’ll take your regular emails, and occasionally even read them.

It’s more like saying, Yes, I acknowledge that you’re a thought-leader, and I’m allowing you to influence my thoughts.

In essence, they’re calling you a Master Teacher. (For more on this – very important topic – see: Who’s Your Yoda?.)

That’s why it’s sometimes so difficult to get our nearest-and-dearest to opt-in with us. It’s not that they don’t love us.

They do.

They may also respect us, and agree that we sometimes have words of wisdom.

But there’s a world of difference between acknowledging that someone whom you know has helpful insights – and that you may even call this person up for a little “help-me-out” conversation occasionally – and acknowledging that this person is not only A teacher, but is YOUR personal teacher.

Opting-in with someone shifts the relational dynamics.

Opting-in means acknowledging someone as a Hierophant – a transformational teacher. (For some background, go to Dealing with Betrayal at the Deepest Level – all about the Hierophant’s own transformational journey – and check out the links at the end of that blog post.)

A whole ‘nuther realm.

And a huge gesture of trust.

So when you get those Opt-Ins, be careful, okay? Treat your people with respect.

They’ve opted-in. They can opt-out at any time, just as easily. Maybe even more so. (I’m saying this because I “fired” someone yesterday; someone whose list I’d joined on the recommendation of someone else – this person was simply way-overusing the privilege of my email address. And I sent this person a detailed note as to why I was opting-out. Needless to say, this person was not pleased.)

Some More Good Words

Seth Godin has been called the godfather of tribe-building. Check him out at: Seth Godin’s website.

Also, Jeff Goins writes a damn fine blog, and much of it is relevant to those of us in the early stages of tribe-building. I particularly recommend his post: How to Build a Killer Tribe.

My favorite suggestion?

This is hard work, no kidding. It’s very focused work. It’s constantly building and refining your own skill set and your own message.

So you have to be disciplined, self-motivated, and develop a whole lot of skill-sets. Time, attention to detail, and consistency are all great virtues.

But most of all?

Have fun with it.

Yup.

As Ron Sieh, one of my former T’ai Ch’i Chuan teachers used to say:

Relax. Be “cas”. Hang out with it.

And most of all, have fun.

To your own health, wealth, and overall well-being

Alianna
Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D. (For more, see my personal website at: Alianna Maren’s website.

Post Script

After all of this, it would be simply rude to close out this conversation without giving you an opportunity to Opt-In with me, right?

The form’s in the sidebar, to the right. Way up at the top of this post. Do the Opt-In thing. You’ll get an email heads-up as for each new blog post, plus special offers from time-to-time. And thank you.

Dominate the Blogosphere: Use Categories and Tags to Establish Authority

Getting Respect: Using Your Blog to Establish Your Expertise

If you’re like me, you spend hours every week on your blogs.

Influence - that's why we write blogs!

Influence – that’s why we write blogs!

In fact, you may know that your blogs are the heart and soul of your outreach. This means that one of your top goals is to make your blogs among the most attractive, most well-read, and most authoritative in your field. You “feed your flock” through your blogs; presenting your finest wisdom, and carefully cultivating your ideas over time.

But are all the right people finding you?

Have you set up your blog so that someone who is searching on a topic will find you? Do you have confidence that someone searching on your area of expertise will select your blog as one of the resources that they’ll check out first?

If you’re like most people (and like me – up to a year ago), your honest answer would be, “I’m not sure.”

Become Known as the Leading Expert in Your Field by Making Your Blog Findable, Searchable, Linkable, and Valuable – Smart Ways to Use Blog Tags and Categories

A year ago, I had several blogs, and several websites. They had grown organically over time; from simple structures into unorganized chaos.

I realized that the best of my material was “lost in the noise” – noise of my own making!

I had to take a step back – a very big step.

I made the tough business decision to pull way back, disassemble what I had built, and re-assemble – this time with a clean, clear, solid structure and foundation that would make my most important material stand out, make the supporting material clearly in support role, and everything easily findable to a casual reader.

It was like renovating an old Victorian home; one that had grown haphazardly over time.

The result?

My blogs (and there are still several, including this one) are now well-structured; well-organized. The material is “findable.”

More than “findable,” if someone is searching for a topic in my blog, they can now easily get all of the relevant blogs, and from there, be gently and quietly led to other related posts.

Instead of presenting people with an impenetrable, overgrown forest, I take them gently by the hand, guiding them on well-defined paths, and pointing out the interesting sights and vistas.

A huge difference, an immense amount of hard work, and a battle well-fought.

But did I say that I’d transitioned all my blogs?

Ahem. A slight overstatement.

I’m still in the middle.

Blog “Makeover”

Since we all love “before and after” makeover stories, I’m going to take you “behind the scenes” into two blogs; one near the end of its transition, and one at the beginning.

I’m going to open up my playbook – one built not only in the practical “hard knocks” school of blogging, but also on decades of research into how our human minds store and organize knowledge, and on the secrets behind some of the top algorithms (computer programs) that are actually useful to individual bloggers today.

No fancy software needed. This is mostly pen and paper, and potentially some Google Analytics.

The best part? You can use these “secrets” to transform your own blog-world.

It will take time – lots of time. This is not an overnight effort, although you can start in one day and make considerable progress by nightfall.

A Tale of Two Blogs

To illustrate the transition, I’ll share with you a tale of two blogs: one that has undergone the transition, and one that has not yet gone from “chaos” to “order.”

First, the “chaotic blog.”

Chaotic Blog: Way Too Many Categories

A blog with too many categories; hard to find topics of interest.

A blog with too many categories; hard to find topics of interest.

The figure above is a screenshot taken August 14, 2013 of the Home Page from www.theunveilingjourney.com.

Note the listing of categories on the right. Only a partial listing is viewable in this screenshot; you’re seeing categories from A-D. Obviously, many more would be visible if you could scroll down the page.

How easy would it be to find something in this blog series? Pretty tough, right?

The reason is that the Category list puts all the levels of detail at the same level of searchability. In this short section, you see book titles (at the top of the list, inside double quotes), the names of several people (both real and fictional), and some categories that might be “broad topics.” (Archetypes and archetype dominance are both possibilities, at first glance.)

Looking at this list, it’s nearly impossible to determine what this blog is really about. Is it about books? After all, several book titles are given, along with the topical category “book reviews.” There are some authors mentioned, such as Christine Feehan and several others.

Or is it about movies? (There’s mention of Clarice Starling.) There are historical figures: Aspasia, Beethoven. There are currently-living figures; Dingwall Fleary is a well-known local orchestral conductor.

Or is it about topics such as “archetypes,” “archetype dominance,” and “core power archetypes”?

From the categories list – as it stands right now – there is no way to tell.

That means that someone finding this blog as a result of a random search would not know which other topics were dominant, or what the blog focus and direction was.

Even though there are over 100 blog posts in this series, the random categorization makes this series much too like an overstuffed closet.

To find out how to do better – to create categories that let the reader know what is topically dominant, and help them find what they want, let’s examine the figure in the section below.

Well-Ordered Blog: Limited, Well-Chosen Categories

Below, we see a screenshot from a blog that is much more ordered. Whether using Google or some other search engine to find a topic here, or visually scanning this blog for topics, it is much easier to find material by topics.

Blog with well-organized, two-tiered categories - less than two dozen categories help users find relevant material 'at a glance.'

Blog with well-organized, two-tiered categories – less than two dozen categories help users find relevant material ‘at a glance.’

The blog shown in the screen capture above has about two dozen categories. Not only is the number of categories significantly reduced, but as you inspect the category listings, it is clear that there is a two-tier category structure.

WordPress (which is the framework for both of these blogs) lets you identify parent and child (or sub) categories. However, that doesn’t influence how the categories show up in the category list!

You have to be smarter; you have to be more clever than WordPress.

You can see how this is done in the category listing above.

How to Be Smart When You Name Your Categories: A Lesson from the Playbook

A “Top-Tier” category is A Resource. In fact, it is such an important category that instead of labeling it the more obvious Resources, I (being the blog author) made it A Resource instead. That put it at the top of the reading sequence.

The reason for this? I (as author) am seeking to be known as a top Resource repository. I have several sub-categories underneath it. It’s important enough to me – and (I suspect) important enough to readers – to make it the most “front and center” category for this blog.

Underneath it are the various kinds of resources. As with all categories (regardless of level), they’re listed in alphabetical order. So to keep them visually-associated with A Resource, I named them so that they would naturally fall next in line. The names for these blog sub-categories are A Resource Article-Link, A Resource Book, etc. Pretty obvious.

Clearly, one of the important topics in this blog series is Resources. Someone who is searching for resources in this area-of-interest could find blogposts devoted to different kinds of resources; books, articles (with good links), DVDs, etc. This is a blog organization that now makes sense.

So what happened to all of the other terms? The “Christine Feehans” of this blog world?

They’re still there – but they’ve been moved to a realm of much lower visibility.

Instead of being blog categories, they are now blog tags – a much less dramatic notation.

Categories are a way of saying, “This blog is about [this category topic].” Tags are a way of adding little notations, as in, “Oh yes, we also mention such-and-such in passing.”

Categories group and identify major themes. Tags identify nice-to-knows.

With a simple widget, you can easily create a Tag Cloud.

Playbook Tip #2: Use Tag Clouds to Provide a Secondary “Swirl of Interest” About Blog Topics

The figure below shows a second screenshot from the same blog – and same blog post – as the one used above to illustrate the “well-ordered blog.”

A Tag Cloud (here renamed 'Hot Topics') gathers up all the 'little things' that you say in passing.

A Tag Cloud (here renamed ‘Hot Topics’) gathers up all the ‘little things’ that you say in passing.

Tag Clouds tell the reader about the totality of your blog in a much more “swirly” sort of way. If the Categories are Left-brain, then the Tag Cloud is right-brain. The left-brain Categories are carefully chosen, well-ordered and structured, and have names precisely devised to make them readable in a certain order. In contrast, the right-brain Tag Cloud, an amorphous swirl of topics and names, gives your reader a “gestalt overview” – a gut sense – of what the whole blog series is about.

As an example: the Category Set for this blog series makes a big deal about providing access to resources; to the extent of making A Resource the first category. In contrast, when we look at the Tag Cloud, we’ll find that a specific book (my own, of course) is dominant: Unveiling: The Inner Journey. This book is not listed as a category, because there are other books mentioned throughout the series as well. But the overall emphasis becomes clear when we look at the Tag Cloud.

If you look near the bottom of the previous figure, showing Categories, you’ll see a category near the bottom: Teachers, Healers, Coaches, and Guides. That’s a fine general category.

If you look at the Tag Cloud in the figure just above, you’ll see a couple of names pop out. Anahid Sofian is one (see the big bold letters). Eva Cernik (slightly smaller letters) is another. You’ll also note that the phrase Master Teacher shows up fairly well. Clearly, this blog series has a lot to say about Master Teachers – and (for those in the know), Anahid Sofian is one of the most respected (as well as being one of my own Master Teachers), and she shows up strongly. Eva Cernik, a protégé of Mdm. Sofian and a Master Teacher in her own right (as well as being another of my own Master Teachers) shows up well – although less strongly than the person whom we would both regard as one of our primary teachers.

So what do we get from studying this example?

A quick recap:

Smart Use of Blog Categories

Overall, use categories to establish broad, general themes – to identify your blog’s topical focus:

  1. Limit the number of categories as much as possible; some blog strategists suggest that 7 – 10 should be the max,
  2. Create sub-categories as appropriate; again, try to consolidate and limit the number,
  3. Carefully refine category wording, to put the most important categories at the top of the list, and carefully strategize how to name sub-categories, so they appear near their “parent” category.

Smart Use of Tags

Use tags to identify specifics, and use a Tag Cloud to present an “swirly-eyeful” of your blog’s overall content.

  1. Use tags for people, organizations, places, events, and things,
  2. Use tags also to fill out phrases or terms that are vital to some of your main themes, and
  3. Trust that as you write on important topics over time, and categorize/tag your blog entries faithfully, the dominant tags (topical themes) will rise in visibility.

Taken together, tags and categories help you reach your reader, and communicate the overall blog content while still delivering specific blogs in response to the reader’s search.


Want the full Playbook?

Sign up using the Opt-In form to the right.

I’ll be divulging the full Playbook in a series of emails.

This is pretty important stuff, so I’d like to share this with you via email, rather than just posting it on the blog. I’ve got some pretty awesome material coming up – based on years of formal research as a scientist in knowledge discovery, followed by the more reality-grounded “school of hard knocks” in learning to do effective blogging – and then making these blogs findable.

I’ll connect with you soon, via email, as soon as I get your Opt-In!






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