Build your tribe through shared interests

Here’s a simple trick to help you grow your audience when you are just starting your career.

Instead of making a website or Facebook group based on you, make it around the type of fan you want to attract.  For instance, I have a Facebook group called Authors and Creators Making Money Selling Books, which I grew from 0 to over 2,000 members since 2017, and made me over $40,000 in 2018 alone.

The goal of the group is to help creators make more money selling books. It just so happens that my services ALSO help creators sell more books, which means the goals of my business are congruent with the goals of the group (which was not an accident).

Even though my goal is to have people use my book marketing and enroll in my courses, I didn’t build the group around me. I built it around the type of people who I wanted to attract. Generally, that means authors who have a couple of books under their belt and are ready to monetize them.

I didn’t create a craft group. I created a group full of people who want to make money, which is where my marketing services are most effective. Nobody knew or cared about me before they joined the group, but once they joined they get to know me through my interactions with them. Then, they began to respect my work, and eventually some of them become buyers. Meanwhile, everybody gets value.

It’s really hard to market yourself when nobody knows you. It’s really easy to market something to your ideal customers though. Then, you become to the leader of their tribe, and some of them will want to work with you if they like you enough, and you prove an expert at a thing they love. They see you in their timeline over and over, and grow to trust you over time. It’s a very easy trust, though, which develops through consistency.

It’s much easier to build a tribe that way than to be the face of everything all the time.