I ask this question in the subject line because I’m not sure I know the answer. Most blog posts should give something to the reader, but I’m going to step out of the box here and ask for the reader’s advice and opinion. It’s been my experience that if the writer (blogger) doesn’t know the answer—the readers will.

I’ve recently written an article for another website about building a tribe. The research I uncovered was actually almost non-existent. It seems the term “tribe” was only coined in 2008 and its popularity is less than—well popular. I expected this “new to me” term to be something I’d missed the boat on. But what I found was very little information at all.

There’s practically no concrete or tangible advice out there about tribes or building a tribe. Even the book, “Tribes” written by Seth Godin received poor reviews. I was a bit surprised at this myself. Being a well known name across the Internet you’d expect a book by him to be a huge success. Unfortunately his term and definition of “tribe” hasn’t gone over too well.

The conclusion I came to is: (1) It’s akin to a community of like-minded people, but it’s not exactly a traditional community, (2) To build a tribe means to be a leader of this said community of people, and, (3) It simply boils down to building relationships online and offline.

Now, building relationships is vitally important; I understand that.
You don’t start out as a leader you build up people’s trust and then you start to build your tribe.
My questions are:
Isn’t that what bloggers do already?
Do we really need to coin a term like “tribe”?
Is it really that important to call it a tribe?

Do you think this trend is still in its infancy and will take off eventually, or is it just another flop?
Please share your experience, your thoughts or your knowledge on this seemingly mysterious new trend. Thanks!