A lot of people interpret the newest internet marketing meme to hit the net: "Market Leadership" as having the largest mailing list, the highest price product, or the biggest profit margin. This would be a logical step but this is really the result of market leadership. If you serve a need in your market then your list will grow because of higher demand. So really if you become the "go to guy" or "go to community" in your niche, you establish trust and rapport with your target niche.
Let me break down Tribes into practical concepts. First off, a Tribe is really a internet swarm or affinity group. You can see examples of this on twitter during a conference or the recent political debates. A swarm, a lot of times, brings in the best people to come up with support, ideas, news in a particular niche or interest group that is extremely valuable for serving that group. What a great time to establish rapport and trust. This obvious vested interest difference will be noticeable to potential clients and customers that your success are based on the long-term strategy of providing value and quality.
If will dive a little deeper into the nature of Tribes, you will find that the future of marketing is observing people's behaviors. The big boys like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo know this. The are creating ways like the Thumbs Up tool bar in StumbleUpon to harvest this attention data. When you lead a market, you are doing just that in finding out what people's attentions are. A vivid example is twitter. Each tweet is a "gesture" that conveys (when collected together) the interests or attention of a group. For more info on the theory of gestures listen to a few of Steve Gillmor's NewsGangLive podcasts. Gestures seem to be light weight or nearly effortless online actions that represent attention. This is the beauty of the 140 character messages in twitter.
So appearing to be going the extra mile to find solutions and finding innovative ways to deliver those solutions in your is much easier if you are leading a tribe. An example of this is people who have a large and loyal following on twitter can just tweet a question and get back relevant answers in just minutes. Amazing. This is the absolutely best possible exposure you can possibly get. You can not buy better marketing right out.
So really the world has changed. There is a difference between trying to “dominate your niche” purely for gain, and making an effort to truly serve your market. Instead of looking at a niche and asking yourself how much money you could possibly earn there, look at a niche and determine ways you could create a tribe over time using podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, Ustream, FriendFeed or twitter. These are the new internet version of the xeroxed newsletters that Seth Godin passed around in his Tribes book.
