My Google+ Tribe (Community)

I am endeavoring to create a Google+ Community for health communications professionals to connect with those who advocate for the same things on the community level. The challenge here is that many times health communications experts are researchers that write research papers but don’t work with their target populations on a daily basis. Comparatively, community advocates and workers in this area are the opposite and work directly with their target population all the time. There is hump to get over, which is how do we create a community where all members are working towards the same goal of improving people’s lives through health communication work?

There must be a way to connect all sectors to each other. There must be a way to create this tribe of people who support and respect each other in this small niche work filling a large need. The best way to do this may be through Jeff Goins “Three Important Steps to Building a Killer Tribe.”

Step 1: Be as personal as you can be 

Well, this may be hard in a professional and academic community. It is a challenge to balance the professional profile with the personal experience profile. Members of this health communications tribe may not agree on theory, method, or implementation for various programming. But, perhaps by being personal and realistic in the community sharing, members of this tribe may be open-minded and support each other despite their differences.

Step 2: Stay relevant to your audience

Personal sharing could be quite beneficial in an online health communications tribe, but it must also be sharing of relevant information. This community will not work if the tribe of people does not stick to sharing their relevant experiences and work within the field.

Step 3: Create mouth-watering anticipation

Anticipation of work and sharing is one way to keep the tribe going. Members may share their upcoming work or offer some insights from a conference they are attending soon. This anticipation will keep other tribe members returning for more information.

In the end, my main take-away is to:

“Make your platform about other people, they’ll make it about you.” – Jeff Goins, “Three Important Steps to Building a Killer Tribe”

What a great insight. Being a member of the tribe doesn’t simply mean sharing whatever I think is relevant. I have to share what will benefit the tribe members. Being selfish never encourages collaboration and there is no individual in a tribe that cannot take without giving.

Link to Google+ Community: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/106287268578366076434?cfem=1