Marketing guru Seth Godin authored “Tribes”. The premise is that people come together naturally behind an issue, cause, candidate, brand, idea. Two critical pieces of Godin’s theory get ignored the leader and the location.

When organizing an online community like party planning I build the location, identify the audience, determine the best forms of communication, invite the conversation and plan to keep them

People have their own opinions and positions. Our job is less about manipulating the passion or opinions of supporters and more about identifying but to attract those who share our opinions, likes, dislikes and lead them. You need a landing place for them, a location from which to build the community and leaders to help attract and direct them.

Many get lost in the numbers. How many followers do we have on Twitter? Fans on Facebook? Members on YouTube? Supporters in the internal social network?

Focus instead on: Where will our followers come to communicate? What are we communicating to our fans? Are we developing a relationship with our advocates? Are we asking (over and over again) our supporters to act and continually giving them the tools to execute?