Solving for Culture

When we first started tribetactics, Aamen and I realised the word "marketing" often holds negative connotation (the act of creating or receiving it), and has built a less than desirable reputation for its overeagerness to sell stuff to people that don't want it.

We wanted a more holistic and timeless mantra. Something that we can invest in for ourselves and our clients and know that it will always hold true, no matter what. 

We didn't invent it, we merely noticed it: Solving for Culture.

Solving for culture? What does that even mean?

Solving for culture is a genre of content creation (and just plain thinking) designed to build empathy, celebrate, and connect individuals in your target market, such that you become their new natural leader and go-to resource.

Solving for culture is NOT the kind of smart-ass content that always rushes to provide a solution. It is the kind of content though that takes the time to say to your audience “I feel you bro, it’s tough out there.” or the kind that says “Girl, don’t even get me started”.

We learnt that solving for culture is the best way to attract more enthusiasts, followers, customers, evangelists and build a competitive brand that is hard to replicate.

Specifically it's broken down into 4 core tenets:

• Create some type of show
• Capture their thoughts and world views
• Entertain, educate, and inspire them.
• Lead them to their new potential by having you in their lives

1. You gotta create some type of show

You need to have a show in 2019, and beyond. See yourself as a media company broadcasting your cause first and foremost. It’s a sustainable way to have a never-ending well of content whether it includes just you, inviting your guests, or both.

The idea here is to create an asset your target audience can call their own, one that doesn't sell your product, but sell's the dreams and fears that your persona is after, and connects those people who thought that they were "alone" in their thinking.

2. Capture their thoughts and world views

Making the decision to start a show (in video, audio, written, or all 3) is the first step in the right direction, but it is incomplete without your ability to accurately empathise with what’s on their mind.

As we said earlier, this isn’t just finding smart-ass solutions for their problems, but going deeper to create more sophisticated content that simply echoes challenges, pet peeves, or dreams that are real in their day to day.

That way, when they see it, they won’t just appreciate it, they may even tag a colleague.

In short, you want to create the kind of content that gets them saying “Damn, that’s so true” or “I was just talking to John about that”.

3. Entertain, educate, and inspire.

Tied with the point above, make sure that your content entertains, educates, and inspires - in that order.

Entertain

Our intuition tells us that we have a much better chance of getting more shares, likes, and tags on LinkedIn and elsewhere if the content is at the very least entertaining.

Just like there is no formula to telling a good joke, there’s no formula here either (and thank god for that!) But one thing that can give you ideas is going over to Buzzfeed.com and studying how they structure their headlines.

We neither endorse nor dis-endorse buzzfeed, but it’s very interesting to study how they get articles trending based solely on how the titles are structured.

Your goal is not to go viral, your goal is to go viral for the few people you care about the most. If it helps, write down the names of 3-5 people you personally know and keep them in mind while you create your content.

Educate

This comes most naturally to content marketers (or one could hope at least). Think of ways you anchor your entertaining content with utility and education value as well. Now people have 2 reasons to share your content.

Granted, while you should always aim to hit all 3 in the content you create, it really is case by case.

You may find yourself creating one piece that solely educational, and not as much entertaining, but our intuition tells us you should always maintain a healthy balance of the three. It’s what we do for ourselves and for our clients alike.

Inspire

By inspire we don’t mean Tony Robbins, although if you can pull that off more power to you.

Rather, I mean piquing their curiosity that perhaps, just perhaps, if they start doing something differently they may start to get different results; in line with attaining their dreams; in line with protecting themselves from their fears.

The inspire step helps them take action. It’s also a great way to tie that to a call to action on your website, where you can be in a position to add even more value to them.

4. Lead them to their new potential

When you do the above 3, you start to build a recognizable and - more importantly - amicable brand.

When you do this enough you build trust, and based on that trust they can then reach out to you to help them get to their new potential by working with you. This could be in the form of protecting themselves from their fears, or enabling their dreams in their business.

Hope this resonates.

Agree? Disagree? Leave your comments below!