03.19.2024 Ryan Humphreys
Seven years ago, to this day, I started Tribal with my 8-week-old daughter asleep on my lap – one hand cradling her and one hand operating the mouse - as I built my first website on Wix.
Today, I’m celebrating not just our 7th anniversary, but our brand-new website – a much better design than my home-made attempt seven years ago.
But this is more than just a glossy front page. What you’re seeing is a re-launch of Tribal - the result of a journey we’ve been on since my last birthday blog.
Each year I pause around our anniversary month to reflect – the highs, the lows, the achievements, the disappointments, the celebrations, the laughter and the tears.
Nothing reminded me of these memories more than when I recently updated our ‘wall of fame’ in our Tribal Hub (customer logos blanked out).
Over the last year we’ve celebrated:
- our own Tribal Olympics 🏅
- laughed through a jellyfish painting class 🎨
- had four Tribal babies (yes – four) 🐣
- let our kids walk to school for the first time 🏫
- danced at the top of the Sky Garden in London with customers 🕺🏻
- delivered our first live workshops since the pandemic 👩🏻🏫
- pass our digital marketing diploma exams 🎓
- we’ve even had a wedding proposal 💍
On reflection, I didn’t find the defining moments in a spreadsheet or a PowerPoint.
I found them in the moments we spent together; the conversations that sparked ideas, the fearless experiments that we tried (and learned from) and the raw life experiences our tribe shared so others can learn.
For me, the last twelve months has been transformational for Tribal and whilst I recognise we still have a long way to go, we’ve put the foundations in place for yet another year of growth.
I’m celebrating our new website, our adventure to date and all those who are part of it. Here's why:
We’ve Gone Back To Our Roots
As we emerged from the pandemic, we did a little soul searching, talking to our customers about their challenges and paying close attention to the market. The pandemic accelerated employee social media adoption as colleagues digitally connected with others.
However, lack of guidelines meant employees were figuring it out themselves, often making mistakes and sometimes creating reputational risk for brands.
This is our strength. We help organisations mitigate the risk and embrace the opportunity that comes with activating employees on social media, at scale.
We’re Connecting The Dots
As part of the above exercise, we noticed organisations are siloed in their approach. Their sales team are leading social selling, their communications team are activating executives, HR teams leading employer branding and marketing teams are leading employee advocacy and influencer programs.
This siloed approach to activating employees means organisations are wasting time, energy and budget. What’s more, employees are confused by multiple tools and training advice.
It's time to connect the dots - improve employee productivity and reduce cost by measuring the holistic social media impact of activating employees.
We’re Elevating The Conversation
We want organisations to feel the productivity increase and cost decrease that comes when connecting siloed social media programs internally. We're like a specialist consulting firm extras - we don't just advise you on the best approach, we have the services and solutions to get you there faster.
Our new methodology, Strategy - Enablement - Impact, takes customers on a logical journey of benchmarking current employee social adoption, building an activation strategy, prioritising where to invest first and measuring impact to scale.
Every organisation is different, every culture is different - we appreciate the complexity and recognise that one solution doesn't fit all.
We’re Baking Data Into Everything We Do
I’ve always loved cake (especially on birthdays) so pardon the baking pun, but over the last year we’ve invested in our data and insights capability.
Our new benchmarking report provides insight into how your employee social media activity compares to your competitors, the maturity level of those employees and where you need to prioritise your activation investment.
We benchmark at a functional level and regional/country level and build a strategy, so you can target your training investment and accelerate your impact.
We’re Learning About Who We Are
As our organisation grows, we’re learning more about our own culture and how we navigate our way through the growing pains that every start-up feels when they move to scale-up phase. This includes clearly defined roles and responsibilities, processes, personal energy management and progression paths.
Last month we introduced our first employee feedback survey. The only way I can navigate our organisation through this transition, as well as a recession, is if I understand the priorities and what our tribe needs most.
You can learn more about us later this year when we launch our new culture book.
We’re Investing In Our Personal Growth
I firmly believe that constant learning fuels our growth, whether in the classroom, reading a book or having the freedom to experiment with new ideas. Learning is key to our innovative spirit and resilience.
Internally, we’ve launched our Learning & Development Hub – a self-guided and employee contributed destination of resources to keep our social media knowledge up-to-date.
Several Tribal members are moving through the Digital Marketing Diploma course with the Digital Marketing Institute. We’re also attending HubSpot Inbound in Boston and The World of Learning conference in the UK. We're building a learning culture.
We’re Investing In Product Development
Our customers need scalable social media training frameworks so their employees can self-serve their way through their own social media maturity journey. They need data points to support that journey so they can serve up the right training and the moment of need. They need to prioritise their ‘high touch’ programs to those employees that are ready for it.
Employees need personalised learning paths based on their role. They need constant knowledge top-ups (because LinkedIn keeps changing) and they need reward programs to recognise their contribution as ambassadors.
We have plans.
2023 is going to be an exciting year - watch this space!
We’re Establishing A Charitable Foundation
Our tribe has always contributed to charitable causes close to our members hearts. Our Tribal Mile Pact program encourages our team to walk, jog and swim - we then turn miles into money.
As we move into 2023, we want to channel our contributions into something that drives a bigger impact on society - our goal is to become B Corp certified.
The Tribal Foundation will focus on equipping and educating parents with the digital skills they need to best support their children on their relationship with social media. It’s a cause our tribe are passionate about and have direct experience with.
Thank You
In the future, I'll read this post back and it'll remind me where my head was at, the challenges we faced and the commitments I made.
As always, I want to use take opportunity to publicly thank every single Tribal member (core and extended, past and present) for your ideas, generosity and resilience as we grow together. I know it's not always easy, but you make the adventure a lot of fun. I'm so proud of what we do together and can't wait to add more to the wall of fame!
Also, huge thank you to our wonderful customers who treat us like we're part of their team, trust our guidance and allow us to co-innovate and grow with them.
Finally, our wider Tribal community of friends, fans and followers who contribute to our conversations, inspire our content and share our passion for this topic 🧡.
Happy 7th birthday Tribal.
