Madison Doherty Tipton shows how to build community identity through merchandise, points systems, profile frames, and visible signals like vehicle decals. The IAFF uses window stickers to mark members. Consistent live presence and surprise celebrations cement belonging in ways newsletters alone cannot.
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Hey everybody. I do not know what happened to the live earlier, but for some reason it has vanished. So here we are again to go over another aspect of of movement which we're going to dive deeper into identity and how our people get to show it off. So if you are watching live, let me know in the comments you're watching the replay or if you're watching this in the membership area, whenever you're watching it. All right, so what we are going to talk about today is in this module, it's about building that connection and allowing your people to show off their identity. And at the same time, how are you going to celebrate your people? So remember in the last lesson we talked about funnel hackers. We created our mantra for our people, we named our people, talked about ultimate softball. Now we're going to talk about the next level of it. Now I will say this is easier in groups than in newsletters. It is substantially easier. But the caveat is the rules are still the same. It still all plays together and it still all works. So in this overview, we're going to talk about it from a 10,000 foot view level. And then in the next lesson we're talking about how to build it for a newsletter in particular. Okay, so how will they show off their identity? This is a example that I love to share. It is the International association of Firefighters. This is something that growing up, all of our vehicles had the IAFF logo, logo, trademark image, union thing on our vehicles. Because that was the identity, right? That was the identity of where my dad worked. We were firefighter, family. And a lot of the times these are actually put on vehicles by firefighter, paramedics, first responders, people's members of the iaff. And it is so that when they are driving on the road, other people, other first responders will recognize, like, hey, that's part of the brotherhood. They're one of us, right? Thing always was you always put it on the driver's side window because that is where the cops show up, right? That's like how the cops walk past you on the driver's side. So they like, they saw the thing and they're like, hey, you're one of us, right? So a great way to do this is for your own people. It's like, how can we recreate this? Like, how can we build together this, this movement aspect, this. They're diving more into it, they're more bought into it. And so that's really we're talking about, right? So number one, you can obviously do merch. We talk about Merch a little bit later. Great thing. Stickers. Right? Now this is a next level. This is the next level of commitment up and really where they're really encompassing this identity of a firefighter, right? So that's why they have the IAFF logo. They're a union member. Um, but you see these all the time, right? You see them with schools, in churches, in groups and all of it, right? So how can we take that thing that we see so common in a in person world and now push it to online, to our online communities? Okay, so we're talking about merch stickers and celebration. So that's one of the ways that you guys can do that we talked about. Merch is the last thing that it connects us. It brings us together, shows us that we're all on the same team. And we all love merch, right? We absolutely all love merch. We talk about them. The funnel hackers talk to ultimate softball. It is getting them to buy in. So how do we get them to buy in? Right? So number one, you got to show up. You got to show up for your people. You got to show up live. You got to provide value to them when nobody is absolutely there, right? That's what I did. The softball group, if you just go live once and just let the group be, they don't have the buy in. You have to show up. Number two, you have to incentivize them with points, right? Bonus entries, extra chances to win, right? We're playing with that psychology of this irresistible giveaway, and they're going to want more chances to win. So we're saying, hey, in exchange for giving you more chances to win, I'm gonna need something back, which is your buy in on this, okay? Give things away, right? A lot of this that I built in the softball communities because I went live three times a week and I gave stuff away. I gave stuff away before I even asked them to buy it, right? I gave it away. And number three, let them build that buy in. Let them self identify as it is. And that's like what we talked about. Like, hey, maybe your movement comes from them naming it funnel hackers, right? They name themselves. Now, I think a really cool thing is like when you show up for your community and you show up time and time again and you give, give, give, give without asking anything in return. We have not pitched a product yet. We have not pitched an offer. We have simply shown up time and time again. Get things like this, right? This is the ultimate buy in of it. I had no idea. I was not Going to name this ultimate softball. It was not what I was going to do, right? That wasn't even on my radar list. I had highlight hacking. Like, that was the thing that I ultimately wanted to sell these people. But as you can see, a small token like this of a cheap necklace rallied a whole group. It got them to buy in to this team mentality. The other thing, have them change their profile photo, right? That's a great way to get them to buy in. And we either use a photo frame, we got to give bonus points, and we gotta even sometimes give extra prizes for them to buy in to do this. Okay, this was my second giveaway. I did not do this on my first giveaway. Okay, the next thing is, how will you celebrate them doing this? Will you send them free merch if they do xyz, will you send them a smaller prize? Will you hold a graduation ceremony? And the key here is surprise. It is delight, right? We've had Andrea come in. She's talked about surprise, she's talked about delight. Do something that they will be like, wow, I can't believe they did that. Wow, that is such a great idea. And I think one of the coolest things is, especially when you really hype this up, is a graduation ceremony, right? Katherine Jones does it so great in CF design school. She, like, makes it a whole event. She's like, invite your friends, invite your family, because it's your graduation and really celebrates her people. Okay? They are design hackers, if you didn't know. So your homework for this week is how will you celebrate them? Them not theme. I don't know. Maybe you're going to have a celebration theme, right? And how will they show off their identity? And in the next lesson, we're going to talk about this specifically in a newsletter because this is a little trickier. When you're showing up live, you build connections with people. You're there, you're interacting with them. When you're doing a faceless newsletter, that is a little tricky. So that will be the next lesson. We will build that out. Until then, have a wonderful day. I will see you guys all in the next.
