Mar 25, 2012

Triberr: help with increasing your social media reach

I'm dabbling in a new social media platform these days. It's called Triberr and yeah, it's been around a while. But I'm always slow on the uptake so  it's taken me this long to get onboard.

Triberr's concept is simple: join a 'tribe' of other like-minded bloggers. Everytime you post, Triberr imports your post title/link into a queue that's visible by all your tribe members - called your tribal 'stream'. Your tribe members then click to allow an automatically-generated tweet, which Triberr releases to Twitter in 20-minute increments.

Here's an example of what those tweets look like: 'Friday Funnies' owt.ryl.com via rewrighter01

I check my tribal stream at least once per day, choosing those links I think my followers would enjoy. Triberr does the rest. It's fast,  fun and increases my own blogging reach exponentially. Currently, I belong to two tribes (a small number - most Triberr members belong to several more) with a reach of over 8,000 people. Triberr calculates the 'reach' by figuring out the total number of followers of your entire tribe. So if Suzi Q has 1,500 followers and I have 250, it adds up those totals to get a reach of 1,750 people.


an example of a tribal queue

Upside: Everything so far. Triberr also hosts a forum called 'bonfires' where potential tribe mates can meet and match, or discuss various things. To grow my own tribe - called YA Writers - I posted a thread saying my tribe was open to those who write, read or blog about YA writing. Simple, right? Read on...

Downsides: I've discovered that there's really no foolproof way to screen people who want to belong to your tribe (other than visiting the supposed sites of those that indicated an interest.) I began inviting people who indicated an interest on my thread about YA Writers. Each invite costs me 15 'bones' - as a newbie, I started out with 85. Unfortunately, a few of those new members were apparently spammers, since the posts that have gone into my tribal stream have nothing to do with YA writing. This is a pain but not (hopefully) fatal. I just don't click on those posts to share. But I have lost all those bones, which I need to invite other members. I'm down to 10 now, so no more invites until I somehow earn some more.

The other downside is, of course, the time it takes to find those like-minded bloggers. Reading bonfires can be a time suck, and there's no guarantee the writer of the original thread - who is also usually the Tribe Ruler - will ever answer/invite you to join their tribe. No doubt those Rulers have the same issue I do, which is to earn back the bones needed to invite/increase your tribe.

Anyway, joining Triberr is free and worth a tour. If you decide to join, stop in and say hey. I'd love to invite you to YA Writers as soon as I have the means to do it. If you form your own tribe, and it overlaps with mine, send me an invite!

8 comments:

Sarah Tokeley said...

I'm not sure I'd ever heard of this.

Kimberlee Turley said...

I don't think I can afford to spend any more time on another social network thing. Still trying to figure out why I spend so much time on Twitter when there's not that much sustenance on it.

K.T. Hanna said...

I love Triberr, but I understand exactly where you're coming from. I screen every post and if the content isn't something I'm okay with putting in my twitter stream, I don't approve it.

I don't have my own tribe, but belong to one that has about 30 members... sadly - some of them are very spammy.

I haven't looked for tribes for a while, a YA tribe sounds like a really good idea. I do have some spare bones...

Thanks for spreading word about - maybe we can get some more quality controlled groups going :D

Jenny S. Morris said...

Sounds a tiny bit complicated. Not that I don't understand the concept but the amount of time I might spend.

Always good to look into new things though.

Dino Dogan said...

Hi Melodie,

First of all, your Bones problem is solved. I just deposited 150 Bones in your account. Thnx for writing about us :-)

Second, ya, you HAVE to tribe up wisely. The onus of responsibility is on you.

And yes, we're building ways in which the relative "goodness" of a certain blogger is easier to gleam, but for now, the best, and most reliable way of vetting a potential tribemate is to KNOW that tribemate.

And as you pointed out, you can do that by checking out their blog.

Also, you can always leave a tribe you're not happy with, or remove tribesmates you're not happy with (if you own the tribe).

To Kimberlee and Jenny. Ya, Triberr can sound little complicated at first but we're designing a platform who's goal is to save time for bloggers.

So it's much faster to read posts, comment on posts, share posts, etc, by using triberr than any other way. And I say that as a blogger myself.

To K.T. Thnx :-) we love you back.

Dino
Founder of Triberr

Elizabeth Seckman said...

If you're slow, then I'm a sloth. I have never heard of it. I will have to check it out.

Daisy Carter said...

This sounds really interesting! I'll def be checking it out! I've never heard of it, but I'm always looking for ways to meet other bloggers and to build a following. Thanks!

A.L. Sonnichsen said...

I've never even heard of Triberr before! Sounds really interesting, and slightly complicated. I don't blame you for feeling like you have a slow learning curve. My learning curve is horrible with new social networking sites!