Tips on Thursday: Triberr

I have mentioned in past Tips that I'm part of a networking group at Triberr. I thought I would share what Triberr is and some ways to get the most out of it. Triberr is a gathering place for bloggers with the intent of expanding each bloggers' reach. It is a way to bring bloggers together to share each other's networks.

Each member of Triberr joins a Tribe of like-content bloggers. There are a number of tribes for book bloggers and authors. You can find some highly specialized tribes and you are not limited to being a member of only one tribe. If you do have a niche blog you may find it beneficial to belong to a specialized tribe and a general book blogger tribe for the most exposure. Tribe members commit to share each other's blog content with their networks. Note some tribes have rules about how many shares you must do each day/week/month while others do not. Each tribe sets their own guidelines so make sure you check them out before joining.

You may be wondering if all members are doing is sharing blog posts why you would need Triberr. Sure, you may have a few loyal followers who occasionally tweet your post or share a link on Facebook, but it is the ease and connections that make Triberr so great. While you may have to convince your readers to share your content, the members of the tribe are in the same boat as you and better than your average reader understand the importance of sharing a post with a larger audience (their network).

Triberr streamlines that process by making it simple to locate like-content bloggers and share content. It uses your sites RSS feed to pull the content from your blog into your tribe's stream.

The above picture is how your post appears in the tribe's stream. Members now have a number of options to share your content. They can click the approve button and it will be scheduled to go out on Twitter and/or Facebook. Under settings, members can specify how often these posts are sent. By clicking the Share button, members are given more options:

 They can set whether posts are sent to Twitter and/or Facebook. I do very little with Facebook, so do not have mine set to send automatically to Facebook. They can also stumble posts (see my StumbleUpon post about the benefits of this social bookmarking site). They can manually (and immediately) tweet the post, share it on LinkedIn and send it to Google+ all in an effort to reach their audience with your content. This much sharing is virtually impossible (from a time involvement standpoint alone) if each person had to go to each blog and click the social buttons. The link is active in Triberr so members can and do read your content via the site.

A precaution to using Triberr... Keep in mind high volumes of promotional posts to Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon can have adverse effects on your influence within your network. One way I avoid over-sharing is by scheduling all my tweets through Hootsuite. If you take a look at the first picture again,

see what I've circled in red? That is the message that will go out when you select the approve button. I just copy that message and then paste it into my Hootsuite schedule. Each day I go to the stream and select posts for the next day (I usually schedule midnight to midnight). This way if I have other events (client promotional tweets or personal promo tweets) I can see the full schedule and know how much and when everything is going out. Yes, this adds a tiny amount of extra work for me, but I feel that it is worth it to maintain my network influence.

For Triberr to work for you, you must be an active participant. Even with tribes that do not have sharing thresholds, most members have a "you share mine, I'll share yours" mentality. If you aren't actively sharing posts on your social media networks for other members of the tribe then it is likely that your content will not be shared either.

Also, make sure your content is the best it can be. A tweet, a like on Facebook, a LinkedIn update, a stumble - all reflect on the one who is sharing it. While it may not be a full endorsement, many do think it is a recommendation at the least. Good content shares = "this person knows/shares great things", follows him/her, network reach increased. Bad content shares = "this person knows nothing, I don't have time to sort through crap", stops following him/her, network reach decreased.

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