How to lose friends and stop influencing people with Triberr
Sep 18, 2011 Social Media
A week ago I received an invitation to join a tribe on Triberr. Having never heard of Triberr before, I checked it out, and actually said out loud, “Are you kidding me?”
The idea of Triberr is this: you join a “tribe” of up to eleven people. You authorize twitter to use your Triberr account. And then, every blog post from every person in your tribe is automatically tweeted out by every single member of the tribe. Every. Single. Post.
Suddenly, I realized what had been going on in my tweetstream lately. For a little while – maybe a month? – I’d been noticing a lot more “hot” posts. You know, the ones that get retweeted a lot in a short amount of time. It’s happened to me from time to time, when I write something that resonates with a lot of people, and I get twenty or thirty retweets in a day. Lots more people than usual click over to my post because if all those other people loved it enough to retweet it, maybe they will too! It’s an incredibly gratifying feeling to know that you created something that touched people and caused them to spontaneously share it.
So, I clicked on a lot of those “hot” posts. And they were not…how do I say this? It’s not that they were bad posts, it’s just that they weren’t the kinds of posts that would inspire a bunch of people I admire to rush back to twitter and recommend them to everyone. Before I even knew what Triberr was, it was affecting my twitter experience in a negative way.
I asked people on twitter how they felt about it, and here are a few of the responses I got:
Exactly.
Reasons not to use Triberr
Not every post is worth a retweet
Even the bloggers I admire most, the ones who make me laugh and cry, the ones who have a true storytelling gift, the ones I read religiously, not even those talented writers move me to retweet every post. Far from it. Retweeting something is like giving it a stamp of approval, and I do that with care.
I know for damn sure that every post of mine isn’t worth a retweet. It’s not that some of them are sub-par, it’s just that some of them are for my core readers, the people who come to my blog each day regardless of other people’s recommendations. I don’t promote those and they’re not what I would want other people tweeting out automatically.
Nobody knows if I’m using manual mode
So Triberr does have a manual mode, where I can choose to approve each tweet before it goes out. (However, I get the feeling Triberr doesn’t want you to know about it – it’s not even on their faq page.) But my followers on twitter aren’t going to know whether or not I’m approving each tweet. My carefully chosen Triberr tweets will just get lumped in with all the spam-like Triberr tweets from other people who aren’t using manual mode.
Peer pressure makes me do things I don’t want to do
So let’s say I join a tribe, and I set my account to manual mode. And I only let Triberr retweet the tweets I really truly approve of. It will quickly become obvious to the other people in my tribe that I’m not retweeting most of their stuff. If they have their accounts set to automatic, they’re going to be especially aggravated that I’m getting way more retweets out of this than they are.
Triberr actually says, on its hard-to-find page about the manual setting, that the tribe leaders should stay on top of this: “The first responsibility is on the Chief to recognize any problems in the tribe, and speak to the members.” So now my tribe leader, who is most likely someone I know well, has to come to me and say “Hey, Amy, why aren’t you playing nice? Other tribe members say you aren’t pulling your weight” So maybe I throw in some extra Triberr tweets here and there, posts that I don’t absolutely love and wouldn’t normally retweet, but I do it just to keep the tribe happy.
I just threw my credibility out the window. I basically said to all of my followers, you can no longer trust me to recommend the absolute cream-of-the-crop posts to you. Now I’m just trying to keep my tribe from hating me and kicking me out.
So why not just block Triberr?
It’s easy enough to do on my computers with proxlet. I no longer see the Triberr tweets on my laptop. But the problem with that is, I’m sure I’m missing some great posts. Someone who has already tweeted something through Triberr is probably not going to tweet it again themselves. They know it’s been taken care of already. So if I’m not seeing any of their Triberr tweets, I’m missing out on the good ones, too.
And to be honest, even on my phone (where so far I can’t block Triberr), I’m mentally filtering out the Triberr posts. I can’t trust them, so I tend to ignore them.
The Alternative?
I don’t think the people who created Triberr are evil. I don’t think they set out to create a spam machine. They were trying to solve a problem: how to get more traffic for blog posts. And I know why so many people are using it: I’m quite sure it does increase traffic. My problem is that there are many ways I could increase my own traffic that I don’t employ because they would annoy the hell out of my followers. Just because something helps you meet a goal doesn’t mean that you are getting a net benefit – if you’re gaining pageviews but losing influence, have you really gained anything?
The alternative is to find a few people whose writing you like and form an informal pact. Promise to read and comment on each other’s posts and promote them where you see fit. I’ve been trying lately to pay more attention to promoting other people’s work, both by tweeting and stumbling, and I’m sure I’ll see a benefit as a result. Sure, doing it this way takes a little more time and effort than relying on something like Triberr, but I know that I’m doing my part to keep spammy tweets out of twitter.
Originally posted on Behind the Screen. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
The Blogger Pledge
Sep 15, 2011 Blogging
So I’ve had an interesting few months. I saw a couple of opportunities blow up in my face, I let a few more slip through my fingers, and I completely messed up at least one. I did not plan well for the summer, especially August, and ended up missing a couple of big deadlines.
On the other hand, lots of great opportunities have come my way recently that I’ve managed not to mess up, and I’ve been getting more and more steady, long-term work.
There’s a lot that both sides – bloggers and those who hire us – can do to make this a more mutually beneficial relationship, but all I can control is my side of it. So, here’s my pledge. Some of these I already do consistently, some of them I kinda do, some of them I really need to work on. Two or three are in there specifically because a bunch of YOU aren’t doing them, and I’m passive-aggressive like that. But they are all the foundation on which I can build a better career.
The Blogger Pledge
Raise your right hand, put your left hand on a pile of contracts, travel receipts, and rejected proposals, and repeat after me:
- I will not miss a deadline, ever again. It makes me look incredibly unprofessional, and reflects badly on all of the other bloggers who are working hard and fulfilling their commitments.
- I will not be late. If I say that I’m going to be somewhere at a certain time, I will plan ahead to make that happen. There are worse things than standing outside for fifteen minutes because I’m early.
- I will show up. If I say I will attend something, I will be there. Sure, emergencies do happen and canceling is sometimes unavoidable. But “I don’t feel like going anymore” is not an acceptable excuse for wasting a spot that could’ve gone to someone else. Which leads to…
- I will seriously consider saying no before I say yes to anything. It’s nice to be included in things, and I always worry that if I don’t attend something, it will end up being the greatest event in the history of PR. But unless I genuinely want to be involved, I will say no, and leave the spot for someone who will appreciate it more.
- I will be generous. The internet is a big place, and sharing an opportunity will not dilute that opportunity for me. In fact, helping to make other bloggers more successful and influential will help convince the people with the money to make more opportunities. However…
- I will remember that I’m not in kindergarten. I do not have to bring enough for everybody. I do not have to include everyone. I do not have to associate with people who bring me down.
- I will not waste time being jealous. Well, not more than a few seconds, anyway. Instead, I will ask myself if that other blogger is really doing something that I would want to do, or if I’m simply jealous of the attention, which is petty.
- I will read every word of everything I sign. Even if someone is literally standing behind me breathing down my neck, I will read – and understand – every word before signing.
- I will stop and think before signing a non-disclosure agreement. The more specific and lengthy the NDA, the more I’ve ended up getting screwed, and then couldn’t even talk about it and warn others. Unless I can be comfortable with what I’m signing, unless changes can be made that protect my right to express myself about my own experiences, I will not sign and will be prepared to lose the opportunity.
- I will make sure I understand the scope of my involvement in a project before saying yes, and that I have it in writing. While I pride myself on being flexible and understand that things change on the fly, it is my responsibility to make sure that if I give my time to something, I will be rewarded with at least a certain level of involvement and promotion to make it worth my while. If the other party can’t promise that, I should run the other way.
- I will not undervalue myself. I know what my time is worth, and when I work for less I end up hating myself for it.
- I will not help promote things – or bloggers – I don’t believe in. Pay or no pay, my opinion is my most valuable asset. And if I use it to promote people or things I’m not enthusiastic about, my worth gets watered down.
- I will keep my goals in mind, always. If I don’t know where I want to end up, I won’t know which path to take. Just because “everybody” is doing something doesn’t mean that it is right for me.
Originally posted on Behind the Screen. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, professionalism
