Triberr, Anyone?

So, a couple of weeks ago, I received a Triberr invite. I had absolutely no idea what this was. I had just signed on to Google + and didn't really want to take on yet another social networking thing. I mean, it's not like I need to gain more followers, but I do like to try out free products and have giveaways once in a while. Those analytics numbers do count for something when a company is considering you for PR. I read a little about Triberr and learned that this isn't a social network at all. It's basically a group of people getting together and tweeting each others' posts.

The Basics of Triberr

Triberr's terminology is kind of interesting. You belong to "Tribes", or groups of others who will tweet your posts, as you tweet theirs. You can belong to as many tribes as you'd like. You can also start your own tribe, making you the Chief of that tribe. In fact, everyone can have three tribes of their own. Now, there is something called Bones - money, really. You start off with so many bones when you sign up (I can't remember how many, sorry.) If you want to join a tribe (and are already a member of at least one other tribe), you must pay the chief and all of the tribe members a kind of offering. That's where the bones come in. The chief of the tribe gets the largest cut, and then the members get a smaller amount. The larger the tribe, the more it costs to get in.

What's With Dem "Bones"?

There are two way to get more bones. First, you can buy them outright. The other option is to earn them. No, you don't have to jump through any hoops like taking surveys or signing up to sites that are going to spam the hell out of you. You simply give Karma to the posts that your tribemates would like you to tweet. This is called...um, (tee-hee) a "Random Boning Opportunity"!

You see, when you are on your Home page, you are able to choose between a few views. One is called the Tribal Stream. This is where a list of all the tweets that are queued up for you to tweet to your Twitter followers. There is a section that shows you exactly what the tweet will say (you can edit this), who the post belongs to, and a link to the post so you can check it out. Then, there is a section that allows you to delete the post, so you won't tweet it. Finally, there is a section for karma. You can like or dislike any post based on whatever you want. Either way, you will randomly earn one bone for doing this. Sometimes you will have to give karma to 10 posts before you earn a bone, other times you might earn 5 bones in a row. That's why it's called a "random" opportunity!

But What if I Don't Want to Tweet a Post?

Then don't you have the control here. In one of the tribe I belong to, one blogger is a very green mamma. She does not want to be tweeting about a great deal on Huggies to her followers, you know? So, she just chooses to delete those posts from her Tribal Stream. If you don't have the time to keep checking back throughout the day to see if any errant posts are scheduled for you to tweet, you may choose to set your account to manual. This means that no tweets will go out under your Twitter account without your approval. You have to be careful with this, though. If you're forgetful and don't return to approve posts often, yet you are allowing all of your posts to be tweets, people are going to get angry. Why should they tweet for you if you're not going to do the same in return?

The Positive Side of Triberr

You will have your posts Tweeted out to a ton of new people. I have gained over 200 new Twitter followers in the couple of weeks I've been on Triberr. Your Google Analytics numbers will jump through the roof. The first week, my visitors went up 78%! This wee, they're at 49%. My bounce rate has dropped, I have people checking out 2-3 posts per visit, AND I'm getting a lot of return visitors. If you've got a message to share and want lots of people to hear it, Triberr is the place to do it.

On that Triberr Home page I was telling you about, there is another tab you can choose. This one is for Your Stream. It shows you all of your posts that have been or will be tweeted by your tribemates. Here, you have the option of pausing a post, so it won't be tweeted yet. You can also delete the post from Triberr completely. Remember all of those KY Intimacy Experiment posts I had? Well, one of the tribes I belong to is named "Family 101". Um, yeah... no one really appreciated my KY posts getting into their Twitter stream. I deleted them and there was no longer a problem.Maybe you wrote a very personal post that you only want to share with your readers and not shout to the whole world - just delete it from the stream.
On that same page, you can see who in your tribe has tweeted your post and how many times one of their followers has clicked the link in their tweet and visited your blog. Remember that Cheesy Broccoli Goodness recipe I just posted. I received 120 visitors to that post just from my tribemates tweeting it to their followers!

I Heard This is Spammy

Triberr can be spammy - if your settings are not right for your particular group of followers. In the My Account section, you have many options. One of these allows you to choose how often each tweet from Triberr will go out to your Twitter followers. I had mine set to every 15 minutes when I started. This meant that once every 15 minutes I would tweet one of my tribemate's posts to my followers. Last week, in an effort to make sure that I was able to tweet all of the Tribe members' posts, I upped the time to one tweet every 5 minutes. It wasn't pretty - I became a Twitter spammer. I lost a ton of followers! So, I just set it back to 15 minutes and I'm gaining followers again. You can choose any amount of time between tweets, one a minute or once an hour - it's your choice. In addition, as I mentioned above, you can delete any posts that you do not want to tweet to your followers. This keeps the spam-ish posts from even hitting your twitter stream.

Word(s) of Caution

I've recently found a problem with Triberr. For me, anyhow. One of the tribes I am in has grown too large. This tribe has 48 members right now (this may change any minute!)For those who just want to get their posts to the largest audience possible, this is great. The members of the tribe have a total of 85,000 Twitter followers, so the reach is HUGE. The problem for me is that I have a certain audience that I want to reach and I don't feel like that's happening for me with this tribe. Because, while these 47 other people are tweeting my posts to their 85,000 followers, I must tweet all of their posts to my followers. Some of these bloggers post 5-10 times a day! I feel like my own tweets of my posts - to my own followers - are being ignored because my followers are getting used to seeing me tweet so many other blogs posts. I am going to turn in my Tribe member "resignation" tomorrow and stick to my smaller tribes.

Which Brings Me To...

Would YOU like to join me on Triberr? I have one Tribe - Green Parenting/Natural Parenting. I'd like to top out at 20 members who post 3 times a day or less. Right now, the others who are in this tribe (myself included) get about 5-7 posts a week out. I think that, with 20 bloggers all averaging the same number of posts and tweeting each others' posts once every 20-30 minutes, we can have a very peaceful tribe and spread our messages to like-minded followers.

If you're interested in joining this tribe on Triberr, please leave me a comment with your Twitter name and, if your blog isn't linked to your blogger profile or twitter profile, leave me the URL to your blog. Now, if you're not following me on Twitter, I won't be able to send you am invite via Twitter direct message. If you don't want to follow me (no hard feelings - you don't have to!), you can email me at ohmiss14 at yahoo dot com. I will send the invite to your email address.

I will be checking blogs to make sure you're not posting a ton every single day. I understand that you may get 8 posts out one day and none the next. I'm just looking at averages here. I'll also be checking for content. I'm not going to be strict on how green or natural your posts are. I'd like to stay away from constant "coupon match-ups" or "go get this deal!" posts. If you have a couple here and there, no big deal. I'm pretty laid back and not a controlling person, but I want to be fair to everyone.