Triberr Part 2: How Do I Splash In The Triberr Kiddie Pool?

Welcome to Techie Tuesday here at More Cowbell! This is the day each week when I unleash my inner geek and we talk about some groovy piece of technology or a technical point of writing.

Last Techie Tuesday, we talked about my new Time-Saving Social Media BFF, Triberr. If you wondering what the heck I’m talking about, click here and read that post first.

This week were going to talk about getting into Triberr and getting set up (properly).

PRIZE ALERT: If you read last week’s post, you know I’m giving away spots in a new More Cowbell tribe specifically from the comments in these Triberr blogs. PLUS, I will give the winners a Triberr tutorial via GoToMeeting where we all talk on the phone and do a quick online session about how Triberr works.

Here’s how to enter this contest:

1. Comment on this post and let me know that you have contest interest
2. I will then add your name to the Magic Hat of Triberr Love
3. I will draw 3 names each time I put up a Triberr post, announcing the winners from each prior post.

Easy-peasy! The only caveat is that you must be new to Triberr to be added to the More Cowbell tribe (though you can still participate in the Webinar) – I’ll explain why in next week’s post…it has to do with something called Triberr “inbreeding.”

Last week’s winners are: Nicole Basaraba, Sheila Seabrook and Raelyn Barclay. Everyone give them virtual high-fives!! And no pouting…we’ve got at least 6 more names to draw over the coming posts.

OK, so you’ve been invited to Triberr… Um… Hmm… *blank stare* (If that’s you, keep reading! OK, even if you’re all Mr. or Miz Triberr Sassy-Britches, keep reading… 🙂 )

Getting Into Triberr

You must be invited to Triberr. You’ll receive your invitation one of two ways: Via an email or through Twitter Direct Message. A Twitter invite from me will look like this:

jhansenwrites

I’d like to invite you to join my tribe (More Cowbell) on http://t.co/v4l1NQ5. Invite Code: fjnAh3 20 Jan at 09:37 Delete

 

You will accept by clicking on the link and typing your Invite Code into the place provided. The easiest thing to do is connect with your Twitter account (when you get the message saying Triberr and Twitter need to connect to each other, just say YES).

Getting Set Up

Once you are in Triberr, there are some things you need to do to get set up. This is the area that tends to give people the most trouble. Once they’re in and their settings are good, it’s a no brainer.

If you don’t remember exactly what you did to get set up and this post looks completely unfamiliar to you (meaning you bypassed most of your settings the first time), you won’t hurt anything by printing this post and poking around. 

The tech geniuses behind Triberr are on top of things. They handle issues very quickly and everything right with your Triberr-verse, even if you click on a shiny object somewhere. (In fact, since Dino monitors the web so well, I expect to see him pop over here and correct me on any points that need clarity.)

1. In the upper right side of your Triberr window, there is your picture once you’ve set up your Twitter account. To the right of your picture is an icon that looks like a screw with a drop down arrow. Click this and choose “Settings.”

2. Scroll down the page to see your settings (I don’t know why everything starts halfway down the page in Triberr but it does). Even if your screen looks  empty, it isn’t. Just scroll down until you see this list of settings on the left side of your screen. (–>)

3. Choose Blog Settings and click the “Add RSS Feed” which pulls your blog into Triberr. You do this by typing in your blog URL with “/feed” on the end. (For example, mine would look like: https://jennyhansenauthor.wordpress.com/feed.)

You might need to click the Manual Import link to the right of your blog address the first time. After that, Triberr will periodically go check for your posts and will pull them into what is called the Tribal Stream. (I LOVE my Tribal Stream!!)

The other items in Settings are:

• Account Overview – where you add your user name, email, password and a bio
• Twitter Settings – This lets you add Twitter accounts and set which is your main one
• Content Settings – You choose how you want to receive posts and updates from others and how you want your own to work (replay is GOOD for traffic). Most importantly, you set the maximum time frequency for sharing your tribemates’ posts. Minimum frequency is every 20 minutes until the last post is tweeted. (There’s a bit more to this but this will get you started.)
• Badge Settings – Triberr is a communal tool.  Dino Dogan co-founded this application to be a community and amplification tool for bloggers (that’s us, More Cowbell Peeps!). Badges are about the topics you like to share – for today’s winners, that might be Travel or Writing for Nicole, Tarot for Raelyn and Books for Sheila. Your tribemates give you karma by clicking the thumbs up under your post when they dig it. This all adds to your badge karma, which you can then post proudly on your site like you would a blog award. You just “Grab the Code.” Some people love the badge, some ignore the badge…its up to you.

Navigating Around

I know some of my pals are a little techno-phobic so we are alllllmost done. (Breathe for a minute if all that talk of settings tightened your shoulders up around your ears.)

In Triberr, it’s all about swimming in the stream. Seriously…click “Home” to the left of your picture at the top of the screen and scroll down till you see a toolbar that looks like this:

Splash around a little in your three main “feed streams”:

• Tribal Stream – This is all your Tribesmates’ posts (our next installment is all about what to do in your Tribal Stream).
• Sent Stream – This will show you which tweets have gone out and how many hits they garnered for your Tribe. You can also “replay” posts from here to tweet them again.
• My Posts – These are all of YOUR posts that your Tribies have tweeted and you can see how many hits they’ve gotten you.

Those are some super-fun streams to splash in, no? We’re going to talk A LOT more about them next week, but I want y’all to get set up and play around a bit first. If you simply cannot wait until next week or your brain will explode, here is Solitary Mama’s post on How To Kick Ass On Triberr (or at least work it right). If you click the last link and love it, thank Myndi Shafer…she found it. 🙂

Finding Help

In Triberr, when you need help or want to learn more, you “send up a bonfire.” (How cute is that?) You click on Bonfires in your main toolbar and look on the left sidebar to narrow down your topic. Some examples are “Find Tribes/Tribesmates” or “Technical Support.”

In each of these bonfire areas, you run a search to see if someone already discussed your topic or question. If they did, you leave a comment there. If you don’t see your issue covered, you start a new bonfire. The Triberr Gods Dino and Dan come help you.

If you’ve never been to the bonfires, you might want to dance on through…make some s’mores, pick some people’s brains. It’s nifty over there. They might even give you a grass skirt and… Never mind.

To recap why I Heart Triberr:
TONS of social media, done in 10-20 minutes per day.
All the people whose posts you read and share in ONE screen. *Rapture!*

What kinds of questions do you have now that some of you have joined some tribes?  Am I going too fast or too slow with these posts? Have you found any other social media time-savers we need to know about? Enquiring minds always want to know these things here at More Cowbell!

Jenny