Triberr Part 3: Graduate to the “Big People Pool” (or How Do I Rock My Tribal Stream?)

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.

A few weeks ago, we talked about my new Time-Saving Social Media BFF, Triberr and I explained why I love it. Last Techie Tuesday, I explained how to get set up once you’re in Triberr.

PRIZE ALERT: If you read the last two posts, 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 or link back to any of my Triber posts
2. I will 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 for the week.

Easy-peasy! I have rescinded the caveat that you must be new to Triberr to be added to the More Cowbell tribe – I’ve unlocked inbreeding and can now take existing Triberr members. I still cross my fingers that you’re new to the app, so I don’t have to pay “bones” (Triberr currency) for you, but this is  a contest. Gotta have a worthy prize!!

News: As of last week, Triberr is now open to all with no invite needed. Any of you that don’t end up in my tribe can still go find and form your own tribes. There are MANY nifty enhancements coming down the Triberr pike right now, especially for WordPress bloggers.

Last week’s winners were: Nicole Basaraba, Sheila Seabrook and Raelyn Barclay.
This week’s winners are: Jessica O’Neal, Marcy Kennedy and Fabio Bueno.

If you’re in Triberr already, you’ve probably done some of the following:

• You’ve read my earlier Triberr posts (links at top of this blog)
• You’ve added your RSS Feed so others can share your posts
• You might even have poked around and shared a few posts yourself

But……

You might still be feeling lost and unfulfilled in your shiny Triberr dreams. Maybe it seems like this Triberr thing might be a bunch of hooplah over nothing.

Where are the hits?
Where is the glory??
Where is the FUN???

[Say what?? Is Jenny smokin’ some tribal grass? Dancing to a freaky Cowbell Beat??]

This week we are going to bring the zing back to your relationship with Triberr! You’re going to learn how to effectively Rock Your Tribal Stream.

Here’s a quick recap of your three main Triberr “feed streams”:

• Tribal Stream – This is all your Tribesmates’ posts (which they hope you’ll pimp).
• Sent Stream – You see which tweets you’ve sent out and how many hits they garnered for your Tribemates. You can also “replay” posts from here to tweet them again. (This costs you “bones.”)
• My Posts – These are all of YOUR posts that your Tribies have shared and you can see how many hits they’ve gotten you.

Just like Kristen Lamb’s WANA Revolution, Triberr is about bloggers banding together and sharing in each other’s audience. Triberr allows your tribe members to send your post to THEIR NETWORK  via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Google+.

Here’s what a post looks like in your Tribal Stream when it comes in:

 
The basics of the the post window above:

1. If I want to check out Lydia’s Triberr profile, I click on her name at the top.
2. If I want to read her post, I click on the title, in this case “Fresh Baked Books.”
3. If I do nothing but hit the Approve button on the right, the post will tweet as is.

But what if I want to do Triberr magic??

There are more nifty things in this post window if you know what you’re looking for:

1. Click the thumbs up to let your tribemate know you think they’ve got a quality post.
2. Load the social media button bar at the bottom to share to your social networks. In order below, you see Twitter (don’t tweet here, I’ll show you a faster way), Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon and LinkedIn.
   
3. Click the black screw looking button on the upper right corner of the person’s post box. It will open an edit box that looks like this (I used a post from a different tribe):
   
4. When you’re finished with your edits (mine were all of the highlighted blue text above), you click the “Update” button and then “Approve” to schedule your tweet. (Remember the Content Settings from the last post? That’s where you set your tweeting interval.)

What else do you need to know?

Posts will automatically leave your Tribal Stream after they tweet
All you have to do is hit the approve button. I only use the share toolbar shown above when I share on networks OTHER THAN Twitter. It’s faster than manually doing every tweet.

Triberr is a teensy bit “punctuation-unfriendly.”
The Update window will refuse some of the characters you like to use in tweets like “<” or “>”. It will also take your apostrophes and dashes and turn them into wackiness like this “%2%04$”.

That’s not so cute…

You can fix the above by just retyping the quotes and dashes and elipses you see in someone’s post title while you update with hashtags, etc. It takes seconds but saves you the time of editing again.

I’ll send Myndi’s post out tomorrow at a better time than the middle of the night so she gets more traffic. (p.s. 8-11 am across any time zone is usually a great time.) It’s all ready and looks like this:

Triberr Etiquette

• I wouldn’t want someone to tweet all MY posts in the middle of the night when traffic is low, so why would I tweet their posts at that time?
• Unless you’re in a desperate hurry, take the time to add hashtags to as many posts as you can. This ensures higher traffic for your Tribesmates.
• Check Triberr 1-2 times a day to Approve your tweets for higher-traffic times.
• You don’t have to tweet every post – only those you want to. That being said, if you’re in my tribes, it’s because I want to promote you so I tweet most posts.

My Triberr Process

1. Open Triberr 1-2 times per day
2. Scroll down to see the Tribal Stream
3. Scan all posts to see if any are time-sensitive
4. Click the black screw I mentioned above to open the Update window and edit the titles
5. Click the “Approve” button in the order I’d like to tweet in (they don’t have to be in order)
6. Click any other share buttons I want to use (i.e. Facebook, G+, StumbleUpon)
7. At my designated reading times (usually at night), I click the post titles (you can do this from the Sent Stream too) and read whatever I missed that day.

I don’t know if this helps you, but that’s my process – I usually garner between 2-14 Twitter hits for each of my Tribesmates’ posts.

VERY COOL THING: Very soon, Triberr will get an update that allows you to COMMENT on your Tribesmates’ posts from inside Triberr!! I’ll also share the deets on their groovy invention – The Frictionless Guest Post. (WOOT-WOOT!)

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!*

This is Triberr post #3 and I can stop here if y’all have reached the saturation point. Please let me know in the comments if you’d like more Triberr posts. If you’re still rarin’ to go, I have a few more posts in me covering topics like:

• How to set up your own tribes
• What some of the unusual words (like bonfires and inbreeding) mean.
• The Frictionless Guest Post

For those of you on Triberr, are you finding your way around more easily? Anyone need any help? Enquiring minds love  to know these things here at More Cowbell!

 Jenny