Today’s guest post is by Amy McCloskey Tobin.
This post took me longer than any I have ever penned because I am so torn over how I feel about it’s subject: Triberr.
Before you react, I KNOW how beloved the app is to so many of us bloggers.
I had to twist Gini Dietrich’s arm a bit to get approval because she loves it so much.
My confession: I use Triberr every day, and sometimes I abuse it.
This post is not anti-Triberr, but about how we abuse it to our own detriment.
I know this: It often damages the authenticity of my social experience.
Like any long-time user of social media, I have been going through a metamorphosis: in the beginning I tried desperately to stay ‘up’ on every new network. I could never catch my breath, nor could I intelligently consume it all. As my social community has grown, it is difficult to interact on all of the blogs and communities I admire and cherish. I’ve had to edit my consumption so I can actually digest what I was reading intelligently.
Enter Triberr
My first foray into Triberr was in a pleasant little Tribe of five; I read every post and shared them all willingly. And, the return on my time investment was that Triberr helped my own blog considerably; I earned more followers and was eventually invited to guest post on 12most.com and then other more prominent sites.
Over time, my tribe membership became a monster; I ended up in two tribes totalling 58 members. If I behaved as a good Tribemate, I’d have to share all 56 other members’ posts. God forbid I took a day off, I’d up with 35 backlogged posts. I became overwhelmed. Somedays I hid and didn’t even enter the site.
Sharing is Caring!
Then, for a short time I decided to dedicate myself to keeping up – and I shared everything. I approved it ALL, even without reading it. The reason I fell in love with social media was the authenticity of it; sharing blindly just felt so wrong, but I had to pay back my tribemates, right?
Deep down I knew this was wrong. What would Holden Caulfield say? He’d call me a phony. I represent myself as having a strong level of integrity but I had become a sharing harlot.
There were others issues too. As I’d become lazy and dependent on the approved sharing cue, I also began posting the same blogs, with no comments on my own perspective, to all of the networks. And yes, I know this is not best practice activity…I would criticize any of my clients for doing the same.
Scaling Back
As I was struggling with my own lack of sharing integrity I was invited to a Power Sharers tribe of 277 – aghhh! This had to stop somewhere.
Before I quit using Triberr, I decided to take some responsibility regarding how I was choosing to use it. I stopped sharing all of my tribemates’ posts, and took the retribution from some choosing not to share mine anymore either. I began to see Triberr as a curation tool. I did have a lot of great bloggers in my tribes, so instead of blaming Triberr for how I used it, I started to regard it as a safe keeping spot for blogs I intended to read.
Skimming through the queue made it a lot easier for me to find the titles that were appealing and relevant. It did mean I’d skip a lot of Free Offer and Special Deal posts. But I read meaningful stuff, and open anything that remotely piques my interest. I try to desist from approving anything I haven’t read fully.
Triberr was never the problem; my abuse of it was.
Amy McCloskey Tobin is a business development executive at ArCompany, and specializes in PR and integrated marketing strategy. She also is the founder of Ariel Marketing Group, llc,. Her mission in life is to create smart, individualized marketing strategies for small business.