Triberr: the Right to (and Problem) with Manual

by OsakaSaul on September 15, 2011

In reply to Makobi Scribe’s firm stance on why the manual mode in Triberr is cure-all, I commented with a very different stance, based on my own experience. This is about blog cross-promotion, .rss syndication, and running a Triberr tribe right.

Excerpt of her post

“I run a forum with some odd 150ish people in it. A lot of us are in the same Triberr group. Outside of that my reach is over 2.5 million so I have heard my fair share of gripes. Here is my response for all those gripes you have, may have, or have had.

Gripe: Someone is not tweeting my stuff.
Gripe: Too many tweets are going out in my twitter stream.
Gripe: I tweeted so and so’s post, but they didn’t tweet mine.
Gripe: There are too many coupons and reviews and giveaways going out.
Gripe: I am tired of tweeting the same posts and opportunities over and over.
Answer: Bummer, put them on manual if it bothers you.

Put them on manual if it bothers you. when people signed up to be on Triberr they did not sign a contract to give you control of their stream. It is THEIR prerogative what they want THEIR audience to read. Put them on manual if it bothers you. Don’t complain, don’t gripe, don’t get all drama over it. Just put them on manual if it bothers you.”

My reply, in comment on her blog

Point noted, and with respect for what you have surely done with Triberr, may I note that the manual setting is problematic.

I, too, have developed tribes, a couple of which are rather prominent and have attracted some rather influential people in media. I provide insights in my very recent http://osakabentures.com/2011/08/ranking-reaching-about-my-tribes which I think you and readers will find enlightening.

The manual setting: let's acknowledge the responsibilities - along with the right to this option.

When they go manual, members demonstrate their lack of confidence in each others’ blog content, overall. Too much of that, and members on auto begin to think, “why I am going to tweet all of hers’ – when she tweets not one in five of mine?” As I see it, that’s where the tribe you have built begins to fall apart.

As food for thought, from the start, one of the first “power tribes,” launched and recruited for by Dino Dogan, himself, demonstrates his own impatience with the manual setting. From the tribe’s (current to today’s date) description:
Anubis Members: 34 Reach: 433,396 people
“Anubis is a Supertribe. We comment on each other’s blogs and we automatically retweet each other’s posts (no manual mode here.)”

“Hmm…?”

To conclude, while I have problems with the manual mode, as I see it, if you select members very well, here should be nearly no need for it. I, for one, am only on manual in two tribes that I was happy to join – until I discovered that the Chief takes nearly anyone with a big Twitter following. Sometimes you discover these things in time.

For what it worth, I am tweeting this article of yours, having edited – as is our prerogative in Triberr – to “Got a gripe about Triberr? For this Chief, manual mode is a cure-all.”

About Saul Fleischman

Working with social web apps developers on getting things made: my role tends to be functionality ideation, user experience, and also, marketing communications and community development.

su.pr size it! http://su.pr/2EXvnw

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Carolyn Nicander Mohr

Hi Saul, I can understand Makobi Scribe’s position on Triberr and that may work well in her tribes. But I would much rather be in tribes where I was confident in the quality of the posts that are published from my tribe mates. Right now, I am very fortunate to be in such tribes. I have read much on the pros and cons of Auto vs. Manual in Triberr and have come down on the side of Auto if the quality of the writing is there. I do value my Twitter stream and firmly believe I am sharing quality content by tweeting posts of my tribe mates. I would like to have time to read all of the posts. In fact, I check my Triberr streams daily to discover interesting comment. But I don’t want to hold back on tweeting because I haven’t had a chance to read all of the content flowing through my tribes.

When I read the posts from my tribe mates, I try to add a comment to the title, showing that I have read it, and give the post karma. I want to support my tribe mates, both because I value their writing and because I want to reciprocate their support of me.

Thanks for this insightful article, Saul!

Saul Fleischman

Oh, thank you very much, Carolyn! Like you, while I cannot make time to read every post I know I should, unless something looks really, really “off-brand” for me, I err on the side of letting it through in Triberr. Its a quid pro quo thing, and there’s karma in promoting those who promote us, I say.

Stan Faryna

Like you and Carolyn, I believe that a tribe on manual will always be a weak tribe. Even if you are doing Triberr just for reach (not connection and community), a reach of 1 billion is worthless when no one is approving your tweets.The emphasis on filtering should not be on the content, it should be on the blogger. On recruitment. If the recruiter lacks commitment to recruitment, good taste, and/or sound judgment, there’s your problem.Recently on my blog: Are you comfortable faking it? And other social media DOHs. http://wp.me/pbg0R-pl

Saul Fleischman

Thanks, Stan. For the sake of the small community that a single tribe actually is, and the reciprocal nature of what we get from Triberr, I believe that we really should be letting through most of the blog tweets from our tribes. If we can’t, we are in the wrong tribe(s), I say. (I even had to boot a couple people, great bloggers, but poor sharers - for that very reason, BTW.)

Makobi Scribe

Seriously Saul, lighten up—this was a funny post meant for the so-called dreaded “mommy bloggers” in my Tribe. Sorry, you took it so seriously. People have Twitter streams for different reasons. Obviously our reasons differ. I would not expect you to EVER be in one of my Tribes and it is the fault of the Tribe leaders for blindly inviting a review and giveaway blogger without checking out their blog to see what posts would be posted in the first place. You and I should never have been in the same tribe and I altered and did what I could with my stream to keep my posts relevant to the Tribe I was in; however, Triberr could not accommodate this and I started double tweeting, so I turned my stream off and eventually got kicked out of the Tribes I do not fit into, which is fine by me. I rather stick with the like-minded people anyways. This all being said, I have enough drama raising three kids to debate a silliness like Triberr on line. Get your facts straight, find out why they wrote a post before attacking them and then sending haters over to their blog. Rude and mean. I had to delete a slough of comments from my blog this morning that I would not want my family to read. Good luck with your blog’s genre.

PamMktgNut

I have to support Saul in some degree with your post. I read it originally and it rubbed me wrong too. I know you probably wrote it in fun but it came across as you had little regard for your tribe members nor respect for their following.

I did not choose to be in a tribe with your content that was filled with sales & spam giveaways. It was a tribe chief who I trusted who let you in. It is nothing against you personally but your content just did not fit what I send to my following.

I think Triberr is a great study of people. Their true self comes out good or bad. It’s easy to tell the ones who are greedy, who share, who give or who only think of themselves.

I think Dino & Dan’s words when you first sign up stating something like “build your tribe wisely” are brilliant words. We should also add “join your tribe wisely

Makobi Scribe

PS–Sorry if I sounded upset and harsh. I guess I am upset. You would not believe the language or how hurtful people can be over something I was writing to my friends in fun. I forget the power of the internet and I should have wrote a disclaimer saying to my friends (who thought it was funny BTW)

Saul Fleischman

Thanks for the comments, all opinions welcome. You may note that I mentioned not a word about the nature of your blog posts going through Triberr, or any Tribe therein, so actually, I have no idea why you’d receive backlash – and think any of it came by my doing. The only subject I covered, let’s remember is how, while we have the Triberr-given “right” to Triberr, it is rather over-used by some.

Randomosityblog

Makobi Scribe’s post was prompted after a few members of her group would not stop griping about Triberr. So she she basically was saying hush up, it’s a great resource, if you don’t like it put them on manual. It was all done in fun, and the people it was directed to did not get offended.

It’s sad to me that you took it so seriously. Lighten up, life’s too short.

But hey, linking to a popular blog gets you more traffic, right?

Saul Fleischman

If you read what I wrote, in fact, it was merely how some, like Makobi (and many, many others, for that matter) feel that the manual setting is a cure all. For those o us who have put many hours into buildin strong tribes, the manual setting, when over-used by members, actually demonstrates their lack of confidence in other members’ blogs.

Say you, I and Makobi were all in the same tribe. Say I started by having you on manual, and after approving nearly all your blog posts, I switch over to automatic for you two. Can you see how this is one heck of an indication of my confidence in what you will publish – hence forth? There is solidarity in the auto setting, something I hope to have more of in my tribes.

I do thank you for your opinions, of course!

PamMktgNut

Saul – I can see your point. I had seen Mako’s post and it also rubbed me wrong but I just ignored.
However, I have to disagree with you regarding manual. There are several reasons people may go manual. It is not always because they don’t “trust”. There is not only one way to do Triberr or any social networking for that matter.I think it is up to the chief and tribe members to decide how they want to run the tribe. If they want to all go auto that is great. However, if a tribe and chief leave it as open then people shouldn’t constantly wine their content isn’t getting tweeted. When someone sends a tweet with a link to my blog I fell blessed. It is not an expectation. As a tribe member we get the benefit of having our content shared more widely. I think the difference is in how people tweet and engage with their followers. There are some folks who don’t really care what they send to their following. They will send anything as long as it isn’t profanity and sounds half like the language they prefer. Or it could be some folks who for whatever reason are willing to trade the sharing of their blog posts for tweeting content that they may normally not. Basically for these folks it’s worth the trade. However, there are other folks (I am one) who have a plan in our communication. I have an editorial calendar that is aligned to my biz and marketing plan. I have goals, objectives and an engagement strategy. I don’t send my following redundant posts. I won’t send them 10 different posts in 2 days on a new feature of Google+ that says all the same thing. I personally don’t understand why anyone would want to do that if you are trying to build an engaged audience that is providing value and connecting with them?

I review every single post that goes out under my name. I approve more than not on most days and honestly try to tweet as many as I can. If I don’t tweet a post it isn’t always because I don’t like it or don’t think it’s good. There could many different reasons why people don’t tweet a post. Could be it’s too “salesy”, is redundant to other posts (this happens a lot), is written poorly, covers a topic that the tweeter recently covered in more depth, is confusing, provides little to value to the reader, is very negative or simply is an old post with links to old references or even links that are broken. Most of the folks I know who are on manual really do have good intentions. I think they are sometimes wrongly being judged and being put in a defensive mode just because they choose to curate vs spam their audience with anything and everything. To me, it’s a matter of choice. I am seriously considering leaving a couple of the tribes I am in due to these issues. It is not worth the drama or time spent reviewing junk content from a tribe who’s leader has let anyone with a Twitter account into them.

Saul Fleischman

Pam, thanks for the ideas, as always, but as for the “Blessed” bit, look, its a quid pro quo thing. Reciprocity is in order. If people are sending through just a fraction of tribespeoples’ posts – they are in the wrong tribe.

Saul Fleischman

I looked at the screenshot. It could have been anyone’s and is probably not a work of creative genius that the user would mind me re-using. Had she titled it, made any copyright, etc. notice in the image file, I would not have used it. I have replaced it with my own screenshot.
Alan Firmin

Nice post Saul! I guess what you said to me about hearing it all before was no exaggeration! I hope I didn’t add to your troubles with the ‘drama’ You are a great tribe leader and I respect the way you seem to float through the ego minefield that comes with trying to give people something extra, like a great tribe.

Respect!

All the best Saul,

Take care Alan.

Saul Fleischman

You are (again) too generous – and have never been a source of any trouble. The ego minefield within Triberr is a behemoth and a thing to behold.

Aaron Lee

I’ve been an early adopter of triberr, i love it. I was automated when it became too much so I changed it to manual to choose what goes out and what doesn’t.

Later on, I moved to Singapore from Malaysia and I didn’t have a connection for 2 weeks. I was kicked off a group lol.

For me personally, I am a little particular about sharing content, I love sharing anything educational on social media, however when it the group continued to grow, i kept it on manual and like you mention, people were feeling I wasn’t sharing their stuff etc since some of the group members doesn’t really write much on social.

Moreover the manual mode does take up a little time. What do you think

Saul Fleischman

Thanks Aaron, and good that you love it like us! As for getting kicked out of a Tribe, yes, people misunderstand things. Manual setting: it is something to use in emergencies, and as a stop-gap measure. Essentially, if you are not letting through the majority of the posts in your tribe – you should not be in that tribe. BTW, when we can SKYPE, you know, there is the waiting invite at http://triberr.com/ext/profile-tribe.php?tid=1813 for you.

Kristi Hines

I use Triberr on manual for several reasons. Maybe they all boil down to me being in the wrong tribes or having “too high standards” but the reasons are as follows.

1. My audience trusts that I have reviewed all of the content I have tweeted. Because I do so, I only send out content that I essentially stamp my seal of approval on, so if that person goes out and follows that content’s tutorial / ideas / tips, I can be confident that they will see benefits. I’ve seen several posts from various tribes come through and I wouldn’t recommend following the tips within them for myself or others because they were just bad, so I don’t tweet them.

2. I’ve had several people say they unfollow people who tweet from Triberr because they assume they’re not moderating the content and are simply tweeting in exchange for other tweets (someone compared it to a Ponzi scheme – no idea if that’s really applicable or not). The consensus is that they don’t respect automated tweets more often than not. So I take the posts I do approve of from Triberr and schedule them in HootSuite. I think that takes away the stigma of “Oh, another Twitter automation” and may actually get each post more viewership.

3. I don’t share all of my posts on Triberr. I specifically choose only my best, so I probably only have maybe 2 – 3 at the most go through a week. Some weeks I’ve had none (and I’m still tweeting everyone else). Others just one. I choose content that I probably spent a minimum of two hours writing. So naturally, I hold some pretty high standards for the content I tweet out. When I see people posting something new daily, and their posts are about 200 words, obviously slapped together in about 20 minutes, and is absolutely boring or something completely off base from the content I normally share, about a service I don’t use or recommend, etc. I’m not tweeting it.

4. I don’t expect everyone to always tweet my posts. I don’t look at who’s done it and who hasn’t. I know that not everyone’ s audience is going to be receptive of all of my content, and kudos to the people who are actually considering that.

5. When I look through my stream of who to tweet and who not to tweet, I look at the quality of the post to determine whether my audience will benefit from that content. I am thinking about my followers first because, at the end of the day, if I don’t have followers, my place in Triberr really doesn’t mean anything to anyone anyway. Which means if there’s someone in one of my tribes that has tweeted absolutely zero of my posts, but they have content that would be 100% awesome for my followers, I still tweet it.

6. Lastly, I have a certain pattern of tweeting. I do it generally from 7am to 9pm with an hour to an hour and a half between link tweets. I don’t want a big blob of tweets going through at once (whether or not they are spaced at 20 minute intervals) and there’s no point in having a tweet go through at 3am in the morning since my best time to tweet (according to this analysis - http://www.tweriod.com/r/bgb5K) is 5am to 10pm.

In all honesty, my Twitter following has dropped since I started Triberr, and if that continues to be a trend, I will probably leave altogether. I’m in several tribes now, and while there are great members in them, there are also ones that are a bit so-so (obviously brought in because of their high Twitter following and not their content), and if I’m “expected” to tweet them all, then it’s really not the right fit for me.

As an endnote, to prove that people are not thinking about their follower’s interests, this goes to show that having tribe members with a lot of followers doesn’t really mean anything in terms of getting visits to your posts.

http://kikolani.com/post-case-study-triberr-visits-vs-google-analytics.html

It could be a combination of followers without the same interests and the fact that, when you let Triberr do the tweeting whenever it feels like it, your posts are being sent at weird hours when your target audience (or that Twitter users) isn’t even up yet. Case in point, one of my Twitter followers (not on Triberr) brings me a LOT of traffic when he tweets my posts during standard business hours. If he does it during off hours, even if the topic is similar to other posts that have done really well, I get very little retweets / traffic from him. I certainly can’t tell him how to tweet, but I can at least ensure that when I do, they get the most traction possible.

Saul Fleischman

Kristi, you go deep with analytics. I go deep with engagement. I find it interesting that those whose participation in Triberr is, either:
1. joining Tribes only or
2. joining tribes – and as for their own Tribes, primarily building them by cherry-picking members from within Triberr…

…are the staunchest advocates of the glories of the manual setting. What’s more, just within the Triberr community, those who make themselves the least accessible to other members extol the benefits of vetting our posts.

You know what? You are correct, and in all your points, and the protecting your brand image, and so on, I cannot find fault with that. That is prudent. (I must interject, right here, that since we are connected, what I want to note next actually does not apply to you, Kristy, since you are, in act, incredibly considerate – but rather, applies to other Triberr users (and “user” is definitely the word I want here!) who believe it is fair that they let through just a small fraction of Tribe members’ posts – as a standard, ongoing policy and practice.) However, with Triberr, there is the reciprocal actor that I ask those who join my Tribes to consider:

A ticket to The Business of Change affords a new member a reach extension of 450K in Twitter. We’ll get the new member a good number of actual page views, Twitter retweets, and so on. “Good citizenship” in a Tribe is letting through at least the majority of the posts by at least nearly all members. Should there be, say, 1-2 members whose content is always going to be off-brand for you, I say it is fair to not let their content through. However, kindly note that I have dealt with a number of people in Triberr who do a great deal more taking (of our reach) than they give – and cannot be made to see how this is wrong. When I find this (nearly always, I do not, by the way; other members tell me about this situation… “a word to the wise…” out there) I do not remove the member. (As you’ll see in my next blog post, I do not “push buttons prematurely,” http://osakabentures.com/2011/09/lets-not-push-buttons-prematurely/ I speak with people, to learn why they are not letting our stuff through, and see if a bad situation can be improved. The great news is in nearly every case – those bad situations had simple fixes, and people did not need to be asked to leave. It does SPEAKING with people, let me add. Not chatting, not emails, be (audio) talking. I do that. I have time for you.

While you came to The Business of Change http://triberr.com/ext/profile-tribe.php?tid=1815
from the inside, I’d like you to know that when we launch a tribe, its just little old “us.” Not a whole hell of a lot of attraction, and it takes real work to recruit good bloggers – who also have strong enough social media presences (for now, with Triberr, that means Twitter; in the future, could be important across several networks) for a fledgling tribe. I did that.

It took an unbelievable amount of time, patience, time-zone considerations (I’m in Japan, alas), to talk with bloggers I wanted for that Tribe. Those who are not yet using Triberr have a slew of concerns, worries, questions… and then, I like to discuss MY concerns (having been burnt just a few times by bloggers who I was connected to in Tribes) before welcoming them to one of my tribes. When I take on an additional member, the benefit in reach – and networking potential, for those of us who care to partake of this – is available to those who “enjoy the ride” of Tribe membership to the precise degree that it is available to the Chief.

Manual if you must. A fair acknowledgement of the give-and-take nature of Triberr – as you gave, Kristi, in noting how the Tribe in which you cannot let through a large percentage of the content might be a Tribe to leave – is in order. Respectfully, I would add that rather than pushing the knee-jerk reaction, and “pushing a button” to leave, you could actually speak with people, since many a problem has been resolved that way.

Kristi Hines

Valid points. I know you do have time to speak with me… but as you don’t know me well, I should say that I do have an intense phobia of talking on the phone, Skype voice, interviews, etc. I’m working on getting over that slowly with some business contacts, but now is just not the right time for me to push that. The few calls I have had for my business have just been silly – either the person just reiterated what they sent in a previous email or confirmed that they would send more details in another email. That and I listen to my colleagues on the phone with customer after customer for hours on end and I think to myself – does this customer realize what they could actually be getting done for them that would help their business instead of chit-chatting. And, oddly enough, I would be alright with sitting down in front of a person and talking to them rather than be on the phone. But I digress….

I probably wouldn’t leave without talking to the tribe chief first, but at the same time, I know I don’t have the place to really say “Well, I need you to kick out X, Y, and Z or I’m out.” And I certainly don’t feel in the place to tell an individual blogger to change their writing style. It’s not that they don’t fit in the tribe – it’s that ultimately I don’t fit in the tribe. The first group I started with had a core of awesome people, and since they have been adding on people that don’t really fit the mold with the rest. Not that they’re bad people with bad content, but they were chosen obviously for their follower count and “power” but not their relevancy. Hence, even though they have 100K+ followers, none of them are interested in my types of posts which makes it kind pointless.

And regardless of how great the people are, if my follower count keeps diminishing, I’m going to have to change up my Twitter strategy as a whole (not just Triberr, but maybe my strategy on tweeting content in general), and there’s nothing anyone could do to really convince me otherwise. Any service one uses, Triberr included, has to bring about good results – that has to be considered above all things, especially for people managing an account that drives their business.

Anyway, great discussion as always Saul, even if it is the text-based kind. :)

Saul Fleischman

It sounds odd that your follower count is diminishing. Robert from our tribe tells me that his is gradually growing, as is mine. I have never heard of anyone losing followers – and being able to attribute the trend to their Triberr tweets. Some have said that , due to the great polarization among bloggers – either hating or loving Triberr – some will dump you when they see you use Triberr. With the new, randomized tweet appearance in Triberr tweets that should be less of a problem. However, more of us need to nudge Dan and Dino to get rid of the “via Triberr” branding. Isn’t helping their cause; we are!

Anonymous

Hi Saul,

i saw your post and facebook today and here i am. As me and you are now in the same tribe I would like to explain you why i have all my tribe mates on manual. Has really nothing to do with trust at all. First and for all i like to read posts before i send them out.

I have quite engage community of twitter and followers quite often reply back to my tweets or even they ask questions. I would feel very uncomfortable of not be able to answer or reply on the their tweet or question. So if i put everyone on auto i doubt i would go and read the posts, for any i would even not know when they were tweeted.

2. I have issue with tribe timing. I strongly believe we should have some control when we would like to tweet the posts. This is the main reason for me why i put all on manual. I want to offer you more then just a simple tweet send out. On the beging majority of post went out for me during late night or early morning hours. Now what i do i make sure all posts get out during the peak time of my followers. When they are most active. I use few analytic tools to determine when my followers are most active. I think this is benefit for me and autohor of the post as well.

3. I like to be selective with content as well, i dont want sent out 5 posts from 5 different authors on the same topic one after another might get a bit boring. Like for example few days ago, many bloggers were writing about lost of S. Jobs. Many with great views and great memories, but all came down to do i really need to send out all 10 of them one after another ? I did my selection and i tweet them out in a period of few days rather then all at one day.

And as Pam said many tribe has spam issue as well, for example in tribe that i am part of some tribe mates are sharing jobs posts, announcements of their coming new blog posts and so on.
One more issue that i have some are brave enough to steal a content of a post from others and put their name on. Well i would never support that, and i know for the fact that same happened even in Triberr. I would never support that kind of post to go out under my name, is not fair to original author.

Saul Fleischman

There are reasons to go manual, I will concede. You give some of the strongest – and particularly, in regards to the huge number of Steve Jobs tribute posts, it is just too much. You, in fact, are kinder than some of us, by spreading them out; many would (and arguably should) simply decline a few. It is too much, already. Brilliant example of why we cannot always trust Triberr to automatically treat our Twitter timelines with the care that we can when on manual. Your other example of why to go manual – also very valid.

You’ll see that Kristi @kikolani:twitter has more terrific reasons to go manual. I’ll add another: you get an invitation to a tribe of 20 members, in which you like 18 of the blogs, can tolerate one more – and there is just one that, well, maybe you would only let through 1/20 of the guy’s posts. They are well-written, and they are far, far off-brand for you.

The thing is, you and Kristi are bad examples: I know how you behave in online communities – you are both real “citizens.” You play ball. As the guy who has invested unbelievable hours into building a few very cohesive, very reaching tribes, I really take exception with those who don’t “play ball,” and let through just a fraction of the tribal blog tweets. I get tired of the Triberr newly-joined people teaching others that this is okay.

Thank you, Jure for speaking up, I really appreciate your input on the manual setting.