What Have I Learned After Using Triberr for Two Months? The Answer May Surprise You

April 20, 2011 30 Comments

Tho Triberr has been in the news a lot lately, you might find it surprising that the platform is barely 2 months old.

So What Have I Learned?

I’ve learned that I wish I had a clearer vision of how I want to group my tribes.

When I started, my goal was simply to build out my tribes. The vision for each tribe was quite loose.

For example:

Jaffa tribe didn’t start as such, but it turned into an Aspirational tribe.
Anubis didn’t start as a Supertribe (more than 15 members) but it turned into a Supertribe really quick; which created an issue for Ben Barden and Erica Allison.

This is my fault because I didn’t communicate the size of the tribe to Ben and Erica (or anyone else for that matter.)

I didn’t realize it was turning into a Supertribe until way into it, and I didn’t have an effective means of communicating with tribe members about the changes.

All this hullabaloo resulted in us building two new Triberr features. The Manual Mode (so that the tribal tweets can be moderated by you) and Smoke Signals; which is in-Triberr messaging platform.

My third tribe, The Ori, has had smooth sailing. And I think I know why.

EVERYONE is that tribe was already deeply connected to everyone else. It was a lot like a class reunion. You joined The Ori and you already knew all the members.

It Pays to Have a Strategy

I’ve written about various strategies already:

and I would like to offer 3 more.

Reader Focused vs. Inner-Focused

Some bloggers have distinctly internal writing style. While others write for their audience.

While the distinction can be blurry, and it requires you to know the blogger in a very deep way, the distinction is there none the less. And the audience will know it.

So sharing your audience with someone who has a distinctly inner-focused writing style while you are using an extremely audience-focused writing style will probably clash. Especially if you have a mixed bag throughout the tribe.

Maybe your voice falls somewhere in between, in which case, having one tribe for inner-focused bloggers, and another for audience-focused bloggers, would be wise.

Platform Specific Tribes

Even as an experienced blogger and an online resident of these here Interwebs; my emotional system is startled every time I jump from one blogging platform to another.

They all work slightly different, have slightly different peculiarities; and many hard-core Blogger (or Tumblr) users don’t really venture outside of those platforms.

So it seams to me that having a platform-specific tribe would make a lot of sense.

This also helps with the comments. Often, users conditioned to leave comments on Blogger will not leave comments on Posterous (for example) because they:

Don’t have an account, and/or
Are not familiar with the interface

Comment-System Specific Tribes

WordPress native comment system allows for certain plugins which many commenters look for. I’m talking about CommentLuv, DoFollow and the like.

If your followers are accustomed to that type of setup on the comment system, they will be more likely to comment (and engage) on the blogs by your tribesmen as well.

Other comment system have their own fans and often the two shall never meet.

If you’re accustomed to commenting on DIY, you are accustomed to using DisqUs comment system; which is different from IntenseDebate, which is different from Livefyre comment system, which is different from…well, you get the idea.

Coda

I hope you learn from my mistakes and are more purposeful when building your tribes. So I will leave you with this.

I have also learned that many people are not connectors of men.

Bloggers come into the tribe and expect to benefit from the Chief who already did the heavy lifting in building the tribe. This is the wrong mindset.

The correct mindset is to help the Chief build out the original tribe to which you received an invite whilst building your own tribes.

In other words, don’t be an asshole.

Increasingly it’s becoming obvious to me that the true measure of a man is the number and relationships he keeps. So keep.

Should I write about relationship building? No. I wont. Why?

Because to build a relationship all you have to do is make the first step, remove self-interest as your motivation and be honest with yourself and others.

Ok. Ok. I don’t mean to hit you with profundity on a business blog, but God knows we can all use it. I will however leave you with these three questions.

What have you learned thus far from using Triberr?
What strategy have you employed to build your tribes?
Are you a connector of men?

Related posts:

Social Media Optimization

strategy, triberr

Behind the Scenes With BlogCastFM’s Srinivas Rao

How To Lose Clients and Aggravate People While Telling the Truth

Anonymous

We ALL need a way to get out of the box… of the comment platform. There’s a project for Dino and Dan. Bridge the comment platforms. That will be killer.

1. Connection and Community:

Getting to know the bloggers in Anubis has been rewarding. I enjoy reading their blog posts as they come through my que. Hopefully, we are connecting.

But here’s what Triberr needs to expand on… connecting Triberr people with Triberr people. We need to be able to join other tribes outside of the first four. We should be able to invite each other into our tribes.

Beyond that, a forum would help us connect with each other and build a global Triberr community. A forum, of course, is not rocket science. Yeah, yeah. I know you and Dan are busy. Expand your team, dude.

You’re holding me back from connecting and participating in a vibrant and exciting community. [grin]

2. Building tribes

Don’t take this the wrong way, because I fully appreciate the challenges you guys face. And the countless hours you put in.

On a scale of 1 to 5, usability is about 2. That’s ok for a beta. But I’m having headaches bringing people into a tribe just because they can’t get through the sign up and set up. I still have people waiting for my help to get them on board. [grin]

I’d come up with some design drafts, but you’re Scrooging me on the bones.

Oh- that new global forum could have two threads of relevance: people looking for tribes and tribes looking for people.

3. Affirmations

a. Blogging is far from dead.
b. Bloggers rock.
c. Together, we have a shot at making blogging more relevant than puddle-deep social media a la Twitter and Facebook.

4. Thank you

Thanks to Dino and Dan for their vision, inspiration and hard work.

My purchase of bones was a symbolic gesture of appreciation. I hope other out there can make the same symbolic gesture so you have some concrete feedback on the value of this effort. Words only go so far. But cash speak loudly- even if all it does is buy the lattes at the meet up.

Some related posts:

How to Succeed in the Thank You Economy http://wp.me/pbg0R-8N
The Next Web Milestone: Social Web 3.0 http://wp.me/pbg0R-7Z
Triberr 1.0: invite-only crack for the in crowd http://wp.me/pbg0R-7E

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Hey Stan. As always you raise great points….let me try and respond in kind

Changing the commenting platform is def on the list. More on that soon.

Cross Tribing with other members is a feature we always planned on deploying. But it has been bit of a bear. No matter tho, we plan to have it in place in a matter of weeks.

We just added the ability to invite people using Twitter DM. It should bypass any and all email related issues. Of which we’ve had few. You can also double it up and invite people via email….you have limitless number of invites. They “run out” once your tribe is full.

Regarding the forum. Deploying a forum based on available free scripts would indeed be easy. However, that is not our development strategy.

All code is written from scratch. The reason we do that is because we need our code to be lean and as bare bones as possible. This makes for a slower development pace -on average- but it ensures full control and understanding.

None the less, we plan on building out a lot of that functionality in a non-forumy kind of way

Thnx for purchasing bones. We appreciate the gesture.

Hope all these explanation help. I can tell you how much we appreciate having you and others who are such fervent supporters. Tank you

Anonymous

Awesome comment by Stan – he’s definitely rocking the blogosphere and leaving some great comments.

A Triberr forum is a great suggestion. There are also some members of Triberrs in other tribes who’d make great members of my own tribes. I know you’re working on the ‘inbreeding’ thang so that will be a great feature.

It may also be helpful to have some screencast videos showing how some of the features work. I *may* be able to do some in a few weeks time when I’ve cleared some of my existing projects. For example I didn’t know the Manual Mode existed…and it would be great for anyone wanting to look at it to have a quick screencast vid they can refer to so they can use it immediately.

But so far, Triberr ROCKS. Loving it.

Thanks for your time and effort.

Paul

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Love the screencast idea…I might beat you to it

Anonymous

Thanks to Stan for his words of support! If you want to beat me to it, then so be it. I won’t have the time until some time in mid may. If it’s not been done by then, nudge me by email and I’ll sort it out….

Anonymous

Paul can teach. Take him up on that offer. And don’t let him change his mind.

Anonymous

I totally agree that people shouldn’t rely on the chief to do all the heavy lifting.

Being able to create your own tribes is an invaluable feature. Everyone should do so, rather than stay put.

Yeah, creating a quality tribe is hard work. So? Hard work pays off.

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Thnx J. I agree about building out your own tribes of course. It requires a shift in the way of thinking for some people upon joining. I think thats a good thing

http://www.itinerantentrepreneur.com/journal/ Robert Dempsey

You look a bit stretched in that picture Dino – I think you’re thinking too damn hard. Stop it!

I’ve been purposefully building out my tribes, and ensuring quality as I go. That translates into slower growth as I won’t accept anyone until I’m more than exposed to their content. I’ve had multiple people request invites into certain tribes and they have no link to their blog, so there’s no way in hell I’m letting them in. Too bad so sad.

I am trying to be more of a connector hence the slow growth – I want to be sure that the people I connect will benefit each other, as well as provide the same or greater level of content that I expect.

That’s how I roll yo.

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

I think I need to start a website called ISuckAtPhotoshop.com lol

Your strategy is smart. Mine wasnt as much. But all is well. After all..I have you in one of my tribes

http://twitter.com/jaennutter Julie Nutter

Can I join that site?

http://www.highballblog.com/ Constantin Gabor

Well… I learned I need another Twitter account… And the fact that I don’t have two accounts (one for marketing talk and one for outdoorsy stuff) stopped me from building tribes of my own.

And to be honest, the bulk of my traffic comes from search and that made me kinda lazy.

I love the Triberr folks and the engagement is awesome. I don’t use the manual feature but if I see my posts retweeted via Triberr then I see that as a quality metric and learn what people like to share.

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

I duno..I tweet all kinds of shit from my own account. But I do have an account for triberr so…who knows….

I will say this. Its a pain to manage multiple accounts. I think some tools make it easier, but I dont use any normally. What can I say…Im old school.

http://www.highballblog.com/ Constantin Gabor

But if I enter an outdoorsy tribe, then all my Twitter followers (who are into marketing and online biz) will be spammed, right?

That’s why I’m not sure where to go yet.

Most of my tweets are online and marketing. The outdoor blog is tied to my Twitter account so each time I post (rarely) it goes out as a tweet as well. But I know my audience is not as outdoorsy as I am…

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Now THAT is an interesting outlook that I never considered. I never thought that people who follow me online because of my biz blog would consider it spam if I tweet about dogs. I just figure they would ignore it if they’re not interested.

And who knows, some of those biz folks might have dogs and would like to read about dogs.

To me, spam meant I was tweeting a link to a sales page. But I could be wrong.

Where did this notion come from? Do you think most people feel the way you do? This is very interesting to me, so please, elaborate if you dont mind

http://www.highballblog.com/ Constantin Gabor

My Facebook friends are outdoorsy and my Twitter followers are into online biz all that stuff.

You’re right about people ignoring all the outdoorsy posts but if join or create a big outdoorsy tribe then there will be a lot to ignore for my followers – and that may lead to unfollow and broken relationships, right?

I must experiment. Maybe I’m worrying over nothing.

http://billdorman.wordpress.com Bill Dorman

Don’t you be an asshole Mr Profundity………….WTH………………:)

So far, I write things as I see them through my eyes; internal to me but it’s the external that I draw my thoughts from. I have a style, but I don’t think I really have a ‘style’ yet.

Relationships and connecting I can do; in fact I would consider that one of my stronger suits. However, I have purposely been dragging my feet on Triberr probably more from the fact that I have a barely functional blog site and I don’t want to hold anyone back because they are having to drag me around.

I like the platform and I definitely want to be part of the party so I think I will get there eventually.

Thanks for the info…..

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Hey Bill…I agree….I think you have the relationship and connection building component down.

Perhaps what you bring to the tribe is not bazillion followers or an amazingly well designed blog. Perhaps you bring your connection-building skills. Thought for food

http://twitter.com/AdamPaudyal Adam Paudyal

Dino; you state some great lessons here. The strategies you pointed out are definitely going to help me build my tribe, as I am in the early stages of building mine up.

I believe you are cent percent right about having the correct mindset – help the chief build the original tribe while you are building your own…It seems like the right thing to do..ya know!

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Im glad you found it useful. It requires a certain kind of mindset -I think- to use Triberr effectively. Plus, being a Chief of your own tribes really helps you understand the challenges your Chief is grappling with. Everyone is a Chief and everyone is a tribesmen. Its a new experience for most I think.

http://www.slymarketing.com Jens P. Berget

Hi Dino,

The one thing I’ve learned from Triberr, that sort of surprised me, was my ability to trust people. A tribe should consist of people we trust, and people we actually want to spend time with. Triberr made it so much easier, and when things are automated and people in your tribe actually get control of your Twitter account (it surely feels like they do) all you’re left with is trust.

They can make really bad judgement and write an awful post, and then you’ll be retweeting tweets and posts that sucks. But that’s what it’s about, you add people you trust to your tribe. I haven’t regretted this a minute.

I haven’t given the whole strategy a lot of thought. I just wanted to connect with people who wanted to connect with me. But I definitively understand what you’re saying about commenting. I don’t have a problem with disqus, but there are so many alternatives now and I don’t want to be signing up for them all

- Jens

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Maybe we shouldn’t call them tribes anymore. Maybe we start calling them Trust Tribes. because the tribe ought to be formed around the thread of trust.

http://www.thejackb.com/ The JackB

When I signed up I accepted that there would be some hiccups and challenges that come along with something new. That is part and parcel of being a trailblazer. Some people will come and go through Triberr and make a small impact and others large. Won’t know who they are unless we stick around.

Overall I am pleased and have met some great people.

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Glad to hear that Jack. Lord knows there’s been hiccups

http://www.thejackb.com/ The JackB

Well sometimes if you want to make a move you have to take a risk.

Pingback: What do “they” know about Triberr that you don’t? By Janet Callaway | The Natural Networker |
Anonymous

Hey Dino,

I have been trying hard to get triberr to work for me but this is the problem I am encountering.

The tribe I was invited to has not grown, the ‘chief’ seeming to make no effort to grow the tribe beyond the two of us. I have no control over this and so it becomes frustrating. This has happened twice (I left the first Tribe to join with someone else)

I realise I should not rely on my chief so I am trying to build my own tribe.
I have invited over 50 of my close blogging allies but the problem is that they are all already on Triberr it seems so therefore I remain with a tribe of just me and one other.

I would send an email to my list asking who wants to be in on my Tribe, but that would mean quality control on a massive scale – and of course saying no to most of my subscribers, something I obviously do not want to do.

I have spoken with many of my blogging friends and they say that their tribe contains one or two at most, so it seems we are at a stalemate, with no one willing to back out of the tribe they were invited to and therefore unable to join mine.

I hear from Brankica and Ingrid that there are plans in the works to allow ‘interbreeding’ as they call it. Can you confirm whether this is the case?

Do you think my points are valid and did you foresee this as a potential problem?

Thanks Dino, thought you would appreciate if I took the time to share my experiences with it thus far.

Despite this, I see the incredible potential and I am uber impressed with what you and Dan have created here. Kudos mate.

http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

Hey Alex,

Thnx for the praise. It feels nice

In short, Inbreeding will be available very soon.

Your points are valid in terms of being “stuck” with a placid Chief. Which is why the original tribe is part of the vetting process…once you’re in, go nuts with building your own tribes.

While I understand challenges in terms of building tribes with non-friends, it can be really useful and enlightening to get out there and find new friends with amazing blogs. It really worked out great for me once I reached out to amazing bloggers who I didnt know from an atom.

hth

http://sweetsfoods.com/ Gera

Hi Dino,

I’m new to Triberr and I didn’t form yet my own tribes, but I’ll use the experience from others. About platforms, as I migrated from blogger to WP, you’re right, many people don’t feel comfortable commenting in different platforms then they tend to stay with them (for me they are narrow-minded). Perhaps platform-specific tribe is a good idea.

Btw: Thanks for coming to my blog and for your comment! You just came to my blog when I posted a guest post exclusively of food LOL.
My blog is a social blog – adore social media – plus blogging topics sometimes with a tech profile and food connections. I’m a techie and foodie then this is reflected on the same.

Enjoy this weekend,

Gera